Bag City Vent is still alive and well. The extensive fields of tubeworms are evidence of that. The yellow rope in the foreground is the handle for a moored temperature recorder, which was retrieved after this image was snappede.

With the pressure still on ROPOS, I take a break to visit the zoo!

For the last 24 hours, we have been using ROPOS to take pressure measurements at Axial Volcano. Each measurement site represents a unique and beautiful new adventure for me. Just this morning a rattail fish gave us a little show through ROPOS's cameras. As the fish hammed it up right in front of my very eyes, it was hard to believe that we didn't frighten her at all. The ROPOS engineers let me sit down at the controls and taught me how to focus in on her and the other creatures hanging out at the site known as "Bag City". What a sight! I was so enthralled with the activity on the monitors that time on my video-logging shift flew. Before I knew it, the shift was over.

Ray Lee (Washington State University) displays a chamber that he designed to house live vent creatures for his pressure and temperature experiments.

Just as I left ROPOS's control room, I ran into my roommate, Leslie Chao, a graduate student working with microbiologist Dr. Craig Moyer. She described the wonders of the biology "wet lab", a place I hadn't yet spent much time. She invited me to join her on a visit to see Dr. Ray Lee's "Zoo". With the sound of Jimmy Buffet wafting through the passageway from another lab, and the smell of chicken pesto pizza wafting down from the galley, we made our way forward in the ship to the wet lab. Ray welcomed us and ushered us over to his work area. Instead of lions and tigers and bears, we were treated to limpets and scale worms and snails, oh my! Ray's "Zoo" is temporary containment for creatures that few people have seen with their own eyes. He is housing these live hydrothermal vent creatures in special chambers that enable him to examine the effects of pressure and temperature changes on them. What fascinates me as much as the study, itself, is the construction that went into building the housing for the chambers. Remember that this ship is used all year long by scientists from all over the world for biological, chemical, geological and physical oceanography studies. When each new group of scientists walk into the lab for the first time, it is a clean slate. It is then up to the scientists to create the proper working environment for whatever experiments they are running while they are on the ship. I find it amazing that Ray was able to undertake such a detailed piece of construction in such a short amount of time. His entire work area is covered with a giant 3-D work of art. Intricately woven tubing branches and wiggles its way through steel, plastic, and wood components to form a smoothly operating circulatory system. Ray jokes that right now, his life consists of checking for leaks and dealing with leaks. After a good close-up look at the activities going on in the zoo, I decide that the scale worms are definitely the cutest benthic vent creatures so far. They are really busy and they remind me of some prehistoric character from a bad sci-fi movie. Hmmm. . . wonder how those snails would taste on pizza. . .

Katie Burkhart, Age 10, Miller Place, New York, asks: How cold is the water
at Axial Volcano? How much wamer do the springs make the water?

Great questions Katie! The water in the area away from the vents around the
Axial Volcano site (on the Juan de Fuca Ridge) ranges from 2° to 3° C (36°
to 37° F) Brrr! That's just above freezing. The bottom of the ocean is cold
and dark in most places. However, near the vents it is warmer. For example,
some types of vents are called "diffuse" because cold sea water mixes with
the hot vent water, (like leaky pipes) so the temperature there can range
from 5° to 70° C (41° to 158° F). That's a pretty big range, eh? (Can you
tell I've been meeting a lot of Canadians?) Near other, "focused" vents, the
water can be much, much warmer. For example, there are some vents at Axial
that have mineral chimneys where the heated water shoots straight up out of
the top of them (like non-leaky pipes). The hot water doesn't have a chance
to mix with the cooler seawater until after it is out of the chimney (hot
water near both types of vents is what makes the shimmery image you see in
some of the pictures on the website). At the focused vent sites, the water
can reach 348° C (658° F). That's hotter than your oven! Isn't that amazing?
Just think how fast you could bake a potato there!.