Hydrothermal Vent - Exploration

Exploration

In 1949, a deep water survey reported anomalously hot brines in the central portion of the Red Sea. Later work in the 1960s confirmed the presence of hot, 60 °C (140 °F), saline brines and associated metalliferous muds. The hot solutions were emanating from an active subseafloor rift. The highly saline character of the waters was not hospitable to living organisms. The brines and associated muds are currently under investigation as a source of mineable precious and base metals.

The chemosynthetic ecosystem surrounding submarine hydrothermal vents were discovered along the Galapagos Rift, a spur of the East Pacific Rise, in 1977 by a group of marine geologists led by Jack Corliss of Oregon State University. In 1979, biologists returned to the rift and used DSV Alvin, an ONR research submersible from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, to see the hydrothermal vent communities with their own eyes. In that same year, Peter Lonsdale published the first scientific paper on hydrothermal vent life.

In 2005, Neptune Resources NL, a mineral exploration company, applied for and was granted 35,000 km² of exploration rights over the Kermadec Arc in New Zealand's Exclusive Economic Zone to explore for seafloor massive sulfide deposits, a potential new source of lead-zinc-copper sulfides formed from modern hydrothermal vent fields. The discovery of a vent in the Pacific Ocean offshore of Costa Rica, named the Medusa hydrothermal vent field (after the serpent-haired Medusa of Greek mythology), was announced in April 2007. The Ashadze hydrothermal field (13°N on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, elevation -4200 m) was the deepest known high-temperature hydrothermal field until 2010, when the Piccard site (18°33′N 81°43′W / 18.55°N 81.717°W / 18.55; -81.717, elevation -5000 m) was discovered by a group of scientists from NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. This site is located on the 110 km long, ultraslow spreading Mid-Cayman Rise within the Cayman Trough.