Selected questions and answers will be posted here throughout the
mission.
What are the immediate goals of your project?
1. Test new equipment that we have just built. This equipment is
designed to obtain chemical data and to filter microorganisms (and
other particles) from basement fluids (ocean crustal basalt) and to do
this in situ (instrument on the seafloor).
2. To collect actual data during these first tests. This will be the
very first in situ chemical data from basement fluids from basement
taht is buried under hundreds of meters of sedments.
3. To use this new chemical and microbiological data to improve our
understanding of the magnitude and the characteristics of the biosphere
living in this vast, remote and extreme environment.
What is exciting about your project?
1. The whole process of envisioning, planning for and mounting an
expedition such as this.
2. The opportunity to test new, sophisticated electronic instruments
under
difficult conditions.
3. The opportunity to learn more about a virtually unknown aspect
(microbial geochemistry) of this vast environment.
Have you encountered any sea life at these depths in an area that is not near hydrothermal vents? Does the environment
you are investigating now support life and if so what kind?
Actually, there are many different animals that live on the bottom of
the deep ocean, away from hydrothermal vents, although they are present
in much less dense populations. In fact, they are rather sparsely
distributed. The seafloor where most of our dives are is relatively
flat and covered by thick soft sediments. The animals in this
environment ultimately depend on organic matter that falls from to the
deep ocean from the surface waters where primary production
(photosynthesis) takes place. As the organic particles sink through
the water column, it is consumed and degraded by a series of
microorganisms, zooplankton and fish; not much of the original surface
production reaches the ocean depths (say 1%). So there is not much for
the deep ocean animals to eat. Nevertheless, they do live there. Some
of the animals seen by our divers so far include: rat-tail fish, a
crab, several octopuses, shrimp-like crustaceans, swimming annelids
(segmented worms), anenomes, medusae or sea jellies ("jelly fish"),
ctenophores, and other critters. We'll let you know what other
organisms we see. Interestingly, dense communities of organisms can be
occasionally encountered in the deep ocean where dead whales fall to
the seafloor. These whale carcasses provide a huge windfall of organic
matter that feed a succession of organisms for years. Craig Smith and
others at UH have been studying this dynamic system for years. Another
significant, but intermittent food fall to the seafloor often follows
dense phytoplankton blooms, especially where aggregate forming diatoms
are involved.
|
