AAAS Symposium

InterRidge held a 90-minute symposium in February 2006 entitled:
Latest Ocean Ridge Research: Microbes, Mining, Management, and More
Track: Earth, Atmosphere, and Oceans
Date: Sunday, February 19, 2006
Time: 3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Duration: 90 minutes

Writing the Code of Conduct: The Future of Ridge Research

Colin Devey

Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, IFM-GEOMAR

Kiel, Germany

Can you trust scientists? Do you trust scientists? These questions touch upon the complicated, often charged relationship between scientific experts and laypeople; they are not questions that deep-ocean scientists have traditionally had to deal with, working as they do mostly outside national water on the "high seas." But things are starting to change. A growing global awareness that the oceans are intimately connected with human society and that the resources of Earth are finite - however large the planet may seem - has prompted environmental groups to investigate how to set up Marine Protected Areas (MPA), akin to nature reserves on the seafloor. MPAs might be seen as yet another possible ring in which the science versus society battle can be slugged out. Only this time, there is a difference. The MPAs will likely only be visited by scientists, the scientists are perhaps the only people who can say how best to protect it, and there is no functioning legal framework to control what they do (There are no police!). Does this sound like leaving the fox in charge of the henhouse in the middle of a civil war? It does to some people. Before this escalates into a classic tale of mistrust and accusation, however, InterRidge (IR), an international organization representing research programs in 27 countries and dedicated to promoting the study of ocean spreading centers (where some of the first MPA have been proposed), is leading the charge in developing a code of conduct for scientists who study the ridge system. IR is working with environmental organizations on this significant project. What are the implications of the code of conduct, where science research, ethics, policy and management issues intersect?

Life at the Edge: Real Animals in Extreme Environments

Chuck Fisher

Pennsylvania State University

University Park, PA, USA

The deep ocean ridge system is home to some of most extreme animal habitats found on Earth. In addition to the high pressure, low temperature, and lack of light that characterize the deep-sea in general, hydrothermal vent environments are characterized by toxic chemicals and temperatures that would be hostile to most other life as we know it. Perhaps even more challenging than the chemicals, dissolved gases, and temperature with which these vent animals contend are the extreme gradients in time and space of all of these parameters. Specially adapted animals not only tolerate these conditions, but often thrive under them. The biomass of many deep ocean ridge ecosystems rivals that of coral reefs or tropical rain forests.



New species of animals from deep ocean ridge habitats are discovered at an average rate of one per week. We are a long way from being able to fully characterize the animals that live in these environments, much less fully understanding their adaptations. However, some groups of animals have been studied for nearly three decades; these groups shed light on the ways these animals adapt to the extreme environment. In the best studied cases, their success is due to a combination of physiological and behavioral adaptations that allow the animals to avoid the extreme effects of their habitat, yet still benefit from the method of primary production that characterizes these environments (chemoautotrophy). In other cases, the spate of unanswered questions that remains warrant future work so that we might eventually redefine the known limits to animal life on Earth.

Unseen Volcanoes: Recycling on a Planetary Scale

Ed T. Baker

NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Seattle, USA

We envision Earth as the water planet. But it is equally unique as the dynamic planet, stirred by the only active plate tectonics in the solar system. Our ocean crust is ceaselessly created and consumed, generating the most active volcanic environments on the planet. Seafloor is created where molten lava from the mantle erupts and forms the midocean ridge, a 66,000-km-long volcano that snakes through all the ocean basins. Seafloor is consumed where it collides with a continent or adjacent seafloor and sinks back into the mantle. Only its most volatile components escape to stimulate volcano growth, as along the 22,000 km of submarine volcanic arcs. This planetary-scale recycling factory may be a key factor in the origin and success of life on Earth.



Less than 30 years ago, the discovery of seafloor hydrothermal vents revealed that these volcanoes harbor sanctuaries of warmth and life in the unyielding cold of the deep sea. Recent discoveries are illuminating the integrated nature of geological, chemical, and biological processes at hydrothermal sites that span the globe. Fluids circulating through seafloor volcanoes help regulate seawater chemistry. Mineral deposits precipitated from these fluids have formed most of the world?s important ore deposits. The chemical soup in these fluids nurture chemosynthetic communities whose genetic ancestry may reach back four billion years to the origin of life on Earth. The startling recognition that life may arise given only water and volcanic activity has revealed a solar system, and a cosmos beyond, in which life may be more commonplace than surprising.

Mining Deep Ocean Metallic Sulfides Is Closer Than You Think

Steve Scott

University of Toronto

Toronto, Canada

Hot springs ("black smokers") on the deep ocean floor harbor life in an exceedingly extreme environment, disperse elements widely through the water column and are accumulating deposits of copper, zinc, lead and silver sulfides, together with gold, that are of potential economic value. Deep sea mining of these deposits is on the verge of becoming a reality, driven by the ever increasing need for raw resources, especially copper, as counties such as China and India develop their economies. Two entrepreneurial companies have exploration licenses covering vast areas of the seabed offshore eastern Papua New Guinea and North Island of New Zealand targeting metallic sulfide deposits that are of sufficient size and apparent in situ value that they could be mined. Nautilus Resources has a Canadian mining company as a partner that has spent $7 million to assess the value of the deposits off Papua New Guinea. Neptune Resources has carried out a drilling program on their holdings offshore New Zealand. Technological challenges for recovery of these seafloor deposits are not insurmountable and mining these may be less environmentally deleterious than mining on land.