Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents: The Hidden World Beneath the Pacific That Shapes Life on Earth

Transcript

Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents: The Hidden World Beneath the Pacific That Shapes Life on Earth · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
Far beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, nearly two kilometers down,
0:03
there is a place where the earth is actively tearing itself apart.
0:08
Molten rock rises, superheated fluids burst from the sea floor, and entire
0:14
ecosystems thrive without sunlight.
0:16
This hidden world does not just shape life in the deep ocean.
0:20
It also influences chemistry, biology, and circulation across
0:24
the entire Pacific Basin.
0:26
Today we are taking you to that place on this episode of the How
0:30
to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
0:32
Let's start the show.
0:34
Hey everybody.
0:35
Welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
0:38
I'm your host, and/or Lewin, Marine biologist and science communicator
0:41
here to tell you what's happening with the ocean, how you could speak up for
0:44
the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action.
0:48
On today's episode, we are continuing our monthly episode of Surfacing Secrets,
0:54
explore the Ocean and Know the Planet, a series created with Ocean Networks Canada
0:59
to bring the deep ocean to the surface through science story and discovery.
1:04
In this episode, we're gonna be diving into the endeavor.
1:07
One of the most active and intensely studied hyperthermic vent fields on
1:11
earth endeavor sits along the Wanda Fuca Ridge off the coast of British Columbia,
1:16
where new ocean crust is continuously being formed and where seawater is heated
1:21
to hundreds of degrees before erupting back into the ocean as black smokers.
1:26
To help us understand why endeavor matters, how it works, and why
1:29
scientists around the world are so focused on this site.
1:33
I'm joined by two experts who know it intimately.
1:36
Steve Mahaley is a senior scientist with Ocean Networks Canada and has
1:40
spent more than a decade working directly with Endeavor through one of
1:44
the world's only cable observatories.
1:47
Lawrence Coogan, who's the professor at the University of Victoria, and
1:50
a geologist who studies mid ocean ridges, volcanic systems, and the
1:55
geochemical processes that connects Earth's interior to the ocean above.
1:59
Together we explore what makes endeavors so special, how life survives in
2:03
extreme conditions, and why this site influences the entire Pacific Ocean and
2:08
what it can teach us about the origins of life on Earth and possibly beyond.
2:13
I can't wait for you to listen to this interview.
2:15
So here's the interview with Steve and Lawrence in Joy,
2:18
and I will talk to you after.
2:19
Hey Steve.
2:20
Hey Lawrence.
2:21
Welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
2:23
Are you ready to talk about the endeavor?
2:26
Absolutely.
2:27
Certainly.
2:28
Awesome.
2:28
I am looking forward to this.
2:30
This is gonna be, uh, so much fun 'cause this is, uh, something that
2:33
uh, you know, it's such a big part of the Ocean's, ocean Networks,
2:37
Canada, and, you know, we haven't had a chance to really explore this.
2:41
So we're gonna take this time to explore endeavor, the significance of it,
2:46
what is so special about it, and why we love talking about it so much and,
2:50
and why we like studying it so much.
2:52
And I think it's gonna be a, a lot of fun.
2:54
So what we'll do first is we'll just start off just by introducing yourself.
2:57
So Steve, why don't you just let us know, you start, let us know
2:59
who you are and what you do.
3:01
Uh, Steve Mahaley, uh, basically senior staff scientist at Ocean Networks Canada.
3:08
And, uh, and my responsibilities are, are in for Endeavor are
3:15
the work we do at Endeavor.
3:16
So that's, that's the connection.
3:20
Love it.
3:20
Love it.
3:21
And, and Lawrence, how about yourself?
3:23
Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm Lawrence Cogan.
3:25
I'm a professor in the school of o Earth and Ocean Sciences at eVic,
3:28
and I've spent my career working on various aspects of Midian bitches.
3:32
So that's my link to Endeavor.
3:34
Awesome.
3:34
So why don't we just start off, um, you, Lawrence, you can
3:37
start off what is Endeavor like?
3:39
What is it so that people can kind of get an idea and get a picture
3:42
of what it is in their head?
3:44
Yeah, so Endeavors a, a Midian village.
3:46
So around the bottom of the world's oceans, there's like 65,000 kilometers
3:51
of, uh, mid ocean villages, which are submarine volcanoes and endeavors.
3:57
Um, one of these, um, in the north northeast Pacific, the, um, where new
4:03
ocean crust is continually created, um, where seawater circulates down into
4:07
that ocean crust and gets heated to four or 500 degrees Celsius before venting
4:13
at black smokers on the sea floor.
4:15
So.
4:16
So this, like for you as someone like, like someone who studies rocks and
4:20
volcanoes and everything, this is like, this is, this is your special, this is,
4:24
this is like the thing for you, right?
4:25
This is where, this is your, your, this is the endeavor.
4:28
This is your thing to study.
4:30
Yeah.
4:30
I mean, endeavor's one of the greatest places on the planet to look at
4:34
these because, uh, there's so much access through things like the ocean
4:38
networks and, uh, observatory and previous studies that people have
4:42
been doing since the eighties there.
4:44
Yeah.
4:44
So it's really well understood area and yeah, it's, these are the
4:47
most active volcanoes on the planet even though we don't see them.
4:50
'cause they're covered by the ocean, so.
4:52
Right.
4:52
It's an incredible place to study.
4:54
Now there are a lot of areas around the endeavor, you know, that have hydrothermal
5:00
vent and everything like that.
5:01
And even just around the world, what sets the endeavor, Steve, why
5:04
don't you just answer this one.
5:05
What sets the endeavor apart from other hydrothermal vent fields that
5:09
are, that are around the world?
5:13
That's a, you know, actually that's a, a pretty important question.
5:16
Um, but basically it's just the sheer magnitude of hydrothermal
5:21
venting that's occurring there.
5:22
That's, you know, a lot of people say, well, there's, this
5:24
one's a medium spreading perfect example of a medium spreading.
5:28
Uh, you know, speed is spreading is, is, is in the middle.
5:32
So you actually have time to, to have life forms, uh, make use of the hydrothermal
5:38
venting and, and actually have a succession of, of, uh, of ecologies there.
5:44
Uh, but the sheer magnitude, there's, there's an incredible amount.
5:48
There's five major vent fields there.
5:50
Um, if you go down south on the Wanda Fuca Ridge, you get to other
5:54
areas where you have a, you're in a Caldera and, and it's far less active
5:59
in, in the hydro, uh, the actual movement of water through the cross.
6:02
And, and it's unclear.
6:04
Lawrence probably has pretty good idea why it's so active.
6:07
Uh uh, but.
6:09
I, I don't know.
6:10
It is a very, uh, very special, uh, venting site.
6:14
It could strictly, you know, if you wanna just go to the, the brass tacks
6:19
or the whole thing strictly because the sheer magnitude of venting that's going
6:23
there and to, and they're different from, you know, two kilometers away.
6:27
Uh, vent sites will have a totally different look to them because of
6:31
the different, uh, uh, GE geological, uh, water interactions that occur.
6:36
And, and you can, you know, we're just.
6:39
We're just scratching the surface of trying to understand
6:41
what's going on there.
6:42
Unreal.
6:43
And it's been, it's been studied for quite some time as Lawrence said.
6:45
Like that's, that's pretty cool.
6:47
You know, Steve kind of opened up the question, Lawrence,
6:49
I'm gonna have you answer it.
6:50
Why is there so much volcanic activity in the, in the endeavor?
6:54
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'd answer this question a little differently
6:57
and, you know, um, we've studied such a small fraction of the sea floor.
7:02
We don't actually know what most of the Mid Ocean Bridge network looks like.
7:06
So there's very few places we've studied and, and like as much detail as endeavor.
7:11
There's just not the resources to study everywhere like this Um, So there may,
7:15
well, in fact there are other places that are just as active as Endeavor And
7:19
then there are other places that aren't.
7:20
And it's really, um, a combination like Steve says, of, uh, the crystal structure
7:26
Um, So how the faults allow fluid to get into the sea floor, um, and just
7:32
temporal variations or changes in the amount of volcanic activity over time.
7:36
But I. I think there are other places that are similarly active.
7:40
It's just mm-hmm.
7:40
That we, we don't have enough areas we've studied in detail to know, um,
7:45
know how unique endeavor really is.
7:48
Right.
7:48
But there are plenty of other places that are just as active for sure.
7:51
Yeah.
7:51
Interesting.
7:53
Now a, apart from the volcanic activity, why is the endeavor considered like such
7:59
a valuable location for ocean science?
8:01
Steve, do you want to answer that part?
8:04
Well, basically it's, it's close by.
8:06
It's in our, that's what I go very fundamental.
8:10
Uh, you know, lots of things are pretty fundamental.
8:12
Like, it's, it's within our EEZ, our exclusive, exclusive economic zone.
