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Logbook
September 13, 1998

Contents:

Daily Science Report - Sep 13 ship's location = 45 56.9N/129 59.0W

The last 3 ROPOS dives (474, 475, 476) were devoted to mapping the northern extent of the 1998 lava flow on Axial's upper south rift zone. It was originally intended to be just one dive but ROPOS had to come up early twice due to vehicle problems before the mapping was completed. In addition to the geologic traverses on the bottom and collecting Imagenex sonar data (map on left) above the bottom, we re-visited the stuck rumbleometer, retrieved bacterial traps, collected additional samples of the bacterial mats on the new lava, and tube worms on and off the new lava. Also a long term osmotic fluid sampler was deployed at "Milky" vent where it will stay down until next summer.

The extensometer instruments that we recovered several dives ago, show a 4 cm distance decrease across the measured baseline at the same time that the earthquake swarm occurred in January 1998. This is also the same time that the rumbleometer (the one that was recovered from the center of the caldera) saw a subsidence of 3.2 meters! This distance change seen by the extensometers is interpreted as due to a deflation of the entire volcano summit as magma moved into the south rift zone.

Listing of all Science News postings

Verena Tunnicliffe
Professor, University of Victoria

ERUPTION ALERT!! Hi, I'm a marine biologist - my name is Verena Tunnicliffe.
(Photo show Dr. Tunnicliffe with her time-lapse camera. When deployed on the seafloor, the camera will take one photo/day of the same region to monitor change.)

Last month, I had the opportunity to visit Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. In 1994, the city was destroyed as two volcanoes erupted. The seismologists were able to warn the inhabitants who were able to evacuate in time; most people have now moved away. As I look at the new lavas on Axial Volcano, I remember the huge fields of tubeworms we saw here last year. Then, we sat our sub in the middle of the field and the tubeworms (called vestimentiferans) towered above us - nearly 2 meters tall! Hundreds of thousands of worm lives were lost here. They had no warning....and even if they did, they are attached to the rocks, and cannot move. Why would anything choose to live in such a precarious place?? (photo below left shows "baby" tubeworms on the edge of the new lava flow)

It's the food source that brings them. You have heard from our microbiologists describing the abundant microbes here. Chemical reactions in the vent fluid feeds their growth and the big animals eat the bacteria. It is a very hard place to live for many reasons: the heavy metals, the sulphide poisons, the isolation and, not the least, eruptions and extinction. Since I have worked on Juan de Fuca Ridge - 16 years now - nearly every animal we have found is a species biologists have not seen before. There are over 400 new species at vents around the world. On this ridge, we have found about 75 new species from big worms to tiny copepods. And we have a couple more from this cruise!!

An example is the tubeworm that we first found here on Axial in 1983. The expert in the Smithsonian named it Ridgeia piscesae - "the ridge worm of Pisces". Pisces was the name of the Canadian submersible we were using. The vent tubeworms belong to a group of animals you won't find often anywhere else. They shocked biologists when first discovered....they have no mouth, no gut no anus. Just a giant sausage in a tube with a red tuft sticking out the top. Well that sausage turns out to be a highly evolved adaptation to vents: it is filled with red blood and bacteria. Why bother slurping up bacteria for food when you can just grow them inside you? The worms pick up oxygen, dissolved sulphide, and carbon dioxide with their gills. These compounds travel in the blood to the bacteria who use energy from the oxidation of sulphide to fix the carbon dioxide into scrumptious sugars. The sugars pass to the worm ... how efficient!

But what about all those dead worms buried under the lavas? Not all are gone: we found some sticking out the edges. When we picked up some to examine (see photo right of samples being removed from ROPOS), we found they are full of eggs and sperm - in the face of disaster, life goes on!!! One of the projects I am doing out here is to find out how quickly the new vents are colonized. And eight months later, it has already happened. Different vents have different animals, which surprises me (different chemistry maybe??). But we did find new tubeworms recruiting to the lavas. The males fertilize the females who release tiny embryos into the water. These turn into larvae that are carried by the currents for many days. Those babies are now landing on the lavas. We plan to try to bring a few live tubeworms back to Victoria where we will keep them in special conditions and see if we can make babies there to watch how they grow.

