ROPOS clutches the Infrared Reader (IR) near benchmark 11 on the southern Cleft segment (2216 meters). A beautiful seastar sits on a lava pillar in the background.

NOAA Ship Ron Brown/ROV ROPOS
Science News

Science Report - Monday, July 16, 2001
Ship's position: 44 39.9'/-130 21.7

ROPOS has been in the water for the last 24 hours for dive 619 at the southern Cleft segment. During the dive ROPOS visited all of the extensometer instruments and downloaded the data they had collected over the last year. There are 11 extensometers in a line that spans the floor of the axial valley and the axis of spreading. Most of the instruments are working well and were full of data but a few were not and will be recovered with the elevator mooring so that we can fix them and re-deploy them next year. The instruments make one distance measurement per day across the plate boundary and are designed to last at least 5 years. It will take some time before all the data is evaluated, but at first glance most of the instruments appear to be working well.

Dive 619 will end this evening and afterwards ROPOS will make another short dive here at south Cleft to visit two of the hydrothermal vents sites (Vent1 and Plume) to recover and redeploy temperature probes and to take vent fluid samples for chemical analysis. By tomorrow evening we will be heading for Axial Volcano.