Image of NeMO Net buoy in the water ready to communicate with the RAS. The RAS, after deployment at Cloud vent marker-N6. The cloudy area in the background is the area of venting.

NOAA Ship Ron Brown/ROV ROPOS
Science News

Science Report - Sunday, July 29, 2001
Bill Chadwick
Ship's position: 45 56.0'/-130 00.8'

The wind and seas came up last night and have kept us out of the water for the last 18 hours - our first down time due to weather so far. However, we received some good news today: after the NeMO Net buoy was deployed yesterday, the communications link was tested from shore and the system is working properly. Engineers in Seattle were able to query the interactive fluid sampler on the seafloor and it has successfully sent back replies. This represents a significant step forward in our ability to respond to events as rapidly as possible because we now have the capability to sample a vent on command even when we are not there with a ship and ROPOS. We hope to expand the scope of monitoring at Axial via NeMO Net in the coming years.

The next ROPOS dive will be at the ASHES vent field where short-term experiments still need to be recovered and long-term experiments deployed. We also still hope to get one more dive to the CASM vent field for geologic mapping and fluid sampling.