8:18
We can get to it.
8:19
Uh, and, uh, and we basically, uh, I think the, these, these kind of,
8:25
the, these websites like endeavors only, uh, discovered in 1984.
8:30
So this is a very new kind of thing happen, you know, that, that we didn't
8:33
know about before that, uh, it was.
8:37
Postulated speculated, but we, we actually didn't, you know, the
8:40
first event, I can't remember, early eighties Endeavor 84, they finally
8:45
actually, uh, got Alvin down there.
8:47
And so, oh yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff and, and there's a whole
8:50
bunch of life associated with it.
8:52
I mean this, so, so it's basically, we realized pretty, the scientific
8:59
community realized pretty soon that something had to hap this is
9:02
very special area, easy to access.
9:04
So it was made into a Marine protected area quite, you know, in the 2000 or so.
9:09
So it was very quickly, um, uh, protected because also what vent sites
9:15
are basically ways of aggregating or concentrating minerals and, uh,
9:20
some minerals concentrate there, you know, there's gold, there's, you know,
9:23
copper, there's all kinds of stuff.
9:25
So it's an ideal, uh, place to mine.
9:27
In fact, like, uh, mines on.
9:30
On the actual, you know, uh, sub aerial or terrestrial mines are often, were
9:35
old, uh, hydro hydrothermal vent sites.
9:38
So the, the Rio Tinto.
9:39
Oh, interesting.
9:40
Yeah.
9:41
Rio Tinto mine, the Red River or, um, in, in Spain, one of the first places where
9:46
they, you know, they move out of the Stone Age was, uh, basically a hydrothermal
9:51
venting site prior to being a mine.
9:55
I did not realize that and being my land, that's it.
9:57
Yeah.
9:57
So yeah, you're move, you're move, you're concentrating, uh, minerals
10:00
in an area and obviously, you know, once you con do that, people wanna
10:05
come by and mine it, so we rich.
10:07
Yeah.
10:07
You know, we, it's two kilometers down, so it's not that easy to mine.
10:11
So we, uh, the community realized that, and the fact that this had so much
10:15
attention and basically, uh, even the scientific, uh, you know, exploration
10:21
could be damaging to the actual environment itself, uh, just right.
10:27
There's quite a, if you go down there, there's quite a, we have quite a few
10:29
things on the sea floor there, so you have to, we have to be quite careful on, on, on
10:34
recovering our stuff and, and keeping the place, uh, yeah, as pristine as we can.
10:38
You know, with all this, like these vent fluids, they go all over the place, you
10:41
know, they go out, they shoot up into the water column, but I've heard that they
10:44
can like, be traced across the Pacific.
10:47
Like how does that, how can you trace that and like, what does it tell us
10:52
about these vent fluids, you know, just in general in terms of their, their,
10:56
their patterns of how they spread out?
10:58
Uh, Lawrence, can you answer that for that?
11:00
Sure.
11:01
So I mean, we trace a, um, mainly by collecting samples, fluid
11:06
samples from, uh, the ocean.
11:08
And so you go out on a ship and you lower, um, what's called a CTD rosette
11:13
instrument allows us to collect water samples And then, uh, we bring them
11:18
back to the lab and you analyze the composition of them and you can see, uh.
11:23
Key element in isotope, uh, tracers that tell you that fluid has interacted
11:28
with those hydrothermal fluids.
11:30
And it's always at the same depth as a ridge.
11:32
So it's about two kilometers depth in the Pacific.
11:36
Right across the Pacific, there's a region and it's enriched in
11:39
elements like iron, uh mm-hmm.
11:41
So that's the iron that's coming out with the hydrothermal vents.
11:44
It's building the chimneys.
11:45
Um, but it's also been spread right across the Pacific and people are
11:49
really excited about that because s uh, limiting micronutrient in
11:54
the ocean and parts of the ocean.
11:55
Mm-hmm.
11:55
So everything needs it, uh, for primary productivity.
11:59
And so knowing we have this source, um, of iron and to Deep
12:03
Pacific is really interesting to, uh, biologic oceanographers
12:07
as well as geologists like me.
12:09
Yeah.
12:10
So the, these, so these fluids go around like the, the bottom of
12:13
the ocean, they kind of travel.
12:15
There's just, is it just 'cause there's like these deep sea
12:17
currents that take 'em around.
12:19
How far?
12:20
Off the, the hydrothermal events.
12:22
Will you get traces of that, that vent fluid, you can trace
12:26
it right across the Pacific.
12:28
So 4,000 kilometers across the Pacific, these fluids have been traced.
12:33
Uh, yep.
12:34
And you can see that the, sorry, I didn't mean to, that's through isotope analysis.
12:38
Like looking at the, the specific aspect of that vent fluid that
12:41
comes from, from endeavor.
12:43
Yeah.
12:43
Isotopes and even just the abundance of elements like ion Gotcha.
12:47
Or even very small particles of, uh, the minerals that lack smoke.
12:52
That gets very diluted.
12:53
But you can still trace those particles right across the Pacific too.
12:56
It's incredible.
12:57
That is incredible.
12:58
That is incredible.
12:59
Now with all that happening, you know, you get, you know, these, the
13:03
areas can be hotter in temperature in these, around these vents.
13:06
And, um, there's a lot of, uh, stuff that's coming out that, you
13:10
know, we wouldn't be able to handle.
13:11
Like if we were out there, obviously with pressure.
13:13
But even if it was at the surface, uh, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be good for us.
13:18
But biodiversity is pretty, like, is is pretty high around endeavor.
13:23
Steve, why is it so high?
13:24
And, and, and why is that such like an impressive thing to, to under,
13:28
like, to, to see around the endeavor?
13:31
Well, probably it, it, it's, it, you know, its, it's hard to, you
13:35
know, compare biodiversity as for, uh, terrestrial biodiversity.
13:41
This, the whole ecology there is based on a totally different,
13:45
uh, you know, uh, function.
13:47
Basically it's, it's chemosynthetic base.
13:50
So basically it's, uh, the, the bottom layer.
13:53
Instead of being green plants, there is this sort of, uh, uh, uh, uh, utilizing,
13:59
uh, the chemicals that are coming outta the actual, uh, vent fluids, uh, to make
14:04
a, a, a, a entire ecological system.
14:08
So the.
14:08
The diversity is different.
14:10
It's totally different.
14:11
It's, it's nothing at all.
14:12
Like what we have on, you know, there's, there's animals that have adapted to it.
14:17
There's, you know, all these, there's skates there, there's giant,
14:20
uh, crabs that are white there and, and things like that mm-hmm.
14:23
That are living off these guys that are only endemic or only found in
14:28
that, that specific area based on, on this chemosynthesis uh, uh, process.
14:34
So it's hard.
14:35
Why, why is it biodiverse?
14:37
Well, um, it's basically, it, it, we, you know, it's been around, we figure
14:44
for at least a thousand years there that this venting is, is, is happening.
14:47
That's a rough guess of what, but it changes quite a bit.
14:50
So right now we're going through a, a, uh, cycle that we believe for
14:56
pretty simplistic reasons, uh, it is a 20 year cycle that, uh, you have
15:00
increased sort of activity and that's gonna change the ecology of one area.
15:05
Too hot for the animals that happen to be there, and some of them are not.
15:09
Right.
15:09
Some of it is, is platonics.
15:11
So float around.
15:12
Other guys are attached to something and if it gets too hot, they, they die.
15:15
If it gets too cold, they die.
15:17
So there, there's, so you have a, a succession of, of, uh,
15:21
of biology that can occur.
15:23
And, and you, uh, you know, uh, adaptation processes that have been
15:29
going on for, you know, thousands of years have, have mm-hmm.
15:32
Built a whole different diverse community.
15:34
And the inter, the more interesting thing about it is the fact, even though
15:38
these are localized into certain areas, like the endeavor segments sits, you
15:42
know, 300 kilometers offshore and the next section is, is well down
15:45
the ridge where there's other Yeah.
15:47
Uh, there, there's interconnectivity between.
15:50
The ridge.
15:51
So they, they're showing that there's certain, you know, certain
15:54
why, why is there, why are the same creatures living at, at Endeavor
15:58
that are living somewhere else?
16:00
If, if they're, they're not, they're not isolated because the ocean itself, right.
16:04
As, as we're, as, uh, Lawrence was saying, basically it is interconnected all
16:09
along really long timescales, so mm-hmm.
16:13
The, basically the oxygen oxygenated, uh, water's ventilated in the, in the
16:18
Arctic and the Antarctic, and it sinks down, it gets cold, sinks down, and it
16:23
ends up at Endeavor in a thousand years.
16:25
Yeah.
16:25
It's about a thousand year cycle, so it's gonna go, it's all connected somehow.
16:29
Yeah.
