Huge Discovery West of Svalbard

Figure caption: The tem­per­at­ure meas­ure­ment in the out­flow open­ing of the black smoker showed that the flu­ids are more than 300°C hot. In ad­di­tion to this act­ive smoker, nu­mer­ous vents of vary­ing char­ac­ter­ist­ics have been found in the newly dis­covered Jøtul hy­dro­thermal field. 

One of the vents was particularly spectacular and has got its own name.

Although hot springs oc­cur world­wide at spread­ing ridges around the Earth, hy­dro­thermal vents on the 500 kilo­meter long Kni­povich Ridge, loc­ated between Green­land and Spits­ber­gen, were previously unknown.

Black bodies of water

“Fol­low­ing in­dic­a­tions in the wa­ter column of hy­dro­thermal activ­ity, we searched the ocean floor with the re­motely op­er­ated vehicle MARUM-QUEST. We were very happy when we dis­covered an act­ive black smoker. The metal-con­tain­ing li­quid, which was over 300 de­grees Celsius, shot out as if from a stovepipe and turned into a black cloud, the spread of which we could no longer mon­itor with the ROV,” says Prof. Ger­hard Bo­hr­mann from MARUM – Cen­ter for Mar­ine En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences at the uni­versity Bre­men, Chief Sci­ent­ist of Ex­ped­i­tion MSM 109.

Based on data from previous studies conducted by the University of Bergen and the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, there were clear indications in advance of where to look for hydrothermal sources, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate says in a press release.

Stig-Morten Knutsen, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate’s observer and geologist on board the cruise, explains that it has previously been searched before without results in large areas with a water depth of 3000 metres.

“All the greater was the joy on board when, on the basis of geological models and chemical and physical observations, we managed to manoeuvre the remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) into what turned out to be a sulphide structure with a solid chimney pouring out black bodies of water with a temperature of over 300 degrees Celsius, a black chimney,” Knutsen says.

DEEP SEA MINERALS, October 26-27, Bergen, Norway

Norway is in an excellent position to become a leader in the exploration of deep-sea minerals. The race has started, and we will address the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead at this conference.

Huge field

The black smoker turns out to be part of a lar­ger hy­dro­thermal field at least a kilo­meter long and about 200 meters wide in a wa­ter depth of about 3,000 meters (roughly 0.2 sq km).

“The nu­mer­ous out­flow sites are very dif­fer­ent. Warm fluid leaks as­so­ci­ated with white pre­cip­it­ates, mi­cro­bial flocs and fil­a­ments, and many small or­gan­isms were ob­served, shim­mer­ing in the ROV’s head­lights. Other vents have led to massive chem­ical pre­cip­it­a­tion and some­times form sev­eral meter-high mounds on the sea floor.“

In agree­ment with their Nor­we­gian col­leagues, the re­search­ers named a par­tic­u­larly di­verse hy­dro­thermal edi­fice with nu­mer­ous chim­neys and pro­trud­ing flanges Yg­g­drasil, the name for the tree of life in Norse myth­o­logy.

“With such a new find­ing, so far north at 77°20′ north, we wanted to use names from the Nor­dic cul­ture when nam­ing it,” Bohrmann says.

“At the sug­ges­tion of our Nor­we­gian col­leagues, we named the en­tire field Jøtul hy­dro­thermal field”, Bo­hr­mann adds. In Norse myth­o­logy, Jøtul refers to a gi­ant who lives in the moun­tains.

geoexpro.com: “The Cook Islands in the Forefront“

Previously unknown

The re­search cruise aimed to find hy­dro­thermal activ­ity at the Kni­povich Ridge, a spread­ing ridge that forms the in­ter­face between the North Amer­ican and Euras­ian tec­tonic plates in the Nor­we­gian Green­land Sea.

“Such hy­dro­thermal vents on the ocean floor were pre­vi­ously com­pletely un­known on the Kni­povich Ridge, al­though they have been searched for sev­eral times. The spe­cial fea­ture is the ex­tremely low spread­ing rates of only 1.4 cen­ti­meters per year. New sea­floor is there­fore formed very slowly here. Hy­dro­thermal cir­cu­la­tion could there­fore pro­ceed dif­fer­ently than at nor­mal or rap­idly ex­pand­ing plate bound­ar­ies,” ex­plains Ger­hard Bo­hr­mann.

Hy­dro­thermal vents are con­sidered oases of life in the deep sea, which strongly shape the eco­sys­tem in the deep sea and whose im­port­ance for pro­cesses on and in the ocean floor is not yet com­pletely un­der­stood.

geoexpro.com: “An Exciting Moment for the Marine Minerals Industry”

Plan to return

In about two years, re­search­ers from MARUM will re­turn to the Kni­povich Ridge to in­vest­ig­ate the newly dis­covered Jøtul hy­dro­thermal field in more de­tail dur­ing an ex­ped­i­tion.