From the Max Planck Society
New deep-sea hot springs discovered in the Atlantic
Scientists from the MARUM Center for Marine Environmental Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen on board the German research vessel Meteor have discovered a new hydrothermal vent 500 kilometres south-west of the Azores. The vent with chimneys as high as one meter and fluids with temperatures up to 300 degrees Celsius was found at one thousand metres water depth in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery of the new deep-sea vent is remarkable because the area in which it was found has been intensively studied during previous research cruises. The MARUM and Max Planck researchers describe their discovery in their video blog.
Chimney-like structures spew hot fluids of up to 300 degrees Celsius that contain large amounts of methane and hydrogen sulfide.
Image: MARUM
The Bremen scientists were able to find the hydrothermal vent by using the new, latest-generation multibeam echosounder on board the research vessel Meteor that allows the imaging of the water column above the ocean floor with previously unattained precision. The scientists saw a plume of gas bubbles in the water column at a site about 5 kilometers away from the known large vent field Menez Gwen that they were working on. A dive with the remote-controlled submarine MARUM-QUEST revealed the new hydrothermal site with smokers and animals typically found at vents on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Since the discovery of the new vent, the scientists have been intensively searching the water column with the multibeam echosounder. To their astonishment, they have already found at least five other sites with gas plumes. Some even lie outside the volcanically active spreading zone in areas where hydrothermal activity was previously not assumed to occur.
“Our results indicate that many more of these small active sites exist along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge than previously assumed,” said Dr. Nicole Dubilier, the chief scientist of the expedition. “This could change our understanding of the contribution of hydrothermal activity to the thermal budget of the oceans. Our discovery is also exciting because it could provide the answer to a long standing mystery: We do not know how animals travel between the large hydrothermal vents, which are often separated by hundreds to thousands of kilometres from each other. They may be using these smaller sites as stepping stones for their dispersal.”
Research on deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic is the objective of the 30 marine scientists from Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, Portugal, and France who have been on board the German research vessel Meteor since September 6th. The expedition to the submarine volcano Menez Gwen near the Azores is financed by MARUM, the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences in Bremen. “One of the questions that the team would like to answer is why the hydrothermal sources in this area emit so much methane – a very potent greenhouse gas,” says chief scientist Nicole Dubilier, who is also a member of the Steering Committee of the Census of Marine Life Vents and Seeps project ChEss (Chemosynthetic Ecosystem Science). “Another important focus of the research is the deep-sea mussels that live at the hydrothermal vents and host symbiotic bacteria in their gills. The mussels obtain their nutrition from these bacteria.”
The hydrothermal vent crab Segonzacia on a mound that is covered with white bacteria and mineral precipitates.
Image: MARUM
Video blog: “News from the main deck”
An expedition on a research vessel is not only marked by great moments, like this discovery; everyday life on the Meteor is also filled with other exciting activities and events. Work on a research vessel goes on round the clock throughout the entire expedition. In his video podcast “Neues vom Peildeck / News from the observation deck”, available through the Hamburg-based newspaper Abendblatt, and in German and English on YouTube (see link below), Dennis Fink, a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, reports on the activities of the ship’s remote-operated vehicle (ROV) MARUM-QUEST, the various instruments used by the scientists and life on board the ship. In the two-minute video blogs, Fink and his colleagues show fascinating images direct from the sea floor.
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Contact:
Dr. Manfred Schlösser, Public Relations
Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, Bremen
Tel.: +49 421 2028704
E-mail: mschloes@mpi-bremen.de
Albert Gerdes, Public Relations
MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Research University of Bremen, Bremen
Tel.: +49 421 218-65540
E-mail: agerdes@marum.de
Title “Hydrothermal vents may contribute more to the thermal budget of the oceans than previously assumed”.
The word “assumed” says it all for me. File in the bin IMO.
Wonderfull!
But does this mean global energy budgets are now suspect? /sarc
Well, Duh. Mr Gore already told us it was millions of degrees down there, or something like that.
In 1999 there was a volcanic explosion on the Gakkel Ridge under the Arctic Ice, the traces of which I maintain can be seen. Clouds covered the area in question, which I believe were the vapors from a bit of open sea or from warmed and thinned ice. A meteorologist should be able to tell whether the clouds were from that source, or from the normal processes of cloud formation in the Arctic. The pictures are hard to get.
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Interesting research and reports,
Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIM) in Townsville, Queensland, Australia also has documented similar work:-
Discovery of active hydrothermal venting in Lake Taupo, New Zealand (2002) Journal of Vulcanology and Geothermal Research V115 Issue 3-4 June 30 p257-75
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03770273
http://www3.aims.gov.au/docs/publications/waypoint/003/pdf/waypoint-200612.pdf
provies some overview of the oceanic research conducted.
http://www.aims.gov.au/index.html
I propose an eco tax on all hydro thermal vents. They are just a bunch of irresponsible gas-emitting freeloaders.
Every day it seems, brings new important data to the field of settled science. How can this be!!!
But it’s important.
So, we’ll let JASON do it.
Thank you, Hal Lewis.
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Heh, wrong thread for 6:06 comment, but let’s not speak of the Devil, who knows in which thread He’ll pop up.
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So I need to buy carbon offsets for these vents?
what … are they saying that they lack knowledge about the activities and mechanisms of 7/8 of the earths surface which happens to be inhospitable to human life ? Didn’t the models tell them these vents would be there ?
Don’t you just love that phrase, “this is could CHANGE our understanding etc”
If only these scientists were climatologists.
Sorry, typo , superfluous “is “in quote.
The heat flow from the ocean floor to the ocean water has not changed. This vent was there all along. The reason ocean temperatures have risen is because something else has changed.
So what we know ,and what we don’t know are two different things?..
This is an interesting piece from a strictly scientific point of view. This deep ocean stuff always gets my attention.
I don’t worry about the methane very much because I am not impressed with the theory behind the greenhouse effect. As for the warming, it is deep in very cold water. Good for the animals there, but not much of an impact outside of that.
Still a good article.
John Kehr
It’s a nice puff piece, but does anybody have some real numbers?
I suspect that in the overall scheme of things that these hydrothermal vents are an insignificant part of the global energy budget.
Poor Trenberth.
He’s been looking for his missing heat in the ocean, and now he has to look for even more to offset the thermal vents he didn’t know about.
Its worse than he thought.
I ponder and I wonder, was it actually the NOAA 16 Satellite which discoverd this vent?
Peter Walsh
Part of the Plate Tectonic thing. They have been around for as long as plate tectonics. ie. for as long as the planet has been around. Yes they warm the surrounding water but not a lot.
“One of the questions that the team would like to answer is why the hydrothermal sources in this area emit so much methane – a very potent greenhouse gas”
The infrared-absorptive properties of methane aren’t relevant to the effect of the vents on marine life or the [deep] ocean’s thermal budget, so why the gratuitous reference to greenhouse here? Trying to make the research more interesting to possible funding sources, perhaps. Or added by the reporter.
“Hydrothermal vents may contribute more to the thermal budget of the oceans than previously assumed”.
Now this would put quite a crimp in the climate models wouldn’t it.
I’d like to see the EPA regulate those vents…
“One of the questions that the team would like to answer is why the hydrothermal sources in this area emit so much methane – a very potent greenhouse gas,”
Wow! I wonder: Will the U.S. EPA commence an attempt to regulate those gas emissions, or will they take planet Earth to court and sue it for non-compliance?
Imagine that: The Earth farts more than the ruminants!
Have you seen this?:
http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?p=11690
This confirms the interrelation among all fields, which really are one and single field:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/38598073/Unified-Field