16:30
Generally when it's in the ocean, you are, you're stuck with, uh, mixing
16:35
processes that slow, you know, slow down the, uh, the, the vertical,
16:39
uh, sort of, uh, travel times.
16:41
And that's why you can pick up, uh, the, these signals at the depth of
16:45
event many, you know, hundreds of kilometers away from national event site.
16:51
Because it's not gonna go up and down.
16:52
It's, but it, it has no problem going side to side.
16:54
It's, uh, it's once it's got its neutral density, it's, it's,
16:57
that's, yeah, that's where it goes.
16:59
And these currents that we don't fully understand, because models aren't that
17:03
concerned about the, the bottom of the ocean, the models are there basically
17:07
to make sure that the atmosphere models are doing the right job.
17:11
Because that's the big reason.
17:12
We, we wanna know where we live, what, what the weather's gonna be, for sure.
17:15
Not necessarily at the bottom of the ocean.
17:17
So we often have a very confused view of what's happening in the, in the deep sea.
17:22
And that's a major area of, of scientific research that.
17:26
Hopefully we're helping out by this observatory that we have there.
17:30
Yeah, absolutely.
17:31
When I, I also think too, like the biodiversity, like with the amount of
17:34
different species you get there and, and such a unique set of species because
17:38
of the, the, the harsh conditions for, you know, for the, your quote unquote
17:42
regular species that we know and find around, I would imagine it, it offer a
17:45
bit of protection from other predators around that because those predators
17:50
probably wouldn't be able to go into those areas to eat those crabs or, or
17:54
eat those skates or, or things like that.
17:56
Would that be a fair assessment?
17:58
It seems to be.
17:59
I've never actually read any, uh, particular sort of thing, but tho
18:03
those, those giant crabs, those white crabs that you might've seen, yeah.
18:07
Um, if you pull a bunch of two berms, for instance, which are full of mm-hmm.
18:11
Blood basically, and they're very tasty for crabs.
18:15
They're not on the actual venting sites.
18:16
They're not, they're not.
18:17
They're, they don't go there.
18:19
But when you go to sample it, you can't get back to the, uh, you know, back
18:23
to your little trailer that you're gonna bring it up to without these
18:26
crabs chasing you down and ripping it outta your hands and trying to eat it.
18:30
It's, it's serious.
18:31
They're, they don't look like they're moving very fast, but they get there.
18:35
Right.
18:36
Once they see that, oh, there's one, it's just like, there, it's,
18:38
And then they've got, they're, I dunno why I, I, I can't see.
18:42
They're, they're just, I That smells good.
18:44
Yeah.
18:44
So they do avoid it.
18:46
Uh, probably, probably, uh, heat, probably chemicals.
18:50
There's lots of chemicals.
18:51
I, but I, I'm, I'm not a biologist.
18:53
To, to, yeah.
18:55
And I don't know, Lawrence, you don't know how to, Ian.
18:57
I, I, I just know they're never on the actual events.
19:00
Yeah.
19:00
No, I'm not a biologist either, so I, uh, you can't really, I didn't know that
19:04
about the crabs coming in to get their tube worms, so, oh, they love them.
19:08
They gotta get, they love those tasty tube verbs.
19:09
Yeah.
19:10
Uh, well, I mean, you know, we're looking at just sort of what you mentioned, how
19:14
things move and like they, they kind of like, you can see things happening
19:17
over thousands of years and, and how they move from ridge to ridge and stuff.
19:22
Can you see, like, like, can you answer questions about just not only evolution
19:27
of, of some of the species that are down there, but also just the evolution of
19:30
the vents and the ridges that happen.
19:32
You know, like what questions about, you know, life and evolution can, you can
19:38
be raised through research at Endeavor Lawrence, do you, have you done any kind
19:43
of like, thought on that, especially when it comes to like how dynamic it can
19:47
be with all these volcanic eruptions?
19:49
Yeah, I'm certainly no expert on this and I don't work on it,
19:53
but I know of people who do.
19:54
So, yeah, you can certainly, um.
19:57
Uh, trace that there are different, um, different things live at different vents
20:04
and how interconnected the species are.
20:06
Depend on how long it is since there was a straightforward geological pathway
20:11
between one set of vents and the next.
20:13
So for example, if the tectonics changes so that one ridge gets separated from
20:19
another ridge and there's not a direct transport per larvae between them, right?
20:24
And then they start to evolve separately.
20:26
So kinda like, uh, the islands at Darwin looked at the fins
20:30
with different, um, features on.
20:32
Yeah.
20:32
So as soon as the ridges get separated, then things can evolve
20:36
separately in those locations.
20:38
And um, and people have traced that out and tried to help reconstruct
20:43
when tectonic boundaries.
20:46
Between these ridges first, uh, were created.
20:49
And that can be on a small scale, or it can be on a much bigger scale.
20:52
Like you find very different things in the Atlantic Ocean than you
20:55
find in the Pacific Ocean, right?
20:57
So it, that'd be a very big scale.
21:00
Um, but yeah, even much more locally, you get those kinds of variations too.
21:04
One thing that's not often, uh, understood or or known is, is the fact that there's
21:09
a lot of stuff that lives in the crust.
21:11
There's, uh, microbial, uh, uh, so what happens, even though, you know,
21:16
it may not be the pathway, may not be in the ocean oceanic occurrence, it's
21:20
through the actual, uh, crust it itself.
21:22
So you have microbes in there, you have a new vent shows up, it spits out a
21:26
whole bunch of mi microbial stuff, basis of, uh, that, uh, uh, and that's the
21:31
basis of the, the basically food chain.
21:33
Uh, you know, we, we've gone to, uh, eruptions that just occurred,
21:37
uh, with a, a rapid response.
21:40
And basically as soon as we got there, which is a month, you know,
21:43
after things happened, these newer places were occupied by, by Lifeform.
21:48
So we don't know whether that was through, through the water column
21:52
or through the actual crust itself.
21:55
It seems like the crust has, you know, there's, it, we, we don't often
21:59
appreciate the fact that there could be, you know, uh, uh, similar amounts
22:04
of species that live in the crust that we have on the actual planet itself.
22:07
That their numbers keep on going up and down all over the place, I guess.
22:10
And how many, how many things live in the crust?
22:13
And they do.
22:13
And they have a geological role.
22:15
They actually change, uh, they, they use, it's, it's basically microbial activity.
22:20
They, they grab a bit of this mineral and that mineral and mm-hmm.
22:23
Get energy out of it and make a third, uh, you know, mineral
22:26
like serpentine or something.
22:28
Um, Yeah, Lawrence probably knows more about this than I do, so I'm
22:31
probably sticking my neck out here.
22:33
But I'm a, I'm a physical oceanographer and generalist
22:38
salesman for salesman for Endeavor.
22:42
Yeah, no worries.
22:43
Well, you guys are selling it.
22:44
You guys are selling it well now.
22:46
Uh, but what did it, like, you know, you're thinking, I'm thinking about
22:49
the endeavor and it's like a number of ridges, but, you know, a couple
22:52
kilometers down below the sea surface.
22:55
What's it like when you start to, you know, work on there?
22:59
So you're going out on a ship, like what's it like to visit the endeavor?
23:03
Like what, what's that?
23:05
Like, what, what, what, how's that work like in terms of a research cruise?
23:08
Can you just kinda just give the, the, for the audience, like a
23:10
picture of, of how you go visit.
23:13
I mean, we all can't go in an ROV and I know that's been ha that's happened
23:16
before, but like, what's a typical research cruise, um, that happens,
23:21
like to do research on the endeavor?
23:24
Lawrence, why don't you start with this?
23:26
Okay.
23:26
Steve's better to speak to this than me because he's actually been there.
23:30
Uh, but I mean, you know, one thing that's great with Owen, Steven and
23:35
the cruises out there now is that all of it's, uh, fully available.
23:39
They stream all of this live, right?
23:40
So anyone in the world can be watching it.
23:42
So, you know, he had bought a ship and, um, with an ROV and the crew,
23:48
And then you'd head out, uh, just over a day's steaming to get to Endeavor.
23:52
When you get there, then you locate yourself And then, you know,
23:56
you drop the ROV into the water.
23:59
So using the A-frame on the back of the ship and it takes, you know,
24:03
some hours to get down to the bottom.
24:05
Um, And then you'd have a, um, a van, basically like a shipping container with.
24:12
Um, typically, um, a whole wall of TV screens looking at all the different
24:17
cameras that the RV's projecting back.
24:19
And you have the pilots for the RV who are really skilled at
24:23
manipulating both the arms on the RV and finding where you want to go.
24:28
And, you know, that's a big challenge, is tracking where
24:30
you are and where you wanna go.
24:32
Um, And then, you know, you'd have, uh, typically one to three scientists
24:37
in there, or engineers telling the pilots of the RV what they wanna do,
24:42
where to go next, what the aims are.
