FHTW employee on ship expedition to the volcanoes of the deep sea Ingrid Kolar at the ship

It forms the longest chain of volcanoes in the world, but no one has ever climbed these peaks, and there’s a reason for that. On average, the East Pacific Ridge lies at a depth of 2,500 meters and can only be reached with high-tech solutions using submarines, diving robots and/or other equipment. For such a mission, the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s new research vessel, the RV Falcor (too), left Puntarenas, Costa Rica, on June 28. Under the scientific leadership of Dr. Monika Bright, samples will be taken with the diving robot ROV SuBastian and experiments will be conducted over several days. Boxes specially developed for this trip by Monika Bright and her team will be used for this purpose.

Ingrid Kolar, a technician in the competence field for Chemical Engineering and Ecotoxicology, will be on board. She was invited along by Dr. Bright to conduct a series of experiments designed to answer new questions. The FHTW made this possible through a leave of absence. So instead of ecotoxicology labs in the Master Ecotoxicology & Environmental Management, now the high seas.

Background of the expedition

Bright and her team have been studying symbiotic hydrothermal vents that formed in the craters of volcanoes after their eruptions for decades. Boiling hot, black-gray water shoots out of the earth’s interior through fissures under high pressure, loaded with minerals, metals and hydrogen sulfide. All this mixes with the cold surrounding water, forming gypsum and metal sulfides such as iron sulfide. These are deposited and form the typical vents, also called black smokers. These hydrothermal vents, despite their toxicity, provide a habitat for a variety of organisms, some of which may exist entirely on the chemosynthesis of their symbionts. (Bacteria that use the toxic hydrogen sulfide as an energy source for chemosynthesis, just as plants use solar radiation in photosynthesis at the surface.)

For this expedition, Bright developed a new research question: The dispersal strategies of organisms in shallow water are well studied, but there is little knowledge of how organisms at hydrothermal vents disperse their offspring over space and time. Whether this occurs only via ambient water or even with water transported in the Earth’s crust will be investigated in this cruise.

Follow online

The expedition will be underway until July 28. There are daily live broadcasts on the Youtube channel, approximately between 16:30 and 22:30, and already a lot of material to look up.

Ongoing updates are also available on the Schmidt Ocean Institute website and a dedicated blog on the University of Vienna website.

(Photos: Ingrid Kolar CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0)