WEBVTT

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In late 2012, NOAA mapped some of this area and from the backscatter data, from the

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multibeam, saw water column anomalies and these have been identified as potential seeps

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or seep sources, so the goal of this dive is to really ground truth this area

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and determine the extent of the seepage.

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We would like to see aerial coverage, if possible, of any of this community; zonation of

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different organisms; if and what type of megafauna are associated with these seeps;

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and also look at any carbonate communities, if we see carbonate rocks

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and potentially that are inhabited by coral communities as well.

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We are currently settling on the bottom, at 1,135 meters depth.

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We are off the northeastern United States,

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off of the coast of Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey.

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We are exploring a new area.

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This white is microbial activity or bacterial mats and I was just wondering if you could

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just explain why we might see something like that here in the seepy sediment?

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Basically they’re an indicator of chemical seepage or chemicals emitting from the

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sediment environment, potentially methane.

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There may be some bacteria that are also present on the sediment surface,

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but these mats can be early an indication of potential chemical seepage.

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This structure looks a little different to me.

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It looks very suspicious, very suspicious, it looks very suspicious.

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The point here is that we might be seeing places along this slope

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where that were more active or are more active now, for example.

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Another question I would have for some of the biologists is whether we might

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be looking at predominance of sulfides as part of the system instead of methane.

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We haven’t seen a lot of methane bubbles today.

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I think I got something on sonar.

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Maybe.

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It’s a little dot that kept recurring.

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It’s right over here.

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Absolutely.

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That’s cool.

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Holy moly.

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Thank you very much.

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That is hydrate.

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Excellent.

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Excellent.

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Excellent.

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That’s wonderful.

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Looks like we actually have some mussels, too.

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Yeah, I’m gonna get an overview before we pass out of the area.

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To the best of my knowledge, that’s the first time we’ve seen

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Bathymodiolus mussels here on this dive.

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Shore, are we getting a good view here of the extent of this mussel bed?

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You can see it pretty well in Seirios.

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Leaving a seep site that we were able to ground truth successfully on this site

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that we had multibeam mapping from and water column backscatter data

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where we identified bubbles or water column anomalies and we were able

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to come to the site using a remotely operated vehicle and ground truth this area.

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This has been a really exciting dive.

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We’ve gas hydrate, chemosynthetic communities, large beds of live Bathymodiolus mussels,

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several species of fishes, and again red crabs which are a commercially important

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fishery, nonetheless.

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