24:45
Navigation's a big thing down there, so.
24:48
Um, and you know, you go about doing whatever you want to do, just looking
24:53
at these TV screens and just playing back what's happening in the sea floor.
24:57
And like I say, anyone in the world can watch these either
25:00
using the Ocean Networks, Canada playback facilities mm-hmm.
25:04
To look at ancient or past cruises or watch it in realtime next
25:09
time that they're out there.
25:10
So yeah, that's pretty, that's pretty cool.
25:13
Now Steve, you've been down there before, right?
25:16
Y yeah, so basically, you know, and in general if it was a real science,
25:21
science crews, so we were basically going there, we're doing operations
25:24
and maintenance and sciences almost.
25:27
We have to do a certain amount of science to be able to, uh, uh,
25:31
properly, uh, characterize what we're seeing with the sensor.
25:34
So there is a, there, but it's a limited role.
25:37
Like in other cases, um, the, uh, I guess Alvin was out there this summer
25:43
on the Atlantis, that's a human, uh, occupied vehicle, and they, they
25:46
would have a, a, you know, two week plan based on a scientific question.
25:51
Mm-hmm.
25:51
And, uh, and, and, And then it would, they would gather up the science
25:54
people that were gonna go on it.
25:56
They get the funding from, in this case, national Science Foundation.
26:00
And then the whole thing is concentrated on the science
26:03
it, it, with, with, uh, ONC.
26:06
We're going out there, we're gonna go to, uh, places on the slope.
26:10
We're gonna go to places, uh, uh, near shore.
26:13
We're gonna have all kinds of different depths to, to go and, And
26:16
then we'll squeeze in, in a four or five day thing, uh, at Endeavor.
26:20
Somewhere in that whole, uh, uh.
26:22
Sequence.
26:23
So it's not, and that is based on, you know, a number of predetermined,
26:29
uh, dive plans that we make up.
26:30
So this is exactly what we're gonna do.
26:32
We're gonna replace this, we're gonna move this over there.
26:34
We're gonna do this.
26:35
We're gonna sample this in here to characterize that.
26:37
So it's very, it's quite structured.
26:39
Um, it's, uh, it, it can be, uh, because science is always good that way.
26:44
Research, you basically wanna be able to, uh, change anything in
26:47
the last minute because suddenly you see something unbelievable.
26:50
Certainly you're not gonna not look at it.
26:52
Yeah.
26:52
And that's right because oh, we have, we have to, we have to now,
26:55
you know, plug this thing over here.
26:57
No, we're, we're, so it, but it's still, it's the, the, uh, our funding is based
27:02
on, based on operating and maintaining a observatory at Endeavor and all
27:07
through the, uh, Northeast Pacific.
27:10
So it's not, not the classic science thing.
27:12
So you'll have like me or two scientists on board doing 12 hour
27:16
shifts and, and we try to, you know, cover all the different bases.
27:20
So we won't have a, a geological expert.
27:22
We won't have a a necessarily a, a biologist.
27:26
It, it, it's all over.
27:27
It's.
27:28
You have to, you have to rely on your email contacts,
27:31
Lawrence, what, what should I do?
27:34
You know, that sort of thing.
27:35
You, you do, you try to keep Yeah.
27:36
Communications with the shore scientists that are experts and, And then you
27:40
learn, you learn rudimentary sort of, uh, parts of many different fields.
27:45
Uh, at least that, that's has been my role anyway, is just not so jack of all trades.
27:51
Yeah.
27:52
Uh, master of none.
27:55
Well, currents.
27:56
I deal with the currents and stuff like that, but that, that's only one
27:59
small little, uh, factor in what we do.
28:02
Yeah.
28:03
So there's a lot of, there's a lot of prep that goes into before
28:06
these cruises are going out.
28:07
You're, you're looking at collaborating with partners like with Lawrence and,
28:10
and other, other, uh, scientists that, that want to ask certain questions.
28:15
And then you go down there with a, a, a plan ready to be adaptable
28:19
depending on what you see down there.
28:21
And then you go down and you try and, you know, do some
28:24
maintenance on, on some equipment.
28:26
Um, check out some cool things that are, that are around there at that time.
28:30
Um, have you had any, can you tell us like a, a time where you
28:34
at really saw some really cool stuff while you were down there?
28:37
Well, every time you go down there, um, uh, so it's kind of
28:40
a, what's your most memorable, what's your most memorable moment?
28:44
Most memorable, most memorable moment?
28:46
I, it's, I, you know, basically these things are, are so, um, uh, fascinating.
28:54
It's, you know, the first time we laid the cable, going in there and,
28:59
and, and you've got that five meter kind of area where you've got.
29:03
Really high intensity lights, uh mm-hmm.
29:06
But you can't see any farther.
29:07
And so you're, you're coming along bumbling along there with a clear view
29:11
of something very close up, and suddenly you walk right into a, well walk the ROV
29:17
flies into this field of these massive, uh, uh, pillars, and you're going, wow.
29:22
And they just come into view fairly quickly and you're just, it's, it's,
29:28
uh, it, it raises, you know, goosebumps on the back of your neck, right?
29:33
It's, it's, it's, yeah.
29:34
So that whole thing, And then finding, you know, accidentally finding
29:37
another one, oh, there's, there, this guy's here, and you, and, and Right.
29:41
Again, because of the viewing, uh, you're, you're, you can't really see that far.
29:47
You, you don't get a picture of the whole story.
29:48
So you're completely lost in this, of course, little maze.
29:51
And you know, the pilots.
29:53
Who have been there a lot often know that stuff or you, or to un to give,
29:59
you know, they actually put in a life size cardboard, not cardboard,
30:04
uh, plywood cut out of one of the, uh, Alvin Alvin, uh, uh, pilots.
30:09
And it, it, we, we got to see it too.
30:11
It was, it was hung around for quite a while.
30:13
And actually what happened though, it floated around.
30:15
So you come across this life-sized band pointing at a, he was point, he was meant
30:21
to point, to give a size estimate of a, a, a edifice, and it's floating around.
30:26
And so you run into that, that's pretty spooky down there.
30:29
Or you see something.
30:31
So it's, it's kind of like that.
30:33
I, it's not, you know, what's specific, unbelievable thing.
30:36
We, the sometimes, uh, a piece of, uh, a vent will fall off and break
30:42
and they're basically, they grow all these, uh, they're, they're like OIDs
30:46
where there's all bunch of crystals grown on the inside and you don't.
30:51
It come from an area where it looks like it's completely like a
30:54
muddy, not that interesting thing.
30:56
Yeah.
30:56
And you crack it open and it's this, this unbelievable, you know, it's full
31:01
of lots of fell spiral down, lots of really shiny, uh, things that, the,
31:06
that it's so dark in the background and your lights are so strong.
31:10
It, it's a fascinating kind of, uh, thing.
31:12
There's a yeah.
31:13
Contrast in that occurs anyways.
31:15
That's, yeah.
31:16
It's not, not a, not, it's not an example, but it's just, it's every day.
31:20
It's, yeah.
31:22
That's a, it's, it's kind of a, I think it's, it's a, it's a difficult thing
31:26
to picture for people who haven't been down there, because I think a lot of
31:28
times when we think of the deep sea, we just think of just, you know, the
31:31
thought that process goes like a flat land, you know, a flat, a flat bottom,
31:36
not land, I guess, or bottom in this sea, and you're just like, oh my gosh.
31:39
Like what is is happening with all this?
31:42
And, um, I think it's, uh, it's, it's really interesting to.
31:49
Here that it's like, there's these pillars and there's this like complexity
31:52
of the, the, the, the bottom of the ocean when we're like two kilometers
31:57
down and, you know, you can't really see where you're going other than how
32:01
far the, the, the lights are shining.
32:03
How far of a distance do you think they go?
32:05
Like approximately the five meters where you can actually see it?
32:08
I, I always use five meters Yeah.
32:10
Yeah.
32:10
You know, it, it's, it's, you know, an R cube kind of, it
32:14
drops down really quickly.
32:15
Um, but yeah, it's, it's not far.
32:18
It's the, yeah, it's just slightly bigger than the actual ROV itself.
32:22
Yeah.
32:23
Yeah.
32:23
That's cool.
32:23
They got more lights now.
32:25
You can look in the back and if they've, you know, we have, if often we, uh, use
32:30
a two body system where it has a, uh, a clump weight, but it has some control,
32:36
it has some lights on it, And then you have your ROV, so that'll be above you.
32:40
And you try to, you, you'll be able to see the lights from a great distance.
32:44
Yes.
32:44
Okay.
32:44
More than five meters.
32:45
So, but all you see is a bunch of lights down there, And then you might be able
32:48
to see what that light, what that, uh, light of the ROV is actually doing.
