Teacher Logbook:
Tuesday, July 11, 2000 1600 hrs.

Last night during our second Imagenex mapping survey, a mystery creature appeared on the video monitor. Several frame grabs (pictures) were taken and everyone around was called in to take a look at it. It resembled a pink dress that went to a party and forgot the person, and was probably three feet long or more. The ROPOS color cam followed as it glided through the water column. Immediately everyone wanted to know what it was.

I caught up with Verena Tunnicliffe outside while she was walking her daily laps around the ship. She shared with me that it was some type of coelenterate (jellyfish) and she thought she'd seen part of one brought up on deck while on a cruise years before. That's it. No more info. Out of all the hundreds of years of marine science experience on the ship, no one knew more than that. I thought to myself just how large and mysterious our ocean is. We're out here on the cutting edge of science in a long term study that has never been undertaken before. NeMO is the first concentrated long-term effort to set up an underwater volcanic observatory and get monitoring data without a ship at sea. The 1998 Axial eruption was the first time instruments monitored an underwater eruption as it happened. That surprised me knowing that about 70 percent of volcanic activity on our planet takes place under the ocean.

Much more is known about volcanic eruptions on land due to their relative ease of access. Mt. St. Helens is a prime example. The May 18,1980 St. Helens eruption was the best documented eruption in history. Seismologists and geologists monitored daily changes in the mountain for months preceding the eruption and for years afterwards. Axial and St. Helens are only about 350 miles (560 km) from each other and each is active. However, due to Axials location beneath the ocean, relatively little is known about it. The Juan de Fuca Ridge has been studied intermittently for some twenty years but Axial volcano itself has only been monitored for less than a decade. Some of the NeMO instruments gather data daily, however the 330 some odd days NeMO expeditions are not out here collecting samples means that we're just getting a snapshot of the processes taking place when ships are at the site.

A continuous manned study of Axial would be prohibitively expensive, would be problematic due to winter storms, and would require so much coffee that not even Starbucks could keep up with the consumption rate. Therefore, the future of oceanographic research must lie, at least partially, with AUV's. (Autumns Underwater Vehicles) A machine, perhaps similar to ROPOS, would sit in the caldera year round. When data collection or samples were needed, it would drive out of its garage to the appropriate vent for collection. No people would be required at Axial itself because the AUV is controlled from a shore-based computer. Any collected data could be transmitted via satellite to the shore. Periodically a ship would be sent out to collect the samples. This system would give the scientists a much broader data-base to work from and permit studies that are next to impossible at this time. We might even be able to find out what the mystery creature is.

Jeff

Mystery creature (jellyfish) in water column during Imagenex survey.

Close-up view of the mystery jellyfish.