Exploring the Deep Mariana Back-arc Basin Within the US EEZ to Link Biodiversity, Geochemistry, and Geophysics
Vessel: R/V Falkor; Expedition Dates: November 29, 2016 to December 20, 2016; Ports: Apra, Guam to Apra, Guam
Project Principals: Robert Embley¹
Co-Project Principals: David Butterfield², William Chadwick³
PI Institution(s): ¹NOAA OAR - Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL),²University of Washington, ³Oregon State University
Partnerships: Schmidt Ocean Institute, University of Victoria, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), GNS Science
Grant #: BOP, OER_2016_003; Award Period: September 01, 2016 - August 31, 2018
More than 70 percent of volcanic activity on Earth occurs under the sea surface, and only a few percent of the volcanic seafloor environment has been explored. Back-arc settings are underexplored compared to mid-ocean ridge and volcanic arc settings and are therefore a priority for deep-ocean exploration today. In November to December 2015, the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Lab Earth-Ocean Interactions group started a two-part interdisciplinary exploration with the R/V Falkor of a vast area of the Mariana back-arc from 13 deg to 18.5 deg N and discovered four significant new hydrothermal vent fields. The 2015 expedition used CTD casts and tows to identify hydrothermal plumes in the water-column and the Sentry autonomous underwater vehicle to map the new hydrothermal sites. In addition, a previously unknown recent eruption site was discovered. For the second part of this project, on R/V Falkor with their new 4500-meter remotely operated vehicle, scientists returned to these newly discovered hydrothermal sites and collected baseline data on the seafloor to characterize their physical, chemical, and biological environments and processes. The data acquired from the new back-arc sites will help to test fundamental concepts about the role of geographic separation versus physical/chemical habitat characteristics in controlling macrofaunal and microbiological community structure. Funding for this project was provided by NOAA Ocean Exploration via its Ocean Exploration Fiscal Year 2016 Funding Opportunity.
Project Datasets
| ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler) | Open |
| CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) | Open |
| XBT (eXpendable BathyThermographs) | Open |
| Fluorometer | Open |
| GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) | Open |
| Gyrocompass | Open |
| INS (Inertial Navigation Systems) - Kongsberg Seapath 320 | Open |
| Multibeam Sonar | Open |
| Splitbeam Sonar | Open |
| SSV (Surface Sound Velocimeter) | Open |
| TSG (Thermosalinograph) | Open |
| Sample Repository | Open |
| Sample Details Sheet | Download |
| ROV CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) | Open |
| ROV Navigation | Open |
| ROV Oxygen | Open |
| XBT (eXpendable BathyThermographs) | Download |
| SAMOS Meteorological Data | Open |
| ROV Dive Video | Open |
| Hydrothermal Vent Metagenome Data | Open |
| Metagenome Assemblies | Open |
Processed Project Datasets
| Processed CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) | Open |
| Processed Navigation | Open |
| Processed Bathymetry Backscatter (Grid) | Open |
| Processed Bathymetry Backscatter (Swath) | Open |
| Processed Bathymetry Sidescan Sonar | Download |
Products
| New Species Registration | Open |
| Area of Operations Figures | Open |
| Oral Presentation: Anderson, M., Chadwick, Jr., W., Merle, S., Resing, J., Baker, E., Walker, S., Hannington, M., and N. Augustin. (2017). Relationship between Tectonism, Volcanism, and Hydrothermal Venting along the Mariana Back-arc Spreading Center between 12.7N and 18.3N. Oral Presentation at AGU Chapman Conference on Submarine Volcanism, Hobart, Tasmania, AUS. | |
| Oral Presentation: Chadwick, Jr., W., Merle, S., Kaiser, C., Baker, E., Walker, S., Resing, J., Butterfield, D., Baumberger, T., Anderson, M., Shore, P., Wiens, D., and Rubin, K. (2017). A Recent Volcanic Eruption Discovered on the Central Mariana Back-arc Spreading Center. Oral Presentation at IAVCEI 2017 General Assembly, Portland, OR, USA. | |
| Poster Presentation: Chadwick, W., Tunnicliffe, V., Butterfield, D., Bates, A., Huber, J., Trembath-Reichert, E., Bobbitt, A., and Merle, S. (2018). Newly Discovered Hydrothermal Vent Sites Along the Mariana Back-arc Spreading Center Support Hypothesis of Geological and Chemical Control on Chemosynthetic Ecosystems. Poster Presentation at Ocean Sciences Meeting, Portland, OR, USA. | Open |
| Poster Presentation: Baker, E., Walker, S., Resing, J., Chadwick, W., Merle, S., Anderson, M., and D. Butterfield. (2018). Hydrothermal Activity Along Back-Arc Spreading Centers: The Importance of Arc Proximity. Poster Presentation at Ocean Sciences Meeting, Portland, OR, USA. | Open |
| Oral Presentation: Tunnicliffe, V., Bates, V., Butterfield, D., and B. Larson (2017). Diversity of the Mariana biogeographic region with a closer look at Alviniconcha hessleri, the original “hairy snail”. Oral Presentation, 6th International Symposium on Chemosynthesis-Based Ecosystems, Woods Hole, MA, USA. | |