32:52
So that's pretty fascinating.
32:54
That's like Titanic, uh, stuff, you know, you can actually Yeah.
32:57
Similar to there, you can, they have to re reconstruct the whole thing in a
33:02
number of, uh, photograph parametric, uh, techniques to show you of them,
33:06
because you only see this one.
33:07
Oh, there's the front end of the Titanic, and that's the
33:10
same thing we have in there.
33:11
It's where we, we got the, this guy here, that guy there, And then you have
33:14
to piece that together in your head and, uh, and try to make the picture.
33:18
And so we're, that's one of the big, big research things that we're doing is trying
33:22
to put, put together an actual, uh, map of, of the area, because it's not, yeah.
33:27
And this is a hard, hard thing for a lot of the cartography people, or GIS people,
33:32
is that they don't realize it's, there's.
33:34
The, the third dimension is just as important as the,
33:38
the, the x and Y dimensions.
33:39
In this case, it's just as vertical as it is horizontal.
33:42
And there's often, there's two Z points.
33:44
So you have an overhang and you have, you know, so what's the bot?
33:47
You know, it's, they can't, it's not mapped, not easily mapped by flying over
33:52
with the multi-beam and stuff like that.
33:53
So you have to actually go in there and build these structures.
33:56
I don't know where on, on Land Lawrence might know, but where there's that kind of
34:01
structures on, you know, maybe in caves.
34:03
Yeah.
34:04
You know, there's tights and you know, something.
34:07
It's kind of like that.
34:08
There's a lot of, it's not a flat, the flatter theory doesn't work there.
34:15
Yeah, no, absolutely not.
34:19
Absolutely not.
34:20
Um, one of the, the unique things about.
34:23
About endeavor is, is the amount of data that we have on it and the amount
34:27
of science that we have, and that's because of this, this cabled observatory.
34:31
So Lawrence, like for you as a scientist, why is having this cabled observatory
34:36
at endeavors such a breakthrough for the work that that you do and that you've seen
34:40
your colleagues, uh, go through as well?
34:43
Yeah, I mean it's um, if you think about trying to study, um, a volcano on land,
34:49
let's say you wouldn't do it by going there, uh, once every few years, um,
34:56
in a looking only five meters in front of you at any one time and going down
35:02
and maybe having like, I don't know, four hours to study the volcano And
35:07
then you come back in three years time.
35:08
So actually being able to do things in real time.
35:11
Yeah, you know, I can look up right now.
35:13
What's the change in the temperature of the vents?
35:15
How has that changed in the last 24 hours?
35:17
How has it changed in the last week?
35:18
I can look at the camera footage and say, oh look, that microbial mat that
35:23
was growing like that has been eaten by something 'cause it's got much smaller
35:27
or it's shed into the water column.
35:29
And, and those are the kinds of things you can never do if you're just going out
35:33
intermittently collecting one-off data.
35:35
So, you know, we've got some really, uh, unique instruments now too.
35:40
So we can, uh, for example, sample that black smoker fluid 350 degrees c, fluid
35:46
on demand from just through the internet.
35:49
So, um, if something happens, if there's an earthquake, Yeah, we know there's
35:53
been an earthquake because we've got the seismometers that are keyboard.
35:56
They tell us, oh, the ground just started shaking.
35:59
Okay.
36:00
Oh yeah, this is a big earthquake compared to normal.
36:03
Let's sample the fluid coming out the vent and see if that changed at the same time.
36:07
That's the kind of thing that you could never do with a. You know,
36:11
even if we had the money to send a ship out after that, right.
36:13
It takes like a month or something to be ready to do it.
36:16
So, yeah.
36:17
And in terms of understanding, you know, how does the geology relate to
36:21
the fluid chemistry and to the biology?
36:23
You know, you need to know how things, uh, the time scale of those processes.
36:28
Does everything change within an hour?
36:30
Does it change within a month?
36:32
Does it change in a year?
36:33
And you can't do that if you just go out once in a while to do things.
36:37
So you need the real time data.
36:39
So it's.
36:40
Being quite revolutionary to have these, uh, cabled observatories, um, oh yeah.
36:45
So they don't solve everything.
36:46
There's certainly Right.
36:47
Plenty of things.
36:48
You still need to go there and do the one-off, uh, sampling and, you know,
36:52
it's finding the good balance between, you know, having the cable data in real
36:56
time and the Yeah, collecting enough one-off samples, you know, Um, so.
37:01
Yeah.
37:02
Well, that was gonna be my next question.
37:03
You know, when you, when we talk about gathering data, there's always like, this
37:08
is, this is the information that I want.
37:09
I want all these different things.
37:11
We have all these different instruments that we know can, can sample sometimes
37:15
in real time, sometimes not in real time.
37:17
Uh, Lawrence are, are there things that you would love to see that, that are
37:22
not on the endeavor right now that you would love to have measured and keep
37:25
it like to like, you know, couple, not, not the, the big list, because I
37:29
know there's always a big list, right?
37:30
There's always a big list, but Yeah.
37:31
Like, how long have you got?
37:33
Yeah.
37:33
So like, I know there's lots of stuff that, that we can, you mentioned a, a
37:36
number of things like measuring the, measuring the, the plume and, and, and
37:39
all these things real time and seeing what happens after earthquakes and stuff.
37:43
What would you love, like on your dream list, like the biggest item on your
37:47
dream list that you would love to see?
37:48
Uhhuh?
37:48
Yeah, that's a really tough question because my dream list is too long
37:52
and I'm not sure what's on the top of it, but, you know, um.
37:57
I guess I'll give two answers if I can.
37:58
Yeah.
37:59
Yeah, for sure.
38:00
One is for everything to be working all of the time 'cause it's just
38:03
really difficult to do for sure.
38:05
Uh, stuff on the sea floor.
38:06
So instruments, however well engineered they are, don't necessarily
38:11
last that long on the sea floor.
38:13
And then you're not just on the sea floor, but you're trying to put
38:15
things in these hydrothermal vents.
38:17
Mm-hmm.
38:17
So it's incredible that anything works ever Yeah.
38:21
Yeah.
38:21
And then you have to go to sea to maintain this and if the weather's not good or your
38:25
ship's not good for the weather state, then then you can't do the maintenance.
38:29
So it can be another year before.
38:31
Yeah.
38:31
So even with instruments out there in real time, you can still have
38:35
big gaps in the data if there's any problems with weather for the cruisers
38:39
or for just instruments not working.
38:42
So one would be to really, that'd be a big dream, is to have everything
38:46
working all of the time rather than like.
38:49
X percent of things working all of the time.
38:51
Yeah.
38:52
Yeah.
38:52
You know, the other would be, um, having some kind of tracer to tell
38:56
us, um, about what's happening with the magma beneath the surface.
39:00
So there are, there are chemicals that we can look at, like carbon dioxide
39:05
that's released by volcanoes and being able to tell, like, measure how much
39:09
carbon dioxide is coming outta the fluids in those hydrothermal events.
39:13
That could be a real great way to tell us about magma.
39:17
Yeah.
39:17
Under the surface.
39:18
'cause it's gonna be, if we do have an eruption there, it's gonna be
39:21
really exciting to see how that impacts the entire system from
39:26
the rocks through to the biology.
39:29
Uh, and one of the key tracers for seeing that would be, yeah,
39:33
a geochemical tracer for, uh.
39:36
Magma.
39:37
So like carbon dioxide.
39:38
Yeah.
39:39
But, but I could list another, you know, another 20 things too.
39:44
So.
39:44
Well, I think you brought up a really interesting point.
39:46
I've worked at sea a number of times and I was, I was a Marine technician
39:49
on a boat in the Gulf of Mexico.
39:51
And even when we're at the surface, you know, having like a surface like, you
39:55
know, sampler that sampled all the time.
39:58
Things would break, just like just being in a dry area, just with having like,
40:02
you know, water circulating through it.
40:04
I can't even imagine what it is.
40:05
It's like in the deep sea with all the problems.
40:07
You're in a hydrothermal event for God's sakes, and you're, you know,
40:10
you're sampling all these things.
40:11
It's like you said, uh, Lawrence, it's amazing that it, it works in the first
40:14
place, but it's a true testament to like the, the, the engineering and, and the
40:19
placement and, and understanding the, the life that's down there and how it's gonna
40:23
interact with, with the instrumentation.
40:26
Um, Steve, you know, working at ONC and, and being out in the field quite a
40:31
bit, um, how does the staff sort of, you know, adapt to putting these instruments
40:39
into a place like the endeavor to try their best to make sure that it, you
40:45
know, it works all the time, or it works just like it does right now and
40:48
providing information for people as earthquakes, as earthquakes are going
40:51
on and being able to see it, uh, live.
40:53
How does that, how does that whole like system work?
40:57
In five minutes or less.
