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Two undersea volcanoes were found in a 1999 Arctic research expedition in the nuclear submarine USS Hawkbill, and one may have erupted as the submarine was passing over it, says Hawaii geologist Margo Edwards, the research leader. UH team finds two
undersea Arctic volcanoesBy Helen Altonn
Star-BulletinEdwards, Hawaii Mapping Research Group director at the University of Hawaii, and her team reported their findings yesterday in the prestigious journal Nature.
"It's the first real paper we've had come out about discoveries we've been making from the submarine trip to the Arctic," she said in an interview.
The Discovery Channel reported the findings Wednesday night and BBC Radio carried a live interview with Edwards.
She was chief scientist for the Arctic mission and broke a time record for a woman on a submarine with a total of 11 days in two trips.
She discussed the investigation with the Star-Bulletin in April 1999, but the discoveries continue. "We are going through these data in real detail and just finding all kinds of things," she said.
The volcanoes were on Gakkel Ridge, a site of major scientific interest because it's the slowest spreading mid-ocean ridge in the world.
Edwards wasn't on the submarine for that part of the survey and the data weren't available to the scientists until September 1999, after going through the Navy's declassification process.
So she hadn't seen the Gakkel Ridge data when Maya Tolstoy of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University approached her at a big meeting in December 1999 and asked, "Did you know there were 250 earthquakes on this one site in the Arctic? Did you guys happen to map that?"
Tolstoy gave them the location of the earthquakes and Edwards said she and graduate student Greg Kurras pulled up the sonar data. "Lo and behold, what did we see -- a volcano."
It ranges from about 11,880 feet to 14,900 feet below the surface, she said. The submarine at the time was about 750 feet deep, so it was never in any danger, Edwards said.
She said the volcano appeared to have young lava and no faults or cracks running through it, indicating it is a young volcano. "We can't with 100 percent certainty say there was an eruption, but it seems very likely."
It was "just 100 percent luck" that it was discovered, she added.
The earthquake swarm started at the end of January 1999, before the researchers left Pearl Harbor for the eight-week expedition.
"By then, everything had been laid out, she said. "We had a plan. We didn't even find out about the earthquake swarm until we got back."
She had planned two Arctic projects. One was to study glaciation in the Chukchi Cap region with Leonid Polyak of Ohio State University. The other was to look at the Gakkel and Lomonosov ridges with Bernie Coakley of Tulane University.
Mid-ocean ridges are created from a combination of volcanic eruptions and tectonic plate movement. Early data had shown some volcanism at Gakkel Ridge, Edwards noted in 1999, but some people said there wasn't any because it's spreading so slowly.
An underwater landslide and some inactive volcanoes were found "in places where, as geologists, we didn't think they should be -- wayward volcanoes," Edwards said.
Edwards' mission was the last of five conducted annually in the Arctic under an agreement between the Navy and the National Science Foundation.
Scientists are trying to understand the Earth better by investigating the geology and biology of the Arctic Ocean, the ridges, circulation, warming of waters and glaciation evidence.
Edwards said tentative discussions have begun with the Navy to see if more research can be done in the Arctic.
"From a scientific point of view, we have basically opened up whole new territories and revamped at least two widely held concepts in two fields. So, as scientists, we want to go back up there," she said.
Ka Leo O Hawaii
University of Hawaii
