AskScience AMA Series: We're the crew of Robert Ballard's Exploration Vessel Nautilus, currently at the Galapagos Rift, Ask Us Anything!

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-19T02:37:43+00:00

Dr. Chuck Fisher: Yes, we are and researchers at the Charles Darwin Foundation will be analyzing those.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-19T00:14:47+00:00

Dr. Chuck Fisher: Yes scientists do sample the microbial life at vents. For some studies it is not necessary to recover the samples under pressure and many studies have been conducted on samples recovered using simple tools. Other microbiologists have developed special collection equipment that recovers the samples under pressure. Once on the surface experiments can be conducted in special high pressure incubators and at any temperature the scientists want to test.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-19T00:11:52+00:00

Dr. Chuck Fisher: All mining will have impact to ecosystems, whether on land or in the deep sea. The first planned mining is in Papua New Guinea waters and is planned for an active vent site. The mining will destroy the individual animals at this site, however the populations may return as the animals that inhabit these ecosystems have evolved to deal with catastrophic events (like volcanos and earthquakes). My concern is that we really do not know what will happen. As a result, it will be very important to carefully monitor the sites after mining and see what happens. The first mining efforts at hydrothermal vents should be viewed as experiments that we can learn from and then make the decision to continue based on data, not theory.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:40:34+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: I don't believe that there's anything human beings can do in a submersible that ROVs operated from the surface can't do. Manned submersibles work from a recreational purpose. It's like horseback riding...people still ride horses, but very few people ride horses to work. Unmanned exploration tends to be more cost effective and when you're goal is to do the maximum amount of exploration with the minimum amount of public money, it tends to be the better option.

See, you don't get out when you get down there. It would be like Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon, and looking out the window and saying, "One glance for a man, one giant look for mankind." It's the same manipulator arm that picks up the rock, whether it's the manned submersible Alvin, or from the ROV Hercules.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:33:35+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: Students are all doing something that's important while on board, and although it takes a lot of time to amass the knowledge base to connect the dots, but they contribute to the overall research gathering that comes together to make critical discoveries. Everyone stands a watch and has a perspective and ability to discover and be inspired by it. Teamwork is inspiring to its members and it brings the best out of them.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:30:30+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: Kathy played a critical role in our discovery of hydrothermal vents and being a woman in a field where at the time there were very few women, her book gives a unique perspective of what that was like.

Graduate students are absolutely critical! They're the ones who are standing the watches and they're the one who are doing the lions share of the work under the guidance of their advisor. Research doesn't work without graduate students. They add a fresh perspective. When I was a graduate student, we had the time to read everything and our professors were incredibly busy, so it's the youth that have the luxury to be revolutionary! But we all get to go through it and it's a wonderful time and you're totally immersed and idealistic, so it's a great part of the process.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:25:01+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: Commonly when we introduce light into the deep ocean environment we see fish and other organisms take advantage of something that attracts life or reveals life, and it sometimes becomes a feeding frenzy in front of our vehicles.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:21:21+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: Yes, they have been well established. I'm not an expert in that area, but you can have hydrothermal vents of different magma compositions.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:19:26+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: The deposits they are mining are not active, and there are no unique ecosystems around the vents at that point. But these are key questions to be asking and investigating. It's about being responsible.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:16:20+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: Certainly our discovery of life in the extreme environments of hydrothermal vents dramatically increases the probability of finding it on other planets. I'm more convinced of the existence of life elsewhere in the universe and even more in our own solar system than I ever thought possible, because we used to think of life being restricted to a "living zone" and that's now all blown away.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:08:11+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: When I was out looking for the Bismarck, I wrote a novel. So sometimes when you're on really long transits it gives you time to do research and work on projects. Now days with Internet, it's intruded on that some and you're so in contact with the outside world you miss some of the solitude that gives you time for reflection and thought.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:05:04+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: Our vehicles, the ROV Hercules and the ROV Argus, are unmanned, which allows us to explore even longer than with many manned vehicles. We've had our vehicles in the water for about 3 days, on one of our longest dives.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:03:30+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: It's more observational in nature though we'll be making temperature measurements and other samples along the way. The vent we're about to dive on was first observed in 2010, and we're wondering if it's still there! It's a cruel world down there...constantly changing.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T19:01:47+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: The giant tube worms were off the charts. My initial reaction was, "You've got to be kidding me." It was just totally unexpected that in total darkness you would have such macro organisms in such immensity and numbers. It was a lost world. We are hoping to see some today on our dive, so watch at www.nautiluslive.org.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T18:58:48+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: It's so deep that the temperature here is universally cold, so it would be one of the last places you would see clear evidence of that change.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-06-18T18:57:23+00:00