40:59
Well, you know, if you take Yeah, you, you learn, you, you slowly learn it.
41:05
It's, uh, it, but, you know, we have been going to these places since
41:10
early eighties, and, and we, you, you learn simple things like, okay, lots
41:14
of people think stainless steel, for instance, is a, is a mighty good, uh,
41:18
uh, material, but at mm-hmm hydrothermal fence, it immediately disappears.
41:22
It, it's like unbelievable vanishing.
41:25
So I say, oh, let's make a mooring normally be galvanized steel
41:29
or something cheaper like that.
41:30
Uh, And then well we're, this is really important.
41:33
So we're gonna use stainless steel, we're gonna use alium,
41:35
we're gonna use all this stuff.
41:37
And then it doesn't last for the year.
41:39
The mornings are all on the shore and we learn.
41:41
And then you tell other people they don't believe you.
41:44
They make the same mistake, but so so you, you eventually
41:48
Yeah, it's, it's interesting.
41:49
They, they, so, so we put the first one out there in 1985, I
41:55
believe, and lost all of 'em.
41:57
And then basically, uh, I was actually part of the act, uh, I looked at
42:00
the data, but so you, it's built up.
42:04
So we know titanium works, we know plastics works.
42:08
We know iron will like, like this is the craziest, you know, because
42:12
it, yeah, it's such an, it's a big iron reactor down there.
42:16
You put a, you put a, a piece of galvanized steel that you paint.
42:19
Let's say you paint it red or something like that, and you got
42:22
it sitting on the, you go back next year or maybe the year after.
42:25
All that's there is the paint.
42:27
You just touch it And then the whole thing crumbles.
42:30
All the iron is now this powder, so this this red powder everywhere.
42:34
So these things, you know, become very clear.
42:36
Everybody knows, but it's.
42:39
It wasn't really predicted.
42:41
I mean, it should have been predicted, but it's more of an experience thing.
42:44
So you wanna be able to have this, I, you know, long-term kind of, uh, knowledge.
42:48
So now that there's no engineer at our, our engineering area that know, knows
42:53
that we were not gonna put in, you know, stainless steel anywhere near the
42:56
ocean, basically our first actual first platform, we put it designed, it's, we
43:02
still have the same design was made outta stainless steel and we put it in ACH
43:06
inlet, which is anoxic at a certain level.
43:09
And it last, it it, six months later, we pulled it back up and whenever
43:13
we had the stickers on, this is like you're trying to sell your operation.
43:16
So you go down with our ov take pictures of this thing, wherever
43:19
the stickers were, it was all cake.
43:21
It all, the fact that you had another sticker on there.
43:24
Lower the oxygen level so that that stainless steel
43:27
was eaten away underneath it.
43:28
And then we, oh yeah.
43:29
We can't use stainless steel, but we, we generally don't put things, the
43:34
people who designed it are, were ROV pilots and stainless steel and aluminum.
43:39
That works great for ROVs 'cause it goes in the water, you clean it off
43:42
when it comes back up and it's fine.
43:43
But if you put something in there for like, you know, a year or six
43:46
months, it, it, it can't work.
43:48
So it's all a, a sequence of uh, trial and error.
43:52
Learn.
43:53
There's some engineering involved in there, but, uh, ahead of time.
43:56
But often it's, you know, you'll say, don't, don't do that.
44:00
That's not a good idea.
44:01
Yeah.
44:01
And there's lots of MacGyvering that goes on at actual, on the ship
44:06
to figure out how to do things.
44:07
I mean, that's the big thing is to be able to adapt right away.
44:11
A as we are there.
44:12
'cause you, that's nothing.
44:13
That focuses you, you're out there, it's, I can't remember what the numbers
44:17
are, you know, a, a, a dollar, you know, a a dollar a second, whatever.
44:21
Yeah.
44:22
Yeah.
44:23
That's your, you, you realize you gotta get all this done or you, you're
44:27
not gonna get funded to do it again because you're just going out there.
44:30
Yeah.
44:30
It's hard to explain to people that it's a really difficult thing to do too.
44:33
So you wanna have success.
44:34
Yeah.
44:34
No, for, and you have to be adaptable, as you mentioned.
44:37
Like it, I think that's the unique part of the staff that, that worked for ONC
44:41
that goes out on these cruises is you have to be able to adapt to any type of
44:44
condition, any type of whatever happens.
44:47
And you have to be able to put stuff together, like you said, MacGyvering
44:49
it together, um, and be able to, you know, put it in the, in the
44:53
water so that it works properly.
44:54
You can't just put it in the water and hope, hope for the best.
44:56
So, so, uh, I think that's, that's a true testament to the staff, right.
45:01
Yeah.
45:01
Yeah.
45:01
It's not prescriptive.
45:02
You can't, you wanna have the dollar plan.
45:04
You wanna know your plan is all there, ready to go, but
45:07
it's not gonna go to plan.
45:09
No, exactly.
45:10
Exactly.
45:12
Now one thing you, you both have mentioned over this, over this interview is,
45:15
you know, you both come from different professional backgrounds, right?
45:18
And, and that, you know, we see that a lot with people who are using
45:22
the data within, like this, this whole context of, of the data that's
45:27
coming up from, from the endeavor.
45:29
Um, there's a lot of collaboration that goes on.
45:33
Is there a lot of collaboration that goes on in the final studies?
45:36
So, Lawrence, do you collaborate with Steve to put a study together or,
45:39
or other people at ONC or even other people within the scientific community
45:44
that are, that are studying this?
45:46
Yeah, there's a lot of collaboration.
45:48
I mean, Steve and I have certainly been involved in a whole bunch
45:51
of different studies together.
45:52
Uh, published a bunch of papers on different aspects together.
45:56
Um.
45:58
And yeah, lots of people collaborate and those collaborations range from, you
46:02
know, detailed collaborations that lead to publications with, with multiple people
46:07
who've collaborated, all been authors like Steve and I through to much more, um,
46:13
helping each other, but without actually being involved in detail in the sounds.
46:17
So, for example, the biologists might be going out there and, and not know where
46:23
things have changed recently, right?
46:24
So Steve's been out there recently, maybe can tell them, oh, go look at this area.
46:29
'cause things have changed a lot there.
46:30
That area hasn't changed.
46:31
So there's a lot of collaboration like that, that's much more
46:34
informal as opposed to being.
46:37
Co coworkers on a publication or coworkers on a grant Prosple and things like that.
46:42
But yeah, I mean, it's hugely interdisciplinary, you know?
46:46
Yeah.
46:46
Everything we're doing, um, it involves people working right from
46:50
the seismologists through the Georgia, the fluid chemists, through to the
46:54
biologists, the physical oceanographers.
46:57
We all get together.
46:58
We have workshops every few years, uh, where everyone gets together
47:02
and catches up on what the latest is in every, uh, every discipline.
47:07
Right.
47:07
So there's a lot of, uh, feedback between things that way too.
47:11
Yeah.
47:12
Yeah.
47:12
And that helps every like, you know, like you said, like, you know, you're, you have
47:15
an update on a study or an area that's changed that helps biologists or other
47:19
people to understand, oh, that's changed.
47:20
Maybe I should, I have these questions to, to ask and, and,
47:24
and answer, uh, within that.
47:25
But it, it's not, it hasn't, only the endeavor hasn't only.
47:28
Just been like a, a diversity of professional background.
47:31
It's been a diversity of, of people from all over the world,
47:34
Canada, us, Asia, Europe.
47:37
Like how did the inve like the endeavor, uh, Steve become such a global hub
47:41
for, for researchers from those places?
47:44
It's, uh, well, it, it, it got, it got lucky.
47:46
It was, uh, picked as, uh, uh, as one of the three study sites that
47:51
they, uh, had for a very large, uh, uh, American based program.
47:55
Ridge Ridge, uh, uh, one was Ridge 2001 was just Ridge before that.
48:00
And so they had three sites.
48:02
Uh, and that was one of 'em, so three integrated study sites.
48:05
I can't remember which one, the other one.
48:06
So it really focused a lot of work on, on these three different sites.
48:11
And it, you know, still, you know, like if, if you take, you know,
48:16
like France works on, uh, on, they have a, a observatory in, in the
48:20
Lucky Strike region, but that's.
48:21
In the middle of the Atlantic.
48:23
So you have to go.
48:24
Yeah.
48:24
Take a ship way out there.
48:26
This is an interesting sort of side, side thing.
48:29
This one's quite close to a very major port Vancouver, Seattle,
48:33
and, and major scientific area.
48:35
So it's right there.
48:37
People can fly into va, to Astoria or wherever, and you go offshore
48:41
only 200 kilometers, you know, that's less than a day's, uh, travel.
48:45
And you can actually get, so these big international kind
48:49
of groups can get together.
48:51
Because the other problem is, I mean, Canada's a small country,
48:54
so how many, you know, I can't.
