KPLU Local News
(2009-12-17)
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A Deep-Sea First: Video of Erupting Volcano
The orange glow of magma is visible on the left of the sulfur-laden plume. This image is approximately six feet across in an eruptive area approximately the length of a football field that runs along the summit.
Image courtesy of NSF and NOAA.
You'd think by now every corner of the planet has been explored. But, an expedition led by a University of Washington researcher is the first ever to witness a deep-sea volcano spewing lava.
It started a year ago, when oceanographer Joe Resing was on a science voyage in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and found signs in the ocean chemistry that a volcanic eruption might be underway.
Fast-forward to May 5, 2009. A dozen scientists are on the deck of the U.W. research ship T.G. Thompson, in a makeshift room, 140 miles from Samoa. They're crowded around a high-definition TV monitor. It's connected by cable to a robotic submarine (the Jason-2) nearly a mile below the surface. The submarine is hovering in pitch darkness, with a bright spotlight and cameras trained on a volcano that's invisible from the surface.
Resing, the chief scientist on this voyage, says, not long after it reached the volcano, one of the cameras spotted white smoke. "So, we we moved the remaining 20 or 30 feet and there it was, molten red lava," he says.
Did big chears go up? "Oh, yeah, darned straight. It was pretty spectacular. It's hard to describe how exciting its is to see something you've hoped to see for a long time."
Volcano-chasers have been looking for this for 25 years. Nobody had ever seen an active volcano emitting lava at that depth. It was just a few years ago that the first deep volcanic activity of any sort was seen, closer to Guam, and that was more limited and not quite as deep.
There are more volcanoes beneath the ocean than on land, but they're sort of like the proverbial tree falling in the forest: When they erupt, nobody knows. When you go thousands of feet deep, the pressure is so high that lava and gases and heat are all contained, and not even a ripple reaches the surface. Even the sound they recorded is muffled. But, in this case, last May, they saw not only oozing lava. Resing describes a pyrotechnic display.
"Suddenly the rocks would crack open, and there'd be glowing lava and gas bursting out, and you could see the red lava just sitting there as all the gas came out, the sulfur gas and carbon dioxide," he says. "And, then we saw these large bubbles that were probably 3-4 feet across. These big red molten bubbles would burst into the water and throw these pieces of rock all over the place."
They nicknamed the crater Hades, and in the video it does look like the fires of hell. Fire and rock and smoke burst out, as if from canons. The robotic submarine cruised within 10 feet of the explosions. If it were near the surface, Resing says, they'd have to stay a half-mile away.
The robot collected various samples. In the patches of warm water, they found microbial life--and even some finger-sized shrimp. The expedition team, made up of researchers from various universities and government agencies, is laying out all the details this week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, where the video is being played for the first time. The various samples they took are shedding light on how life survives in harsh environments, and on how Earth's crust forms. The volcano itself rises about a mile off the ocean floor. It's called West Mata--and as far as anyone knows, it might still be erupting, nearly 4,000 feet deep.
Extra Resources:
Smithsonian Institution Volcanism website for West Mata
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