The most advanced research vessel ever is about to set sail on its inaugural 40-day mission to look for never-before-seen creatures in the deep sea and shed light on how life may have arisen elsewhere in the universe.
The 110-metre-long ship , previously called the Polar Queen and dedicated to offshore industry, has undergone a 17-month refit to deck it out with scientific equipment.
The ship is due to depart from San Juan, Puerto Rico, on 3 March to look along the mid-Atlantic ridge, where the movement of tectonic plates creates tears in the seabed. It will search for unusual kinds of hydrothermal vents 鈥� seabed fissures that emit geothermally heated water 鈥� and the strange forms of life they host.
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Decades after a 鈥渓ost city鈥� of chimney-like hydrothermal vents was discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, there are still only a few similar sites known, says expedition leader at the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean and Ecosystem Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.
The in Palo Alto, California, has kitted out Falkor (too) 鈥� which replaces a smaller ship called Falkor 鈥� with about 30 types of oceanographic, navigational and atmospheric sensors. There are also eight laboratories, including a cold lab, a seawater lab, a computational electronics lab and a robotics lab, and accommodation for nearly 100 people, but finding new vents won鈥檛 be easy.
鈥淲hen people think of hydrothermal vents, they often picture 鈥榖lack smokers鈥�,鈥� says Butterfield. 鈥淏ut the ones we鈥檙e looking for are completely different, and they鈥檙e much harder to find because they don鈥檛 release those billowing plumes of smoke.鈥�
Once they arrive at the mid-Atlantic ridge, the teams on board will use sonar to map out the terrain. They will also send out autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to search for chemical signatures from the reactions between seawater and hot magma seeping up through fissures. The AUVs will conduct their own high-resolution mapping to identify vent-like structures on the sea floor.
If the weather gets rough, there are two openings in the hull called moon pools through which scientists can deploy these vehicles without going on deck.
Once the researchers have identified promising locations, they will explore them using a remotely operated vehicle called while watching on banks of screens on the ship. SuBastian can reach 4500 metres below the surface, which is deeper than the ocean at the mid-Atlantic ridge. High-resolution footage of its dives will be live-streamed so researchers and the public alike can see the first glimpses of any new creatures found near vents.
Of particular interest to the mission are hydrothermal vents in聽areas known as oceanic core complexes, where Earth鈥檚 tectonic plates are moving apart so slowly that instead of magma solidifying into a thick layer of volcanic rocks, Earth鈥檚 mantle 鈥� the layer between its core and external crust 鈥� becomes exposed to seawater.
A chemical reaction called serpentinisation occurs between the water and mantle rocks at vents, producing hydrogen, methane and other organic compounds. This allows microbes to rely on chemosynthesis, using chemical energy to drive their metabolism. It also enables animals that consume the microbes to live there even though no sunlight reaches them.
鈥淲e鈥檙e interested in how the chemistry, microbiology and resulting animal communities are linked to the geology of their habitat,鈥� says at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who is part of the expedition.
Analysing the impact of serpentinisation on habitats also offers a way to study the possible genesis of life, she says.
鈥淭he serpentinisation process we aim to study is also happening elsewhere in our galaxy, including potentially deep beneath the icy聽crust on Saturn鈥檚 moon Enceladus,鈥� says Huber. The fact that organic chemical building blocks of life can form without input from living creatures 鈥渉as potential implications for how life聽first arose on Earth and how it聽may be supported elsewhere in聽the universe鈥�, says Huber.
To help study this, SuBastian will collect samples from the sea floor, 鈥渋ncluding seawater, hydrothermal vent water samples, rocks and small animals like snails, mussels or shrimp that live around vents鈥�, says Butterfield. The researchers will analyse many of these in the cold lab, which is chilled to about 5掳C to allow work on temperature-sensitive samples from the deep sea.
The ship鈥檚 missions may transform our understanding of the ocean, says , executive director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. 鈥淭his year, we will explore several other kinds of hydrothermal vents, investigate octopus breeding grounds, test technology related to microplastics, study vertical coral reefs and much more. The ocean is so poorly understood, and we鈥檙e on a mission to help change that.鈥�
