Hydrothermal vents are seeps on the ocean flooring from which scorching liquids escape. “Water penetrates into the ocean flooring the place it’s heated by magma. The overheated water then rises again to the ocean flooring by way of cracks and fissures. On its approach up the fluid develop into enriched in minerals and supplies dissolved out of the oceanic crustal rocks. These fluids typically seep out once more on the sea flooring by way of tube-like chimneys known as black people who smoke, the place metal-rich minerals are then precipitated,” explains Prof. Gerhard Bohrmann of MARUM and chief scientist of the MARIA S. MERIAN (MSM 109) expedition.
At water depths larger than 3,000 meters, the remote-controlled submersible car MARUM-QUEST took samples from the newly found hydrothermal discipline. Named after Jøtul, an enormous in Nordic mythology, the sphere is positioned on the 500-kilometer-long Knipovich Ridge. The ridge lies inside the triangle shaped by Greenland, Norway and Svalbard on the boundary of the North American and European tectonic plates. This type of plate boundary, the place two plates transfer aside, is known as a spreading ridge. The Jøtul Discipline is positioned on a particularly sluggish spreading ridge with a development charge of the plates of lower than two centimeters per yr. As a result of little or no is thought about hydrothermal exercise on sluggish spreading ridges, the expedition targeted on acquiring an outline of the escaping fluids, in addition to the scale and composition of energetic and inactive people who smoke within the discipline.
“The Jøtul Discipline is a discovery of scientific curiosity not solely due to its location within the ocean but additionally on account of its local weather significance, which was revealed by our detection of very excessive concentrations of methane within the fluid samples, amongst different issues,” stories Gerhard Bohrmann. Methane emissions from hydrothermal vents point out a vigorous interplay of magma with sediments. On its journey by way of the water column, a big proportion of the methane is transformed into carbon dioxide, which will increase the focus of CO2 within the ocean and contributes to acidification, however it additionally has an affect on local weather when it interacts with the ambiance. The quantity of methane from the Jøtul Discipline that ultimately escapes immediately into the ambiance, the place it then acts as a greenhouse gasoline, nonetheless must be studied in additional element. There may be additionally little identified concerning the organisms residing chemosynthetically within the Jøtul Discipline. Within the darkness of the deep ocean, the place photosynthesis can not happen, hydrothermal fluids kind the premise for chemosynthesis, which is employed by very particular organisms in symbiosis with micro organism.
With a purpose to considerably develop on the considerably sparse info obtainable on the Jøtul Discipline, a brand new expedition of the MARIA S. MERIAN will begin in late summer season of this yr below the management of Gerhard Bohrmann. The main target of the expedition is the exploration and sampling of as but unknown areas of the Jøtul Discipline. With intensive knowledge from the Jøtul Discipline it will likely be doable to make comparisons with the few already identified hydrothermal fields within the Arctic province, such because the Aurora Discipline and Loki’s Fort.