NOAA Vents Program: 25 Years of Earthshaking Discoveries

Lauren Koellermeier
NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

October 22, 2009 — Undersea tremors, bursts of hot lava and spewing rock are just par for the course for scientists working in the NOAA Vents program.

This year, the Vents program at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory is celebrating its 25th anniversary, marking a quarter century of research, discoveries and technological innovations in the volatile depths of some of the world’s best-known oceans. 

Launched in 1984 with four personnel in Newport, Ore., the Vents program conducts research focused on understanding the environmental impacts of deep volcanic eruptions and hydrothermal venting. It has since grown to employ the expertise of 20 scientists and technical staff, located in both Newport and Seattle, who traverse the world’s oceans to study these intriguing phenomena.

What Is a Hydrothermal Vent? 

Simply put, a hydrothermal vent is an area on the seafloor, typically found at mid-ocean ridges and tectonic plate boundaries, where seawater seeps through a crack in the Earth’s crust. That water is heated by molten rock or magma churning within deep-sea volcanoes and then thrust upwards back into the sea, sometimes at temperatures as warm as 400 degrees C (750 degrees F). 

More than 70 percent of the Earth's volcanic activity takes place beneath the sea surface, where it can impact deep ocean circulation, the global chemical and heat balance, and disturb what may be the most ancient biological communities on the planet.

Deep-Sea Discoveries of Plumes and Volcanoes
                                                     
In 1986, the Vents program discovered the first megaplume — a large, hot, deep-water plume stemming from underwater volcanic eruptions that are used to trace eruption locations. By 1993, scientists were using acoustic detection to discover a deep-sea volcano for the first time. 

In 1999, NOAA established the first deep seafloor volcanic observatory, NeMO (New Millennium Observatory), on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the coast of Oregon at the Axial Seamount.

Vents scientist made headlines in 2004 when they discovered both gaseous and liquid carbon dioxide gushing from a volcanic crater in 1,600 meters of water at Eifuku volcano on the Mariana Volcanic Arc in the western Pacific Ocean. In the same area, they found a deep eruption at Rota (which was still active when the team visited this year) along with other volcanoes, such as Daikoku and Nikko, which have lakes of molten sulfur atop their summits.

“All of these phenomena — the first of their kind to ever have been observed — have profound marine ecosystem impacts, including effects attributable to ocean acidification [the process of ocean water becoming corrosive as a result of carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere],” said Steve Hammond who leads the NOAA Vents program at PMEL.

This year, scientists observed yet another deep volcano in eruption near Samoa in the Pacific Ocean. The event produced lava flows and spectacular explosions that expelled cooled lava several meters upward into the water column. 

Looking Ahead at What Lies Beneath

The Vents program team is partners with NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research. Together they are making discoveries that have important implications for marine ecosystems, as well as the global distribution and abundance of carbon dioxide and ocean nutrients.

Want to learn more? Check out video and photos from both the 2004 and 2009 Vents expeditions, which can be found on this year’s Lau Basin Eruption Exploration Expedition and Mariana Arc Expedition Web sites.