To try to avoid this Johnson and engineers with the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory designed probes that look remarkably like giant hypodermic needles. The 15-foot-long stainless steel probes were driven into the summit of a 3.5-million-year-old seamount. Two of the hollow probes immediately began venting warm crustal fluid.
The successful insertion of the probes and the development of a new barrel sampler meant scientists could take very large samples, 25 gallons at a time, of uncontaminated fluid to measure extremely dilute organic compounds that would tell how long the fluid was within the crustal rocks. These quantities are 200 times larger than normal hydrothermal fluid samples and the scientists may have accidentally spilled more hydrothermal fluid than is collected during other expeditions, Johnson says. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's new remotely operated vehicle Jason II was used for the seafloor work.
All 24 scientists on the expedition are named as co-authors on the Eos paper. In addition to the UW, they represent NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, University of Victoria, Oregon State University, University of Chicago, Field Museum of Chicago, University of California Santa Cruz, University of South Carolina, Dartmouth University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
While work continues on the chemical and microbiological analyses, Johnson and his colleagues have been intrigued by research reported by Andrew Fisher of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and 12 co-authors in the Feb. 6 issue of Nature.
That work describes how two seamounts in the North Pacific appear to share the same underground plumbing so that cold seawater being taken in at one seamount is venting as warm hydrothermal fluid at another and the two are 25 miles apart.
The seamount at th
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Contact: Sandra Hines
shines@u.washington.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington
18-Mar-2003