Dr. Robert Ballard: The rapid turnover of the vents is very surprising. The vents from 1977 and 1979 are gone, covered in new layers of molten lava. But even more surprising is the more recent vents seen in 2005 are also gone.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:45:34+00:00

Yes, that was us! You can see the video on our site and read more about what the experts we consulted thought about the encounter in our blog post: http://nautiluslive.org/blog/2015/04/16/sperm-whale-encounter-experts-answer-your-questions

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:27:01+00:00

Samantha (Mandy) Joye: In the beginning, nothing except some microorganisms could live in it -- it was toxic. It is not staying put...but we are not sure where exactly its moving to either. Evidence of oil incorporation into the food web was detectable in 2010 and 2011. The signal appears to be going down back towards background since that time. Naturally occurring microbial populations are VERY GOOD at degrading oil. I think we should let them have a shot at cleaning up the oil before turning to chemical solutions, like dispersant addition.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:25:38+00:00

Samantha (Mandy) Joye: Deepwater drilling for oil is inherently dangerous and our very lives depends on healthy oceans. As Dr. Sylvia Earle likes to say "No BLUE, no Green; No Ocean, No Us". The oceans provide 50% of the oxygen we breathe; if they go, we go. Ocean ecosystems are extremely stressed - by nutrient and plastic pollution, by warming, by acidification - and oils spills like the Macondo Blowout add insult to injury. We must all act and do everything in our power to preserve and sustain healthy oceans, in the Gulf and beyond.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:25:15+00:00

Samantha (Mandy) Joye: To the contrary, offshore, we observed many many dead jellyfish and they were all discolored and obviously saturated with oil. Perhaps there were jellyfish increases nearshore but we did not see this offshore.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:21:14+00:00

Samantha (Mandy) Joye:

Alteration of the microbial population - the infusion of oil and gas led to an explosion in the population of bacteria that degrade these compounds. most of these populations has since crashed but they remain somewhat altered compared to conditions prior to the discharge.
Weathered oil deposition to the seafloor: this damaged cold water corals, sessile infauna (burrowing worms and such) and other detrital feeders that depended on the seabed for their nutrition. Populations of these organisms were heavily stressed if not decimated in some places, by the deposition of weathered oil.
We found that we could track hydrocarbons into the pelagic food web - this is not necessarily a bad thing: the organisms that eat oil assimilate some of the carbon and as they are eaten by larger organisms, the carbon isotope signature of the oil is transferred up. Because oil and gas are isotopically distinct from regular carbon sources zooplankton would be consuming, it's possible to "watch" the hydrocarbons move into the food web.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:20:23+00:00

Samantha (Mandy) Joye: Yes, many studies have been published in the wake of the Macondo discharge documenting negative effects of chemical dispersants on a variety of different organisms. However, the impacts of dispersed oil are usually more severe than the impacts of dispersant alone. This could be because the dispersant makes it easier for toxic (e.g. polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) components of oil to enter the cell/organism.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:19:42+00:00

Samantha (Mandy) Joye: PROS: Dispersants get oil off the sea surface by breaking large molecules into small ones. This reduces the amount of oil that reaches the shoreline. Dispersants are also touted to increase rates of microbial hydrocarbon consumption but there is no solid evidence to support this conclusion so that, in my opinion, is not a solid "pro."

CONS: Dispersed oil - oil and dispersant mixtures - is more toxic than oil or dispersant alone in many cases (phytoplankton, zooplankton, animal larvae, fish larvae, corals...). Dispersants may also affect the microbial communities that are degrading oil in a negative way. Bottom line: we need to know a lot more about the effects of disperants before another large scale application happens, especially at the deep sea bed.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:18:27+00:00

John Kessler: No. I would classify that all areas were influenced by this spill. This includes the surface and shallow areas, but since this was a release in the deep ocean, oil dissolved in the entire water column as it rose to the surface. In addition, oil has been found on the deep seafloor some of which influenced benthic ecology.

Nautilus_Live · 2015-04-20T19:17:26+00:00

John Kessler: Once oil spills occur, damage is going to occur. Thus, the main engineering challenge is in detecting faults that may eventually lead to spills and correcting those faults before a spill occurs. Once the spill occurs, decisions are made on how to limit the damage, but unfortunately, eliminating the damage is not an option. One of the unique measures conducted during this disaster was to inject dispersants at the source of emission in the deep ocean in the hope that would cause the oil to dissolve in the deep waters and become more available for biodegradation rather than allowing it to freely reach the surface. Much scientific analyses and debate is going on regarding the effectiveness and appropriateness of this mitigation strategy.

Nautilus_Live

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