Research cruise 2010
The first part 24 June – 2 July, led by Haflidi Haflidason, will employ the Calypso coring technology to extract up to 20m sediment cores. The second part 5-20 July will stop briefly at the Håkon Mosby Mud Volcano and Loki’s Castle for sample taking before heading north and west along the Knipovich Ridge to look for new sites of hydrothermal activity using AUV technology to support the traditional CTD and ROV work.
Discoveries such as Loki’s Castle and the shallow vents near Jan Mayen have shown that hydrothermal venting does take place on slow spreading ridges, such as the arctic ridges, and that venting may be a more ubiquitous activity along ridges than previously believed. Other discoveries such as Lost City in 2000 have shown that venting may occur at other kinds of geological sites and be driven by other kinds of thermal activity than volcanic activity. Lost City is driven by exothermic water-rock interactions (learn more) and researchers will be studying this summer’s longer Calypso cores for historical evidence of both kinds of venting activity.
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Learn more
Summer 2010 CGB researchers continue working with cutting-edge technology in their search for new examples of arctic venting phenomena.
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Two new hydrothermal vent fields discovered
The Centre for Geobiology leader, Rolf Birger Pedersen, was part of an international team of experts who discovered two unique hydrothermal vent fields in the Mid-Cayman spreading centre. Their results are now published in Nature Communications.