We're in the New
England Seamount Chain, and today
we're exploring a seamount called
Gosnold.
When we landed on this dive,
we actually landed on a manganese
nodule field.
We're going over
this incredible debris field coated
in ferromanganese, and instead of growing in one stratigraphic direction like crusts
on rock surfaces and rock outcrops, manganese nodules actually form around a nucleus and
grow outward radially and form concentric layers, kind of like tree rings.
For this expedition, because we're looking at seamounts, I'll be looking at the ferromanganese
crusts.
We'll get to see what kind of seawater chemistry they've recorded over their growth histories.
So ferromanganese crusts grow layer by layer, about a millimeter per million years.
When you go back in time through the rock, you can see the seawater chemistry being recorded
in those ferromanganese crusts.
You can also look at the metal enrichments to see if there's anything that might be of
interest in terms of resource potential.
So there's just several different aspects of ferromanganese crusts that are really interesting.
I think the key ingredient here is the available of material on top of sediments that is allowing
nodules to grow in this region, which is definitely an unexpected setting that we've landed here
today.