Logbook: September 7, 2003

Science Report / Cruise Summary
Bill Chadwick, Chief Scientist

The top of one of many large black smokers at the ASHES vent field.

Our NeMO 2003 expedition has been a tremendous success. We came out here with a long list of things we wanted to do and not very much time to do them in. However, we were able to do almost everything we had planned, thanks to good weather and the hard work of the ship's crew, the ROPOS group, and the scientists on board. It is now 5 years since the 1998 eruption at Axial Volcano. After the dramatic changes we saw right after the eruption (new lava on the seafloor, new hydrothermal vents becoming established and colonized, and warm water and microbial blooms almost everywhere), we have documented a slow decline in hydrothermal systems in the eruption area since then. Some vents gradually declined in temperature while others stopped venting altogether. So before this expedition, we did not know if more, or perhaps even all of the sites that we had been monitoring would now be completely dead; the heat and chemicals from the 1998 eruption now completely dissipated. But that is not what we found. more...