幸运飞艇计划

Home
Centre for Geobiology
Research cruise

2015 Summer Cruise

While testing Norway鈥檚 new, marine research-dedicated ROV during the summer research cruise 2015, researchers from 幸运飞艇计划鈥檚 Centre for Geobiology found a new hydrothermal vent field; their 7th!

CGB research cruise 2015
Team Photo: CGB research cruise 2015
Photo:
Cedric Hamelin

Main content

The newest vent is located further away from the sediments of the Bear Island Fan than is Loki鈥檚 Castle, and is also some distance from the Jan Mayen hot spot. It may therefore provide CGB researchers with new insights about arctic venting.

Vent Name

Year discovered

Jan Mayen Vent Field: Soria Moria

2005

Jan Mayen Vent Field: Trollvegen

2005

聽Loki麓s Castle

2008

聽Jan Mayen Vent Field: Perle & Bruse

2014

听7-蝉颈蝉迟别谤蝉

2014

New vent

2015

The results from this summer鈥檚 cruise will further Centre research activity in a number of areas:聽 the weathering of mine tailings; bioprospecting for new enzymes; increasing our understanding of venting processes; and learning more about the unusual animals that live in these extreme and inaccessible environments.

脝gir 6000 is launched

This summer the ROV was launched and tested. Among other things, it successfully undertook sampling activities, recovered incubators previously left in situ and recorded the finding of the Centre for Geobiology鈥檚 (CGB鈥檚) newest hydrothermal vent field. 脝gir 6000 was built by , a sub-sea technology company. It is named after an ancient Norwegian god. The new ROV will complement other deep sea sampling equipment. One of its unique contributions to deep sea research, however, is the fact that it gives researchers 鈥渆yes on the ground鈥 鈥 in this case, the inaccessible, inhospitable deep sea floor.

The first part of this summer鈥檚 cruise was spent testing the new ROV along Norway鈥檚 western coast where the waters in the fjords are deep, but calmer than in the open ocean, and access to repair services and replacement parts is easier. The dedicated Tether Management System (TMS) was not fully operational for this summer鈥檚 activity, so another TMS system was rented. Unlike the ROVs used on previous expeditions, 脝gir can use a TMS, which is a cage-like containment system for transporting the ROV during deployment. It also stores and deploys the tethering cable enabling the ROV itself to be decoupled from the motion of the surface vessel as well as allowing it to operate at a larger radius from the mother ship. The TMS also has sample storage facilities so that the ROV can make several collection efforts, thus making each dive potentially much more effective.

In situ mine tailing experiments

Post-doc, Ingeborg 脴kland, has begun a series of in situ experiments that will provide information about the effects of depositing mine tailings on the seafloor 鈥 specifically, how this material will 鈥渨eather鈥 on the seafloor.

脴kland has 3 different types of experiments on-going at both Loki鈥檚 Castle Vent Field and the Jan Mayen Vent Fields: deployment of incubators, taking of push cores and deliberately making scars in the sulphide chimneys on the seafloor. Two incubators were set out at each field in 2014. 脝gir was able to recover one of these this summer; the other will remain on the sea floor to further 鈥渋ncubate鈥 until collection at a future date. The incubators were filled with ground, gem-grade pyrite (FeS2), which is the most common of all sulphide minerals.

脴kland is part of the Water, Rocks and Microbes research theme. Learn more about her work with weathering.

Enzyme hunting

Enzymes are the tools of nature. They accelerate, or catalyse, chemical reactions by as much as a factor of many millions. Enzymes are specific, reusable, efficient, effective, and generate little waste.

Bioprospecting is the process of exploring nature for new natural enzymes. CGB Theme Leader, Ida Steen has built a multi-faceted research team that has been actively engaging in bioprospecting.

Norway is recognising the importance of biotechnology, and, not the least, assuming responsibility for Norway鈥檚 biomass so as to be able to mine its biodiversity. The aim is to optimise Norwegian input into a global economy that is becoming increasingly bio-based. Steen鈥檚 team is actively involved in important national biotechnology initiatives, and the .

During this summer鈥檚 cruise, CGB researchers collected one of the team鈥檚 incubators from a hydrothermal vent (Perle), near Jan Mayen. Learn more about this research theme鈥檚 bioprospecting activity.

Finding out more about what lives there

The CGB Vent and Seep Biota research theme is surveying life in the arctic deep seas. This summer they tested an important sampling instrument. On previous research cruises the ROV has been outfitted with a suction pump sampling tool that can be used to relatively gently extract samples for the seafloor. However, the sampler was only capable of conducting one sampling operation per dive 鈥 a severe limitation for learning more about such an unexplored, inaccessible, inhospitable environment.

The new suction pump module has a set of rotating chambers that will make it possible to undertake several different sampling operations in different locations on each ROV dive. The chambers are completely separated from one another, thereby isolating each sample.

Learn more about the cruise marine biological activity.