Volcanic eruption in Deep Ocean Ridge is seen for the first time by scientists

Andrew Wozniak, a chemical oceanographer at the University of Delaware, had difficulty processing what his eyes assumed. Dr. Wozniak was parked on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean under almost 1.6 miles in water Alvin, a research -being investigated. As far as he could see there were a predominantly bare vastness of jet -black rock.

Only a day earlier, in the same place, a lively ecosystem flourished in the sizzling waters of the Tica Hydrothermal Vent, about 1,300 miles west of Costa Rica. Beings inhabited every centimeter of the rocky seabed, winding in a patchwork of life. The Karmozijnrode tips from gigantic tube worms that wadded in the current exchange around clusters of mussels. Bugish shellfish closed through the scene while spooky white fish slowly sniffed around for their next murder.

Now only one cluster of tubeworms remained on the black terrain, all dead. A haze of particles filled the water like glints of bright orange lava flickered among the rocks.

“My brain tried to understand what was going on,” said Dr. Wozniak. “Where did things go?”

Eventually it clicked: he and the other passengers of the sub witnessed the end of a submarine volcanic eruption that had buried the flowering ecosystem under fresh lava rock.

This was the first time that scientists had witnessed a clearly active eruption along the Mid-Ocean Ridge, a volcanic mountain range that extends 40,000 miles around the worldas the Seams of a baseball. The ridge marks the edges of tectonic plates while pulling apart, volcanic eruptions and creating fresh crust, or the layer of the earth where we live, under the sea. Over 80 percent of the Volcanism of the Earth is done on the seabed, with the vast majority Prevents along the Mid-Ocean Nok. Before this last observation, only two outbursts under water were caught in action, and neither of them were along a Mid-Ocean Heuvelrug, said Bill Chadwick, a volcanologist at Oregon State University who was not in the research team.

“That’s a super exciting first,” he said.

Observing such an event Live offers scientists a unique opportunity to study one of the most fundamental processes of our planet: the birth of new seabed and the dynamic effects on ocean chemistry, ecosystems, microbial life and more.

“Being there in real time is just this absolutely phenomenal gift – I am really jealous,” said Deborah Kelley, a marine geologist at the University of Washington who was not part of the research team.

Dr. Wozniak and colleagues sailed on a ship, the R/V Atlantis, before they left in the Alvin sub. Their original goal was to study carbon that flows from the Tica ventilation, funded by the National Science Foundation. Hydrothermic ventilation openings are a planetary sanitary system that is driven to sea water that is heated while it seeps through the ocean floor. The process transports both heat and chemicals from the interior of the earth, helps to regulate ocean chemistry and feed a unique community of deep marine life.

The dive on Tuesday morning started like any other. Alyssa Wentzel, a student at the University of Delaware, who is at Dr. Wozniak on board added to Alvin, described the enchantment of sinking in the darkness of the Oceantspenden on the 70 -minute journey to the seabed. While the light disappeared, organic crewing jelly and small zooplankton drifted through.

“It was magical,” she said. “It really takes away your words.”

But when they approached the site, a dark magic pulled off when the temperature slowly tapped up and particles filled the water. The usual boring gray-brown of the seabed was covered by sities of ink rock that smiled with an abundance of glass-it-result of fast extinguishing when lava gets cold water.

While particles cloudy the view from Alvin, Kaitlyn Beardshear of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the pilot in the order of the journey of the day, kept the sub -function on the temperatures. While they were refueling, they also realized about the safety of the immersion and the crew. Eventually the pilot called to withdraw.

“It was an incredible sight to see,” they said. “All the life and functions that I had seen only a few days earlier, wiped away. I can’t believe we were so lucky that we had been there within a few hours after eruption.”

After returning to the ship, the team heard those sensitive microphones, called hydrophones, on board the Atlantis, had detected the volcano eruption earlier in the day. It registered as a series of low frequency tree and campfire -like cracker.

This was the third well -known eruption on the Tica gathering since the discovery in the 1980s. In the course of the decades, Fornari, a marine geologist at Woods Hole, and his colleagues have The site is close to a close eyeTracking changes in temperature, water chemistry and more. By combining these analyzes with modeling the spread of the seabed, they realized that the site seemed ready for an eruption, and suggested that it would happen somewhere this year or last.

In 1991 he and his colleagues had arrived within a few days after the start of an eruption. It might still be active, he said, but they didn’t see flashes from lava to confirm. This time, he said, there is no doubt about what the Alvin crew saw. “This was the closest that we once witnessed the initiation of an eruption” along the mid-ocean ridge, he said.

The team continues to study the volcanic activity. Given the safety problems, they collect data and take photos remotely from the Atlantis.

The data will help researchers to unravel the mysteries of the deep sea and the role it plays in marine ecosystems. “All this has to do with understanding this holistic system that is earth and ocean,” said Dr. Fornari. “It is so intertwined and it is both complex and beautiful.”