The Invisible World

The World of Captain Nemo

James L Braldly July 16th, 2011
Some 4.54 billion years ago (give or take a few) our planet was formed (after taking 10-20 million years) out of debris spinning around from a disk shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun. I guess this is a good enough reason to suspect where all the gas comes from in our halls of government and why the female of the species is continually dusting the house. Initially a molten ball, the outer surface eventually cooled and water accumulated in the atmosphere by the way the moon came along around 4.53 billion years ago. The male of the species can understand the concept of outgassing, albeit hes a little weak in understanding volcanic activity (other than teenage pimples), but both processes produced the early atmosphere of Earth condensing water vapor, added to by ice and liquid water delivered by asteroids and the larger proto-planets, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects all which eventually produced the Oceans. Albeit the newly formed Sun was only 70% of its present brightness, the ocean remained liquid and not big blocks of ice, this situation is labeled the faint young Sun paradox. Our scientists state it was a combination of greenhouse gases and higher levels of solar activity (more flares and massive storms on the Sun) that seemed to have raised the Earths surface temperature preventing the oceans freezing over. It wasnt until some 3.5 billion years ago that the Blue Marbles magnetic field was established, which means no electricity, translation, no IPods or any such device was around to download naughty movies or news from Washington. But, think, the magnetic field helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the massive solar winds, which causes one like myself to wonder what kept the atmosphere in place before the magnetic field creation, as it seems a lot went on that required some type of shield from the Suns activity you think, like the oceans freezing over. Over millions of years continental formation became a task on our home world, over 100s of million years the surface continually reshaped itself while moving across the surface of the Blue Marble, until the final episode (so far) when Pangaea which broke apart some 180 million years ago.

Over time as things have settled a bit, we find the land mass of the planet making up around 29.07% of the planets surface and the oceans and seas of the world around 70.92%. In other words 139,691,761 square miles of area we know practically nothing about, and when you think about it a vast heat sink and carbon sink that our scientists can only guess at its impact on our daily lives. Oh the whiz boys and their faster and faster supercomputers plug in number after number and crank out predictions to suit this politician or that one, but at the end of the day they are clueless in actually what is going on around us, when it comes to our environment, health and our well being on the planet in general.

Our planets abundance of water is primarily what makes us unique in the overall scheme of things in our solar system, whereas our hydrosphere mainly consists of our oceans, technically it includes all water on the planet including inland seas, lakes, rivers and underground water down to a depth of 2,000m or 6,562 feet. As far as ocean depth the deepest undersea location found today is the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, eastern if you live in China at 10,911.4 meters or 34,421 feet deep! The tectonic plates, that have been moving about for some 180 million years are alive and well, whereas on their boundaries we experience wild and wooly earthquakes and find most of the

worlds volcanoes, geothermal vents along with various minerals from the planets interior bubbling to the surface here and there. Beneath this mass of our oceans that have mean depth of around 12,000 feet is mostly a mystery to our civilization, these bodies of H2O (basically) are big, whereas if all the landmass on the planet were spread evenly the water on this Blue Marble would rise to an altitude of 1.68 miles, and unfortunately of all the water on the planet is saline at 97.5% while the remaining fresh water at 2.5% is mostly locked up in ice. It was announced the other day that a dozen undersea volcanoes where discovered near the South Georgia Islands and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic and they were pretty massive holes in the sea beds spread across a 370 mile by 90-mile area and get this our present day underwater charts tell us it was deep water only! After mapping a month-long the expedition

volcanic chain, some 500 miles southeast of the South Georgia Island was and Sandwich some were revealed known there

surprising results, where it volcanoes in the area they did not figure on the size of them as one was almost as big as Mt Fuji at over 9,800 feet off the seabed floor, and about three times the size of the now dormant Mt Edgecumbe volcano in Southeast Alaska just west of Sitka.

One thing becomes apparent in the above scan is the volcanoes have all spread debris across the ocean floor, and there was a massive releases or collapse of a caldera in the one in the lower left chain in addition one can identify the cinder cones accompanying each of them as the sharp peaked mountains next to the primary volcano. Keep in mind that the distance from the bottom to the top is over 370 miles and the width is over 90 miles. They are located when viewed on Google or other relief maps showing the sea floors at the end of the tail that was created when South America and Antarctica either brushed against each other or one or the other broke away from each other. The relief of the bottom shows a swept like line of ridges and peaks that join the two locations together. This volcanic chain is at the extreme eastern point between the two land forms. The one volcano shows in the foreground recent

activity, two or less years.