So we have some very special animals who have evolved to live on the edge: the constant threat of death but the continual chance for rebirth.

It is a great challenge to try to do this type of work out here. But so rewarding. I am a Professor in Earth/Ocean Sciences and in Biology at University of Victoria. Over the years, my program has evolved to work with interdisciplinary groups such as this one. But not only is there great pleasure in working with other scientists, the technologists and pilots of the ROPOS group have also taught me and my students a great deal - we delight in their successes. And a final note: a big hug for my little girl, Arielle, who started back to school last week; it's hard not to be there.

Listing of all Perspectives postings

September 13 - 1500 hours

It's Sunday afternoon and we have good news and bad news. After a few problems yesterday with water alarms, ROPOS is back on the bottom taking bacterial mat samples and surveying two more tracks along the ocean floor. Despite a one hour delay caused by a video malfunction in the deep recesses of the hydro-lab, this part of the dive concluded at about 1400 hours and we have begun a long run of Imagenex work. The schedule calls for 12 hours of working Imagenex lines as the scientists try to get a more accurate picture of the sea floor surrounding the vent field. One of our improving maps of this area has been sent to land and is available on above on today's (9/13) site. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the weather report calls for some relatively nasty stuff tomorrow and maybe beyond. We are beginning to feel the change in the ship's motion already this afternoon. The meteorologists are predicting the 35 knots winds that will guarantee that we'll all be "sleeping" on the cheap roller coaster for a night or two. Still, we can't complain. There has been very little of this kind of disturbance in our first 21 days at sea and we are still averaging somewhere in the vicinity of 15 hours per day of dive time. That's phenomenal.

We are still looking for questions from shore. We want to keep our scientists in touch with what folks on shore are thinking about the work being done out here. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, send them through the question icon at the end of this page. One common question that has shown up in a number of different forms is "Where are all the big animals?" Our biology professor from the University of Victoria addresses that question in her science report for today. We are sending along some pictures of the big animals that we have observed, but the truth is that the area we have been exploring is only about one-tenth of a mile in length, and in an area of the ocean where big animals are generally very rare due mainly to a lack of food, we just don't see many.

We have begun a cribbage tournament among the card-playing members of the crew. I have my first match this evening. I expect to win the whole thing, but of course so does everyone else who is competing. The whole crew is beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and while we still have five days of science and one day of cleaning and packing ahead of us, we are all looking forward to a little R and R in Victoria, B.C. One week after I get home I have to go to Washington D.C. to begin working on the second annual National Ocean Science Bowl. I can virtually guarantee that some of the information you find on this website will find its way into that contest. Those of you who are teachers at the high school level might want to start thinking about putting together a team. Last year's contest was superb. I will post information about the contest to this website as soon as I have reliable dates and places in hand.

If it turns out to be stormy tomorrow so that ROPOS is not able to go in the water, I'll try to do some catch-up on things we've missed reporting along the way, or perhaps take you on a quick tour around the ship, provided it will hold still long enough to have its picture taken. L

Logbook of all Teacher At Sea postings

Question: What is the "bag creature"?
Andra Bobbitt, Seal Rock Oregon

Answer: A figment of overactive imaginations to some extent. The big jelly blobs we see around the vents are not creatures at all. [When they were first found, geologists decided that, since they weren't rock, they had to be animal and the name stuck.] If you look at them in the lab, they are like round lumps of Jello: transparent, often with white fuzzy growth on top. Under the microscope, there is no structure at all. Our microbiologists will be examining them because we believe they are sugar wastes produced by bacteria. So much is coming out that they stick together and form large blobs.

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