| Oral Presentation: Butterfield, D. A., W. W. Chadwick, Jr., B. Larson, V. Tunnicliffe, A. E. Bates, and K. K. Roe (2018), 2016 Exploration Shows Contrasting Fluid Chemistry and Hydrothermal Vent Communities Between the Mariana Arc and Back-Arc. Abstract ME52A-01 presented at 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting, Portland, OR, 11-16 Feb. | |
| Oral Presentation: Huber, J., Trembath-Reichert, E., and Butterfield, D. (2018). Application of Stable Isotope Probing Coupled with -omics to Examine Thermophilic Autotrophy in Newly Discovered Hydrothermal Vents Along the Mariana Back-arc. Oral Presentation at AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, USA. | |
| Oral Presentation: Tunnicliffe, V. and Gigučre, TN. (2021). Beta-diversity metrics assess biodiversity distribution in hydrothermal vent (and other) deep-sea ecosystems. Deep-sea Biology Symposium, Brest, France. (oral presentation) |
Additional Resources
| NOAA Ocean Exploration Project Website | Open |
| NCEI Multibeam Landing Page | Open |
| R2R Cruise Page FK161129 | Open |
| Marine Geoscience Data System Page FK161129 | Open |
| Schmidt Ocean Institude Project Data Page | Open |
Publications
| Cruise Report | Open |
| Baker, E., Walker, S., Resing, J., Chadwick, Jr., W., Merle, S., Anderson, M., Butterfield, D., Buck, N., and S. Michael. (2017). The Effect of Arc Proximity on Hydrothermal Activity Along Spreading Centers: New Evidence from the Mariana Back-Arc (12.7 - 18.3 N). Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst.. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1002/2017GC007234. | Open |
| Anderson, M., Chadwick, Jr. W., Hannington, M., Merle, S., Resing, J., Baker, E., Butterfield, D., Walker, S., and N. Augustin. (2017). Geological interpretation of volcanism and segmentation of the Mariana back-arc spreading center between 12.7 N and 18.3 N, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 18, 2240–2274, doi:10.1002/2017GC006813. | Open |
| Chadwick, W., Merle, S., Baker, E., Walker, S., Resing, J., Butterfield, D., Anderson, M., Baumberger, T., and A. Bobbitt (2018), A recent volcanic eruption discovered on the central Mariana back-arc spreading center, Front. Ear. Sci., 6:172, doi:10.3389/feart.2018.00172. | Open |
| Trembath-Reichert, E., Butterfield, D., and J. Huber. (2019). Active subseafloor microbial communities from Mariana back-arc venting fluids share metabolic strategies across different thermal niches and taxa. The ISME Journal, doi: 10.1028/s41396-019-0431-y. | Open |
| Komai, T. and Giguere, T. (2019). A new species of alvinocaridid shrimp Rimicaris Williams & Rona, 1986 (Decapoda: Caridea) from hydrothermal vents on the Mariana Back Arc Spreading Center, northwestern Pacific. Journal of Crustacean Biology, rus046, doi: 10.1093/jcbiol/ruz046. | Open |
| Grandy, J., Onat, B., Tunnicliffe, V., Butterfield, D., and Pawliszyn, J. (2020). Unique Solid Phase Microextraction Sampler Reveals Distinctive Biogeochemical Profiles among Various Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents. Sci Rep 10, 1360, doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-58418-4. | Open |
| Breusing, C., Johnson, S., Tunnicliffe, V., Clague, D., Vrijenhoek, R., and Beinart, R. (2020). Allopatric and Sympatric Drivers of Speciation in Alviniconcha Hydrothermal Vent Snails. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 37(12), 3469-3484, doi: 10.1093/molbev/msaa177. | Open |
| Giguere, T. and Tunnicliffe, V. (2021). Beta diversity differs among hydrothermal vent systems: Implications for conservation. PLOS ONE 16(8), doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0256637. | Open |
| Breusing, C., Castel, J., Yang, Y., Broquet, T., Sun, J., Jollivet, D., et al. (2022). Global 16S rRNA Diversity of Provannid Snail Endosymbionts from Indo-Pacific Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents. Environmental Microbiology Reports, doi: 10.1111/1758-229.13051. | Open |
| Watanabe, H.K., Chen, C. and Chan, B.K.K. (2021). A new deep-sea hot vent stalked barnacle from the Mariana Trough with notes on the feeding ecology of Vulcanolepas. Mar. Biodivers, 51, 9, doi: 10.1007/s12526-020-01144-x | Open |
| Breusing, C SB Johnson, S Mitarai, RA Beinart and V Tunnicliffe. 2021. Differential patterns of connectivity in Western Pacific hydrothermal vent metapopulations: A comparison of biophysical and genetic models. Microbial Ecology, doi:10.1111/eva.13326. | Open |
Data Citation
| Embley, Robert; Butterfield, David; Chadwick, William (2022). Environmental data and products from NOAA Ocean Exploration Grant Award BOP OER_2016_003 Project: Exploring the deep Mariana back-arc basin within the US EEZ to link biodiversity, geochemistry and geophysics. [indicate subset used]. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Project Datasets. https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/waf/ocean-exploration-nofo/16marianabackarc/16marianabackarc_cruise_landing_page.html. Accessed [date]. |
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