The Bathyluck cruise was originally scheduled in june 2009. After the AF447 crash, the ship and the engins participated in the search of the wreck. The cruise is now re-scheduled for September 2009. We will sail from Horta (Azores, Portugal) onboard PourQuoi Pas? towards the Lucky Strike hydrothermal field along the Mid Atlantic Ridge on September 1st, and we'll be back on Sept. 29th 2009. We bring along the robot VICTOR, and the autonomous vehicle Aster X. Nautile is on board and ready for use if needed.
We are going to investigate how the heat is loss from the interior of the Earth at the mid-ocean ridge. Hydrothermal fields expell large volumes of water at temperatures of more than 300°C, mining heat from deep into the crust. This hydrothermal activity sustains extraordinary ecosystems in an otherwise barren environment. And this activity is linked to other active processes along the ridge, such as earthquakes and volcanism, resulting in a highly active environemnt.
To study this type of systems we need continuous observations over long periods of time of the temperature of the fluids, the seismic activity, the pressure, and the ecosystems. To do so, we will recover and deploy instrumentation, including temperature sensors, seismometers, pressure gauges, microbial colonizators, and currentmeters. We will also carry out sampling of rocks and hydrothermal fluids, and create a very high resolution map of the area, that allows to identify features as small as a couple of meters.
In the coming entries we will follow up some of the science operations, present discoveries as they happen (or almost), and give an insight into day to day life onboard a research vessel.
This cruise, financed by CNRS and IFREMER, is part of the MoMAR program (Monitoring the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, http://www.momar.org).
Below: Temperature sensor installed at a hydrothermal vent. Copyright: CNRS/IFREMER/Victor, MoMAR08 Cruise.
Below: three dimensional view of the Lucky Strike area, with the lava lake on the left (purple) and faults dissecting the flanks of the volcano (right), an area that hosts the hydrothermal vents (spikes in the topography). The lava lake has a diameter of approximately 400 m. Data from Ondreas et al. (G-cubed, 2009).