48:56
I can count on one hand the scientists working at endeavors.
49:00
Yeah.
49:01
And, uh, uh, we really have to rely on Americans.
49:04
We have to rely on the French, we have to rely on, And then, you know,
49:08
the, the whims of, uh, those countries change, uh, uh, France wasn't gonna
49:13
support any kind of research, uh, in, basically in, uh, in the Pacific
49:18
because they want to concentrate on the Atlantic, so they do that.
49:21
Mm-hmm.
49:21
Now it's kind of, that's changing a little bit.
49:23
I just, so it moves around quite a bit.
49:26
It's not, it's not, you know, Canada sunk a bunch of money into making this happen.
49:29
So we, we are, you know, we try to, uh, uh, corral Canadian scientists mm-hmm.
49:36
Who are working at, at Endeavor and, and of course American scientists as well.
49:40
Of course.
49:40
Yeah.
49:40
But, but that's, you know, basically.
49:43
You build it and, And then you people will come.
49:50
Absolutely.
49:50
Yeah, we've heard that, we've heard that before.
49:52
That, the line before.
49:55
So just, yeah, it got, there was a, a path then it just happened to, uh,
50:00
a path that ended up, uh, you know, uh, concentrate a lot of research and
50:04
endeavor compared to other places.
50:06
Now, you know, you have all these collaborative and you and people
50:09
have been working on the endeavor, you know, since the early eighties
50:12
and, and you know, there's been a lot of scientists have come through.
50:15
Um, some have retired since.
50:17
Some have gone to other, you know, other places.
50:20
What happens when, you know, a scientist or an expert like works on the endeavor
50:24
for like a, a long period of time And then suddenly, you know, they.
50:28
As as life is, they retire or they move on.
50:30
Um, Lawrence like, have you seen that happen before?
50:33
And like does, is there a gap in that knowledge or is there like a succession
50:37
plan with like other researchers?
50:39
Like I know you probably have students that you probably
50:42
have as graduate students.
50:43
Hopefully they'll work on the endeavor, you know, throughout their
50:46
lifetime, you know, how does that work when someone leaves or retires?
50:50
Yeah, unfortunately it's pretty informal, so Um, so yeah, it certainly happens and.
50:57
There's obviously some information gets passed on because it's been
51:00
published or it's been written in after every or after most cruises.
51:04
There's cruise reports come out that document things in there.
51:08
But there definitely is a loss to the community when someone's
51:11
been working in an area retires.
51:14
Um, and that corporate knowledge, um, of these areas and especially 'cause
51:18
they're so dynamic, like Steve was talking about earlier, chimneys fall over, new
51:22
chimneys grow, these things can grow at like a meter per year, even so, so
51:27
you see a chimney and someone's saying, I think that's, uh, that's X chimney.
51:31
And it's only if someone's been there multiple times that they
51:34
can really say, no, that chimney wasn't there three years ago.
51:37
Uh, or that chimney, no, that's not that one because it used to be
51:40
bigger, so it must have collapsed and a new one grown and stuff.
51:43
So, so there is definitely a loss to the community and a big good moving forward.
51:49
The more of this that, like again, Steve was talking about that we can digitize And
51:53
so that's readily available when people were first going there in the eighties.
51:56
You know, we, the technology for doing this was very different than is now Yeah.
52:00
Yeah.
52:00
So a lot of the early maps were drawn by hand, you know?
52:04
Wow.
52:04
Because you know, you didn't have, well you still have pretty poor navigation,
52:08
but you had even worse navigation.
52:10
And so, And then sketching what things look like out the window of an, I mean,
52:14
you've got a six inch wide window to look out from Alvin to see what's there.
52:20
So yeah, Um, So moving forward, the technology's definitely
52:24
getting much better to try to, um.
52:27
Document things much more clearly and have that available to future generations.
52:31
But we definitely have lost as a, as some of the people who were there in
52:35
the early days have retired by now and yeah, that corporate memory's
52:39
gone and even different chimneys get given different names by different
52:42
groups from around the world and stuff.
52:44
So you're like trying to make sure they really talking about
52:47
the same thing as we are.
52:48
Those kinds of things.
52:49
So, um, Yeah.
52:51
Yeah, it's, it's a problem and yeah, it's a problem across all
52:54
of science, so For sure, for sure.
52:56
Yeah, no doubt.
52:57
Now one thing that's, that I want to kind of talk a little bit about, and it
53:01
might be literally outta space, uh, but you know, we, we, we always compare, you
53:07
know, a lot of times people compare like working in the deep sea to to space, and
53:11
here we have these, these hydrothermal events that are very different
53:14
from what we've ever seen before.
53:16
Uh, we're still discovering a lot of new things.
53:19
How does studying the in endeavor.
53:22
Help us understand like the potential for hydrothermal events
53:25
on other planets or, or moons?
53:28
Lawrence, I think that's a question, uh, for you, uh, on this one.
53:34
Sure.
53:34
I mean, um.
53:36
There's another number of different aspects to that question.
53:40
Partly, uh, just knowing about how these work on your own planet can
53:44
give you ideas about what could be going on in other planets.
53:47
What are the key controls?
53:48
What do you need?
53:49
You need to have a heat source.
53:50
You need to have hot rocks.
53:51
It can't just be cold rocks or else there's no drive for the rocks and
53:55
the fluids to react with one another.
53:57
Right.
53:57
Um.
53:58
And then there's other things like, okay, what pressure, temperature
54:01
conditions are actually conducive to these systems working?
54:06
Um, how would they work differently if you didn't have salt in the water?
54:09
The salt in seawater plays a huge role in how these systems work.
54:13
So if we start thinking about what could be happening on Europa, for
54:17
example, where people think there may be hydrothermal systems under the ice,
54:21
you know, well, how would that work?
54:23
What do we need to know?
54:24
So there's gonna be a flyby mission that NASA are running in, I forget,
54:28
six or eight years or something.
54:30
Yeah.
54:31
And a lot of the, a lot of the data that they're going to try to collect from these
54:34
fluids that spurt up through the ice.
54:37
Uh, those questions are driven by, okay, this is how we think those
54:41
systems would work if they're working like earth systems, right?
54:44
And if the ocean on Europe is different, then these are the kinds
54:47
of observations we'd need to look for.
54:49
What, what organic molecules would we have to look for in there
54:52
to tell us that the temperature or pressure of the hydrothermal
54:56
system was different, for example.
54:57
Right.
54:57
So yeah, it's, uh, it's fascinating to think how these things
55:02
could work on other planets.
55:03
It's also very unconstrained, so it does allow you to have a, a lot of
55:07
your imagination can come in as well as the shines, but for sure, for sure.
55:12
Now, uh, for, for Steve, you've worked on, on Endeavor for, for a very long time.
55:17
Uh, why does the endeavor keep inspiring, like new generations of scientists?
55:22
Why do you think like the endeavor is sparking that?
55:25
Well now, basically because there's an observatory there that has basically a
55:29
lot of footage, and right now we can go pull up a camera looking at the side of
55:33
North Tower and it's looking at a whole bunch of animals moving around there.
55:38
So it's very accessible.
55:40
Um, uh, and the, the concept, I mean, a lot of scientists like the idea of,
55:48
well, there's, it, it breaks down.
55:50
And there's a lot of scientists that are more like to be not going to see,
55:54
but a lot of people like to go to see.
55:56
And if you're Yeah.
55:56
Going to see guaranteed every, you know, well, except for this last year, which
56:01
is really unfortunate, you basically get out there once a year and that's a,
56:06
that's a very compelling sort of, uh, you know, uh, thing if you, if your scientist
56:11
get out to your study zone once a year.
56:13
You can get a lot of stuff done.
56:15
Uh, so I, I think the, the regularity, the fact that there's this observatory
56:20
there and, And then has the fascinating, you know, the stuff that we, every,
56:25
you know, I I, I was just looking at Oceano Oceanography magazine, you know,
56:28
we just published something in, in June and it's had a big, uh, hydrothermal
56:33
vent picture on the front of it.
56:34
Now I just realized the last one, which is.
56:36
Comes out every two months.
56:37
So three issues later, it's gotta hide a thermal vent picture
56:41
right on the front of it too.
56:42
So these are topics that are very, um, yeah, uh, magnetic to, to, uh,
56:48
uh, you know, you know, you start science as, as a student, you're not.
56:52
Yeah.
56:52
You want to get something that you can really drive.
56:54
You usually you'll find it, but this one's very easy to capture onto It's,
56:59
yeah, probably it's, it's, it's like, it's like studying whales, you know, Yeah.
57:03
Yeah.
57:03
Everybody wants to study a whale.
57:06
Um, they're, yeah, for sure.
57:07
They're big, they're charismatic.
57:09
Uh, this, this one is the charismatic, uh, geo rocks.