Using multi-beam scanners, the RRS James Clark Ross surveyed the area with great accuracy, where data on hand has shown that via information from GPS coordinates that the Sandwich Islands are moving east at an accelerated rate with respect to Africa.

Directly the volcanoes are a result of the South American plate sliding under the South Sandwich plate (blue green in the plate slide) to the east, carrying water down into the deep interior of the earth whereas eventually the super hot water pushes upward, ultimately leading to eruptions of molten rock. There are nine surface volcanoes on the Sandwich Islands, eight of them active and one that is dormant with the latest eruption in 2006 by Mount Belinda at 4,495 above sea level, a stratovolcano on Montagu Island it was inactive until late 2001, when the eruption created large quantities of basaltic lava, melting the thick cover of ice accumulated during its dormancy. It has been in a persistent state of eruption since 2001, and in 2005 produced its highest level of activity producing a 2.2 mile long lava flow extending from its summit cone all the way into the sea. Captain Cook who bumped into the island in 1775 wrote in his shipboard log of a number of active volcanic islands peeking and erupting above the sea and in 1962 a British naval vessel reported large patches of floating pumice that they determined could only have come from an undersea eruption albeit the original project to map the seabed was the intent, the finding of the 12 active volcanoes albeit was not a total surprise their size was. Although the discovery is exciting for geologists who hope to learn more about underwater eruptions and how new continental crust forms, this find also offers a bucketful of information for biologists whereas the vents of hot water spewing up from the crust have shown in recent finds, such as off the west coast of the United States, a novel variety of sea life in a hot water environment thousands of feet below the surface.

The leader of the project Dr. Philip Leat says, We know theres a whole different ecosystem of new life forms that exist around these hot areas. To say the least - the crew aboard the RRS James Clark of Ross the were involved in the discovery worlds undersea vents, deepest volcanic known as

Black Smokers over 3.1 miles deep in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean. Using a deep-diving vehicle remotely controlled from the ship, the scientists found slender spires made of copper and iron ores on the seafloor, spewing forth water hot enough to melt lead the find nearly mile deeper than anyone has found before. One month later the scientists aboard the RRS James Cook discovered a new set of smokers in the chilly waters of the Southern Ocean this teams 4 th discovery in less than 3-years, leading most to believe that deep sea volcanic vents are more common than previously thought. This time using an underwater camera system, the scientists say slender mineral spires over ten-feet tall, with shimmering hot water gushing from their peaks, and thick gossamer-like white mats of bacteria covering their sides. The vents were at a depth of 830 feet in a newly-discovered seafloor crater near the South Sandwich Island around 311 miles southeast of South Georgia. As a layman in studying the Earth I have found throughout my studies that the Earths crust is thinner beneath the oceans, especially in the very deep locations common sense tells you this, whereas drilling through the top soil, rock and hard material the continents float on is a lot harder than pushing your way through the surface rock beneath the 12,300 or more average depth of most ocean, so in this it stands to reason that the molten band of earth beneath the crust will find it easier to push through the ocean bottom. Deep-sea vents are only hot springs on the seafloor, where mineral-rich water nourishes lush colonies of microbes and deep-sea animals since 3-decades ago when scientists first encountered these undersea hot-springs our scientific world has discovered over 250 of these vents, where most have been found on a chain of undersea volcanoes however very few are known in the Antarctic.

