Tunnicliffe, right, and Juniper with some palm and
tube worms brought
back from the expedition.
Dr. Verena Tunnicliffe (earth and ocean sciences) barely had time to get her land legs back when she found herself sitting in front of a TV camera for an interview with the Discovery Channel.
The University of Victoria marine biologist and 34 other Canadian and American scientists had just returned the night before (Sept. 20) from NeMO Cruise 98-an expedition 320 km off of the west coast to assess deep-sea animal life after the eruption of the Axial underwater volcano.
Tunnicliffe and Dr. Kim Juniper of the Université du Québec à Montréal described their findings in an interview with the daily science news magazine, @discovery.ca, broadcast Sept. 22.
Earthquakes recorded near the volcano site in January suggested a large eruption had occurred near bizarre life-forms that scientists are just beginning to understand.
Operating the Sidney-based ROPOS remote-controlled submersible from on board a U.S. research vessel, researchers confirmed that an eruption had taken place and that 2000-degree Celsius lava flows had devastated the unique hot vent communities.
But new life has quickly returned.
"What we were able to find were the sights of this new hydro-thermal venting and all sorts of animals that already had settled to the point where they were adults and reproducing," Tunnicliffe said on @discovery.ca.
It took a week of searching with ROPOS before scientists realized they had found the actual site of the lava flow, 1,500 metres below the surface, because "a two to three millimetre 'rusty fluff' of iron oxide had already formed on the new rock," Juniper added. "We were there early enough to see the beginning of the food chain."
The other clue to the presence of new rock was that fields of tubeworms, nearly two metres tall, that once inhabited the site had disappeared.
"Hundreds of thousands of worm lives were lost here," Tunnicliffe wrote on the NeMO Cruise 98 Website http://newport.pmel.noaa.gov/nemo_cruise98/.
But not all of the tubeworms were wiped-out by lava. Their larvae, floating through the water column, are finding the new hot vents and re-establishing the colony.
Sea water percolating through cracks in the ocean floor is heated by molten rock and returned through the geyser-like hot vents. The heated water carries with it heavy metals and sulphides that feed bacteria, tube worms, palm worms, and dozens of other creatures.
Tubeworms-resembling giant white sausages-cope with the harsh environment by taking in sulfides, carbon dioxide and oxygen through their gills and converting them to sugar. They multiply when males fertilize the females and embryos are released into the water where they become larvae and float around for several days before latching on to a hot vent.
Tunnicliffe-who has studied hydrothermal life along the Juan de Fuca Ridge for 16 years-brought back live tubeworms to her lab. She hopes the specimens will provide sperm and egg samples to help researchers grow new tubeworms and broaden their understanding of reproduction and development processes, life-spans of larvae, and whether they're attracted to hot vents by bacteria or by hydrogen sulfides.
"We're trying to put together the story of the growth of the babies,"
says Tunnicliffe.