Loihi deep-sea lab
up and running
Scientists can hear the volcano
By Helen Altonn
erupting the instant it happens
Star-BulletinNoises like big fireworks greeted scientists after installing the world's first underwater laboratory on seamount Loihi and connecting it to the Big Island. "I'm sure it is erupting," said Fred K. Duennebier, University of Hawaii geology and geophysics chairman. "At one point it sounded like the grand finale for a fireworks show."
Duennebier spent about seven years developing the Hawaii Undersea Geo-observatory to study Loihi, about 21 miles off the Big Island. The volcano is growing from a "hot spot" in the Earth's crust that created the Hawaiian Islands.
The Navy-run R.V. Independence was used last week to lower HUGO onto Loihi's summit, about 3,160 feet below the ocean surface, and hook it by fiber-optic cable to a recording station at Honuapo. AT&T donated the power cable, which HUGO is using as "an extension cord with a junction box."
Euennebier was on the Big Island this week setting up the shore station and completing hookups so the Volcano Observatory and UH-Manoa could receive data.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center also will receive HUGO data on ocean-depth changes.
Duennebier said everything is working well except for the seismometer package. "But when we go back, hopefully in January with the sub, one of the beauties of the HUGO system is we'll be able to unplug the faulty experiment and replace it"
Meanwhile, Duennebier said, the hydrophone is "an excellent seismic tool."
He is looking for funding to use the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's submersible, Pisces, in January to check on the laboratory and cable and deploy more instruments.
Pisces will plug instruments into the junction box, which will accommodate more than 100 experiments to monitor the volcano's growth.
The initial package includes a seismometer, pressure sensor for tsunami measurements, a temperature sensor and hydrophones.
Data are being transmitted in real time, as things happen.
It will be fed into the Internet so scientists with experiments can dial up the information, Duennebier said.
Eventually, he said, "We hope to be able to get sounds from the hydrophones into classrooms . . . When whales come around South Point, they can hear it themselves."
C. Barry Raleigh, dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, said, "This is really a first, where we've actually been able to make fiber-optic connects remotely with a sub and have them work underwater so we're getting signals back from instruments . . . It's a technological feat."
Duennebier said in working on the project that it was a a big risk because optical and electrical cables have never been connected before in the same device.
Because it's a fiber-optic cable, Raleigh pointed out, numerous instruments can be connected to it "and even, if you wished, have a visual recording of what goes on down there.
"We hope eventually to have a display at Bishop Museum where people will be able to hear what's going on on the volcano in real time," Raleigh said, adding: "I hope the instrument package isn't swallowed by a lava flow."
Still to be added to HUGO, Duennebier said, are more seismometers, more hydrophones, tilt meters, current meters, television and eventually "little remote operated vehicles to run around the top of the seamount."
UH oceanographer Gary McMurtry developed a Hawaii chemical monitoring station, still being tested, to tap into the HUGO line.
He tested a prototype last month in a Pisces dive into Pele's Pit on Loihi.
He hopes to put a monitoring station in the pit when a cable is extended there from HUGO.