As technology improves and interest has spiked in developing the natural resources of our oceans, besides the diminishing supply of fish, the academic science world and the commercially driven mining world is discovering them on an increasing pace. In the Southern Atlantic the researchers were exploring the Adventure Caldera, a crater-like hole in the seafloor 1.86 miles across and 2,460 feet deep at its deepest point despite its size the Adventure Caldera was only discovered by geophysicists from the British Antarctic Survey group last year. All-in-all the new vents are the 4th set to be discovered around Antarctica in 3 expeditions since 2009, Id say 4 of many yet to be found, and it proves that the discovery of the 12 active volcanoes in the area wasmt just pure dumb luck, the scientists in all likelihood were on the tramp for more vents and their sophisticated multibean scanner found them the mother lode of undersea mountains that just happened to be volcanoes. Which is okay! The volcanoes and the associated vents must contribute more than we realize to the diversity and huge numbers of marine life around the South Georgia island, where on May 25 th of this year results were published of the 1st comprehensive study of sea creatures in the area which at the end-of-the-day showed that the area was richer in biodiversity than even many tropical sites, such as the Galapagos Islands. Evidence examined showed that the South Georgia and its surrounding islands were the richest area for marine life in the Southern Ocean. And that during the breeding season it hosts the densest mass of marine mammals on Earth, where over 1500 species were recorded in the area. Specimens were collected from scientific cruises, fishing vessels and by scuba divers from the surrounding waters, whereas species identified included sea urchins, free-swimming worms, fish, sea spiders and various crustaceans a great majority rare with many not found anywhere else on Earth. The following shouldnt be attributed to the vents or sub-sea volcanic activity but the nearsurface waters around South Georgia are some of the fastest warming on Earth in this fact the study provides a framework to identify ecologically sensitive areas and species, based on the accumulated data researchers will be able to identify changes that might be brought on by our on coming climate change and any or no current changes. Investigation of the data has raised once again the possibility of having a slope of one of the volcanoes collapse, which has already happened many times, as they foun very large slump deposits flowing from the volcanoes slopes the theory is that these collapses or slumps have caused good sized tsunamis whereas the area might appear isolated the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami showed that tsunamis can affect shorelines great distances away from their

birth from the direction of the scanned data they figure the west coast of Africa would be particularly vulnerable to a tsunami triggered by a collapsing slope of the newly discovered volcanoes. During June 26th, 2010 a joint Indonesia/United States exploration of the deep ocean north of ship Explorer mult-beam mapped along a Sulawesi, Okeanos with its sonar huge its Indonesia the NOAA

undersea volcano and with remotely-operated vehicle snapped high-definition images of the feature called Kawio Barat, this in the area west of Kawio Islands. Based on satellite information and data collected by a joint Indonesian/Australian team in 2004, they chose the immense underwater feature as their initial target to calibrate onboard tools and test new technologies being used on the ships maiden voyage. Scientists onboard hoped the maps and videos produced would pave the way for other researchers to follow up on their preliminary findings. The result of their calibration exercise was a detailed portrait of the Kawio Barat seamount, shown at the left. They noted, This is a huge undersea volcano, taller than all but 18,000 feet deep. three or four mountains in Indonesia, rising more than 10,000 feet from the seafloor in water more than

Here again, the expedition found active venting along the sides of the volcano, one vent at a depth of 6,070 feet a sulfur vent with a number of point sources, whereas surrounding the vent they found large amounts of yellow and black molten sulfur. Moving on up the ROV, (Little Hercules) as it ascended the summit ridge it encountered many fields of sulfide chimneys with vast numbers of stalked barnacles at their base. It is noted that the chimneys varied in terms of age and venting characteristics, where some chimneys were fairly oxidized and other covered in white sulfide some vented clear fluid while other were venting black smoke.

It is not surprising to find a sub-sea volcano near Indonesia, a country that sits to the west of the Ring of Fire, and is one of the most volcanically active locations on the planet as a matter of fact science expects to fine more of the same in the region here again we find numerous vents erupting hot water from the interior of the Earth and in doing so creating life in abundance from the minerals being pushed up from beneath the mantle.

As our technology develops and our interest peaks our scientific community almost on a weekly basis searches the deep exploring the subsurface biosphere, and over the recent years have discovered many new subsurface biosphere habitats reminding one of what Marginux W Beijerinch (1851-1931) said, Everything is everywhere, the environment selects, where his approach was to study the relationship between environmental conditions and the special forms of life corresponding to them it more than fits into the world beneath the waves, where biology and microbiology interact with geology and hydrology. Question are numerous when it comes to the world far from our eyesight and physical being, a few like what organisms inhabit the deep, how deep are they living, how long can they survive under these conditions, and how they have adapted to take advantage of energy provided by the planet rather than by the Sun? We also wonder what impact does this living world of the deep have on the oceans and the planet? What can these hardy, entrepreneurial organisms teach us about the origin and evolution of life on Earth? And last but not least can these microbes of the deep teach us or guide us in our search for life on other planetary bodies? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was a great story which Hollywood could only attempt to do justice, albeit the images of helmeted men strolling across the sea floor collecting the evening meal has remained in my grey matter since I watched the flick back in the late 50s, eyes wide open and full of wonder, Nemo had a good thing going, too bad the surface dwellers screwed it up.