WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.894 --> 00:00:07.394 Good morning, everybody. This is the Okeanos Explorer. 2 00:00:08.428 --> 00:00:11.170 Today we go to a suspected shipwreck. 3 00:00:11.678 --> 00:00:14.422 About 200 feet long, perhaps 20 feet wide. 4 00:00:17.472 --> 00:00:25.645 This is something that’s completely unknown that was found on the sidescan sonar from an acoustic survey done for a pipeline in 2009. 5 00:00:31.173 --> 00:00:36.140 We’ve come in on our first sonar target of a suspected shipwreck site. 6 00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:40.473 We are now getting our first detailed look at it. 7 00:00:43.845 --> 00:00:45.591 It’s pretty clear that what we’re looking at is manmade. 8 00:00:51.634 --> 00:00:56.137 We should remember that this part of the Gulf of Mexico is essentially a giant geologic mix master. 9 00:01:00.131 --> 00:01:09.170 The fact that we have a platy, layered appearance here suggests that it isn’t necessarily true that this is manmade. 10 00:01:12.421 --> 00:01:16.912 All kinds of interesting things come to the surface in the Gulf of Mexico that are geologic, not manmade, that have interesting-looking shapes. 11 00:01:23.585 --> 00:01:35.379 This actually was reported to us as a potential shipwreck, largely based on the fact that there was nothing similar in the vicinity that showed upon their survey. 12 00:01:36.879 --> 00:01:40.886 This is looking increasingly like a natural object, not manmade. 13 00:01:41.636 --> 00:01:45.388 Yeah. I was actually able to look at some of that. That is a spectacular extrusion. 14 00:01:45.634 --> 00:01:51.880 It’s very large and then there’s these fracture planes that suggest some activity after extrusion. 15 00:01:52.386 --> 00:01:55.386 So this is a very substantial asphalt volcanic structure. 16 00:01:56.168 --> 00:02:01.671 But the fact that you have tubeworms around the edges indicates that there remains some volatile hydrocarbons present, 17 00:02:03.468 --> 00:02:07.804 which means that it’s not totally ancient, that this is a somewhat recent feature. 18 00:02:10.837 --> 00:02:15.587 Jack, our lead archaeologist today, has said that archaeologists find cool things even if they aren’t all shipwrecks. 19 00:02:16.888 --> 00:02:18.639 I’m not going to dispute that. This is pretty cool. 20 00:02:21.388 --> 00:02:25.131 Now that’s some good footage on those barnacles. Thanks for that. We can identify those pretty well. 21 00:02:28.139 --> 00:02:32.886 There is another seafloor-positive feature a couple of hundred feet away that we’re going to look at next. 22 00:02:35.383 --> 00:02:38.634 This one, this in quote “flower” looks a lot different than the first one. 23 00:02:42.004 --> 00:02:51.637 Likely been at the seafloor for hundreds if not thousands of years, but we’re still seeing evidence for activity associated with the initial extrusion of the asphalt. 24 00:02:54.888 --> 00:02:55.886 It looks like they’re frozen over. 25 00:02:57.383 --> 00:03:06.137 Yep. So I think we are seeing our first visual evidence for escape of hydrocarbons, other than the obvious evidence for the asphalt we see. 26 00:03:08.887 --> 00:03:09.888 There’s actually two there. 27 00:03:10.638 --> 00:03:12.139 Very good call. Very good call. 28 00:03:12.384 --> 00:03:12.920 A short one and a tall one. 29 00:03:13.664 --> 00:03:21.249 So we’re seeing multiple lines of evidence that we are getting chemosynthetic biology associated with what must 30 00:03:21.745 --> 00:03:26.298 continue to be streams of hydrocarbons to the seafloor. 31 00:03:31.135 --> 00:03:37.387 Must be tremendous forces involved to push this much asphalt through and 32 00:03:39.133 --> 00:03:46.888 but that’s not well understood, so any mapping or volume estimates that you’re able to make, I think that will be a real contribution. 33 00:03:53.135 --> 00:03:54.886 We’ve been talking about photomosaicing these 34 00:03:57.139 --> 00:03:58.382 flowers, for want of a better term. 35 00:03:59.381 --> 00:04:03.132 We think we can do it in several passes over the tops of these features. 36 00:04:11.631 --> 00:04:18.714 I concur on the photomosaic. Absolutely critical to do that because that’ll the aerial extent and probably some notion of volume. 37 00:04:26.386 --> 00:04:31.388 The great thing about today is that we came down here thinking that these structures might be parts of a shipwreck, 38 00:04:32.134 --> 00:04:34.639 it's pretty clear that they are not now, but they are naturally occurring.