We're trying to relate how the tectonic structure of the earth creates different
biological habitat zones the Mariana backer is where the upper plate here is
spreading so the part to the right is moving to the right part to the left is
moving to the left causing the hydrothermal vents the
challenges in trying to understand a system so sparsely sampled and so
completely out of view the models that are out there are developed for
environments that are just fundamentally different than the ones we're studying
if these dives are successful will really fill in a big gap
wish us luck
the animals the microbes they're not just living on hot seawater they're
really extracting the chemical energy that comes out the quality of the
chemical energy depends on what the reaction zone is underneath the dive
went great I mean the very first science dive for this ROV I thought it was
fantastic I'm super proud of Sebastian right so if
this has been a long time coming and now to see it actually bring up some samples
and scientists with smiles on their face we want to look at differences in these
really acidic arc volcanoes like this one versus the more neutral pH deeper
back arc vent sites it's always good to come back to a black smoker especially a
giant one that we've never seen before you know you go up with the ROV and they
just keep going up and up in Perth or further 30 metres a hundred feet tall
that's just crazy and these things are just pumping so much into the ocean it
blows me away temperatures of those events are above 300 degrees Celsius
which is pretty hot and you know just centimetres away from that hot hot fluid
there's those crazy shrimp and worms and snails and crabs we were able to focus
in on two crabs and what we observed was something I didn't really expect we've
got one crab that is letting a larger crab which is a very aggressive species
pick something from its shell it's not moving away so that might indicate that
this is something positive for that crab then we have the crab that's eating
something is this a regular food source or is this something else could it be a
grooming behavior we don't know and so what this kind of observation inspires
then is questions that we can then think about testing even though the animals
are just gorgeous we're not seeing as many as we might see
at chimneys on another vent system and it has something to do with the amount
of fluid that's coming out through the sides of the chimneys so that was a
little bit surprising to me even though there's thousands and thousands of
animals on the chimney it's still possible to create more biomass more
animals if you can channel more and more fluid through the chimneys I've never
seen anything like this before as far as the morphology of the chimneys the
minerals that make up that chimney are not very permeable they're really stuck
into narrow channels and their only choice is to go up they can't go out and
I don't know the answer to that the hardest part about chimneys is getting
them I feel lucky that I get to have these samples and look at them so we can
learn about how long has this whole general area being Hadj thermally active
what we've done here is that we're not just looking at temperature we're now
pairing that with the fluid chemistry as well as oxygen as well as pH and so
we're going to be able to look at all four of these factors that imagery is
telling us exactly the spots these animals want to live the animals living
in the back arc are very different from the animals living on the volcanic arc
and we wanted to confirm that we know that now the two environments are right
next to each other where the animals could overlap if they wanted to but they
don't so that's really telling us a very clear message geological setting is
really important probably influencing the chemistry and the microbes and
therefore controlling the animals and that really I think will help us
understand the distribution of hydrothermal vent animals around the
whole planet it just feels like a real privilege to come out here and do this
kind of work it makes me feel pretty good about society in that we are
willing to put together the resources to come out and do things like this so that
we can learn more about our planet what we've learned from work that we've done
in extreme environments might help us to understand what might be the traits for
species that are going to persist in a global ocean that is going to be
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