57:13
It's the iconic habitat right now.
57:15
Right.
57:15
Yeah.
57:15
It's, it's, it's what it's like the sea turtle and whale of, of, of
57:18
the deep, which is, which is great.
57:20
And with that said too is, you know, deep sea has been a, a, a big topic
57:25
these days just sort of in the, in the general media, you know, with, with
57:29
talks of exploring the bottom a little bit more, trying to extract things.
57:34
But, you know, we don't know a lot.
57:35
Like, you know, if you ask most people who, who are listening to
57:38
this or just most people like the, the average person on the street,
57:42
what do you know about the deep Sea?
57:44
They might say some things.
57:45
And, and I wanna ask Lawrence, like in your, uh, in your experience
57:49
working in the deep Sea, like what, what do most people misunderstand
57:54
about these deep sea environments?
57:56
Oh, um, yeah, that's a good one.
57:59
Um, I mean, part of it is just how little we understand about them.
58:02
You know, we know more about the surface of, uh, Mars or the moon than we do about
58:08
the bottom of the ocean, so, mm-hmm.
58:09
I mean, we don't have decent maps from most of the bottom of the ocean.
58:13
There are very few places that we actually know where the hills are.
58:18
Like we know if there's like a, a kilometer high, uh, mountain somewhere
58:22
on the bottom of the ocean, but we don't know whether there's a five
58:25
meter, a scalp or something over most of the bottom of the ocean.
58:28
And that leaves us, uh, yeah, just with so much still to learn about.
58:33
Almost everything to do at the bottom of the ocean.
58:36
So, you know, and, and people, I mean, I don't know if it's that people
58:42
don't know it, but people don't really appreciate, uh, just the vastness, you
58:46
know, like most of our planet is ocean.
58:49
Yeah.
58:50
The bottom of the ocean is way more important to the planet
58:52
than the right continents.
58:54
But we're kind of parochial species who think more about the
58:57
continents 'cause we live on them.
58:58
Right.
58:58
But, but they're not more important for the, for how the whole planet is.
59:02
So, yeah.
59:03
Um, yeah.
59:05
Um, I think people also sometimes think that anything that happens at the bottom
59:10
of the ocean doesn't really matter 'cause it's out of sight and out of mind.
59:14
And whether that is, it can be a dumping ground for pollutants or whether
59:19
it's just that we don't have to worry about what's happening down there
59:22
from the natural processes because it seems like it's a long way away.
59:26
But everything we learn says it's really not.
59:29
There's so much interaction between the deep ocean and the shallow ocean and
59:33
the atmosphere that, you know, yeah, we really have to care more and learn more.
59:38
And in some ways it, uh, it frustrates me sometimes that, uh, the, the
59:44
space community can get these massive projects funded to send out
59:49
a mission to wherever, um, yeah.
59:51
And getting trillions of dollars, literally.
59:55
Yeah.
59:55
And you have to study the bottom of the ocean on our own planet.
59:58
You'd never get that kind of funding.
1:00:00
Right.
1:00:00
I mean, with that kind of funding, we could revolutionize how much
1:00:03
we understand our planet and Yeah.
1:00:05
Um, So it's, uh, we're not telling things quite right, probably, but, yeah.
1:00:10
True, true.
1:00:12
And, uh, last question to you, Steve.
1:00:13
Uh, like what is the most single, most surprising fact about Endeavor
1:00:19
that you wish that everybody knew?
1:00:21
Like everybody listening to this, what, what would you say?
1:00:25
Wow.
1:00:28
Single fact that, well, it, it sort of building, building on
1:00:32
what, what Lawrence was saying is, is the fact that, you know, sure.
1:00:36
It's a geologic area.
1:00:38
Uh, it's interesting, it's beautiful to look at, uh, there's ecology
1:00:43
there, but it, it's basically a passage from the deep, the, the
1:00:49
crust into the, in, into the ocean.
1:00:52
And it, and as previous statements by Lawrence, we, that affects that
1:00:56
at that level all across Pacific.
1:00:59
So this is a hugely, uh, formative to the ocean environment.
1:01:05
So if things change there, the ocean will, will, will change it.
1:01:09
And, and we don't Yeah.
1:01:10
Fully understand the, the implications of all this.
1:01:15
It, it, it's.
1:01:17
Shooting a, a ton of iron into the ocean, which iron does a whole bunch of
1:01:20
interesting things as it folds around in the plume, but it's also, it's a ma, it's
1:01:24
this, this, uh, limiting macronutrient.
1:01:27
If you stop that, what, what difference?
1:01:29
So the connection between this sort of geologic ar area and, and the deep ocean.
1:01:34
So if there's a, you know, if there's a volcano that erupts on the, on, uh,
1:01:39
Mount St. Helms or what somewhere mm-hmm.
1:01:41
You know, it affects the, the entire, um, you know, uh, the
1:01:45
atmosphere and the, the planet.
1:01:47
Yeah.
1:01:47
And this is Yeah.
1:01:48
Yeah.
1:01:48
We have this happening in a much more regular controlled way in, in the,
1:01:52
in the deep sea, and we don't fully understand that cycle, or, I, I, Lawrence
1:01:56
understands a little bit more than I do, but I think that's probably the biggest
1:02:00
thing that you Sure it's a beautiful, beautiful place, but it's, it's basically
1:02:05
pumping all this, uh, important, uh, uh, chemistry into the ocean and
1:02:09
controlling the chemistry of the ocean.
1:02:10
Of course, you get it from the land too, but it's this
1:02:13
huge cycle of, of, of that we.
1:02:17
If we, if we take it, if we mine it and pull all that stuff outta there, what,
1:02:21
what will, what will, how will that change, uh, the chemistry of the ocean?
1:02:25
Because that's, you know, that, that's the big reason we're focused
1:02:29
on now is basically for mining.
1:02:31
So they're gonna mine it.
1:02:32
If they mine it, that'll spread a whole bunch of that, uh, chemistry
1:02:35
around in much different way.
1:02:36
And if we don't have the fan study, what, what it'll do, it'll be similar
1:02:39
to burning fossil fuels where you, it was a good idea way back then, but you
1:02:44
implications were kind of pretty, uh, planet ending if you'll Yeah, definitely.
1:02:52
Planet influencing.
1:02:55
So we, yeah, no, I mean, this is great.
1:02:57
Yeah.
1:02:58
Yeah.
1:02:58
No, I wanted, this has been a amazing to, to, uh, learn more about the endeavor
1:03:03
through, through your eyes and, and, and hear you guys, uh, speak about
1:03:07
the endeavor and all its different, uh, unique aspects and, and I think
1:03:10
this is a lot of fun to listen to.
1:03:12
So I wanna thank both of you, Steve and Lawrence, for, for
1:03:15
being on the show and sharing, uh, your wisdom and your experiences
1:03:18
and, and everything we really do.
1:03:20
We really do appreciate it.
1:03:21
Thanks, and/or.
1:03:22
You bet.
1:03:23
Thank you.
1:03:24
Thank you Lawrence and Steve for joining us on today's episode of the
1:03:26
How to Protect the Ocean Podcast.
1:03:28
It was great to have you on and really dive in almost physically
1:03:32
to the endeavor and finding out what the endeavor is all about.
1:03:36
It's something that is very special here in Canada, off the coast
1:03:40
of the British Columbia coast.
1:03:42
It is something that.
1:03:44
We don't really talk about enough, I feel like.
1:03:47
And when you go over to the website, ocean Networks Canada's website,
1:03:51
osha networks.ca, you can actually take a look at live cameras deep
1:03:55
down in the ocean, near and around Endeavor, looking at different slopes.
1:04:00
The Campbell River.
1:04:02
Cascadia Basin.
1:04:03
I highly recommend that you go and check out all these different places 'cause
1:04:07
you can see these live cameras ready to go and showing you the deep ocean.
1:04:12
This is something that is not offered everywhere around the world and it's
1:04:16
something to give you a glimpse of what it looks like to be in the deep sea.
1:04:19
So I wanted, again, thanks Lawrence.
1:04:21
Thanks Steve for joining us today.
1:04:23
Thank you.
1:04:24
Ocean Networks Canik for this continuing series of surfacing secrets.
1:04:28
Explore the ocean, know the planet.
1:04:29
It is something that is very special to me to be able to
1:04:32
collaborate with this organization 'cause they do such amazing work.
1:04:36
So thank you so much for that.
1:04:37
Looking forward to next month when we're gonna dive into
1:04:41
more Ocean Networks Canada.
1:04:42
So I wanna thank Steve, I wanna thank Lawrence.
1:04:45
I wanna thank Ocean Networks.
1:04:46
I wanna thank you for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean.
1:04:49
I'm your host, and/or Lewin.
1:04:51
Have a great day.
1:04:51
We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.