The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is literally a mountain range that
divides the Atlantic Ocean into two: east and west. It extends
on its northern extent to just northwest of Greenland and it
goes all the way down almost into the Southern Ocean to
about the same latitude as the southern tip of South America.
Plates that form the surface of the Earth are splitting apart.
The plates come apart and the molten rock underneath it is
coming up and that causes new crust of the Earth to be formed
and it pushes those plates apart. And that's what's created
the Atlantic Ocean in the first place.
It's like a line. It's like a zipper running all the way down
the Atlantic, and that zipper is literally opening and being
replaced by hot molten rock that binds to the edge of the
crust and so we're always making new seafloor.
The southern part has actually been pretty well mapped and partly
explored because of there's a lot of hydrothermal vent
activity that takes place there but north of the Azores,
there's very very little that we know. In fact, there are
virtually no good bottom topography maps for more than
300 miles north of the Azores, and so this is one of the
things that we're going to be doing on this expedition is
trying to create some good maps. and once you have the maps and
you have a better knowledge of the bottom, then that induces
exploration and asking questions about, well, oh, what
will we find in this kind of habitat and that kind of habitat?
So, north of the Azores, very, very poorly explored.
There has been work done previously here but it's been hit and miss.
It's been very sporadic and it's been more of work of
opportunity so as the ship is transiting through here to get
to another location they might stop, they might do a little
multibeam mapping. They might take a geological sample. But in terms
of the number of dedicated expeditions just to exploring
this area, it's really few and far between so that makes it
really exciting. In the deep sea, in these very specialized
locations called hydrothermal vents, bacteria are feeding on
energy from inside of the Earth and they are becoming the base
of the food chain for lots of other really interesting and
endemic organisms. So we're really hoping that we can
discover some hydrothermal vents. Um so far as I know
there's only been one or two that have been discovered north
of the Azores and so this may be an opportunity to discover more.
It's always exciting because we have some
predictions of what we're going to see and very often
they're upended. I think one of my most memorable views was on
dive one when we were climbing this slope that was a pile of
coral rubble at first, and it was kind of interesting to see
all these dead coral skeletons, but perhaps a little bit
depressing and wondering why we weren't seeing the live ones,
and then we came into this field of just brilliant yellow
among this you know completely black deep sea and this field
went on and on and on for tens and tens of meters. Eguchipsammia
stony coral just a spectacular sight that I've never seen before.
One of the things that I I really found most beautiful to me as a
geologist was some of those beautiful pillow formations we
found and those beautiful pillow lobes especially there
was there's one that we came across that look like it had
been just snaking down this small hill and it had gotten to
a point where the the outside crust had become too cold for
it to continue and then there was this beautiful breakout
where the head of it had been fragmented and then this
beautiful other pillow lobe pushed right out of it and and
that was a textbook example of how those those form and push
forward. The other thing that I I really appreciated was you
know having Scott here as a biologist. Uh I haven't had
this opportunity before to be side by side with someone in a
completely different discipline and an expert in their own
field and and realizing this really beautiful intricate
codependent relationship on the geology and the biology. These
pillow lavas that we see provide homes and structures
and and little refuges to the biology and then the biology
also helps precipitate some of the weathering of the of those rocks.
We found very high abundances, high density, high
diversity sessil communities, corals and sponges, all kinds
of color, lots of abundance from the moment we hit the seafloor
to the moment we left. And these are some of the places
that we have some sense are down there, but we don't know
for certain. We don't know exactly where they are. We're
still trying to learn why do we see such communities in this
place and not that place. Um to see them is really important
for conservation and management knowing the places that perhaps
we want to protect these organisms are very long lived.
Really exciting to get down there.