      |
  |
|
 |
|
 |
| |
 |
| Thompson |
|
Welcome to the Black Smoker Expedition Web site! This site chronicles the adventures of the Museum's scientists, engineers, and educators as they collected a black smoker sulfide chimney from the ocean floor. This expedition was extremely complex because these massive black smoker sulfide chimneys were under more than a mile of water, weighed many tons, and spewed incredibly hot (400°Celsius/ 750°Fahrenheit) mineral-laden water. Nobody has ever attempted to collect a black smoker sulfide chimney of this magnitude.
Two expeditions occurred, a reconnaisance mission to document the area in the summer of 1997 and a collection expedition in the summer of 1998. Four chimneys, each weighing several tons, were collected on this second expedition.
Three of the chimneys are on view at the Museum in the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth, opening in late spring 1999. The exhibition also includes underwater film footage of this extreme deep-sea environment, a 3-D model of the mid-ocean ridge that the chimneys came from, and interpretive text, graphics, and photographs.
All of the black smoker sulfide chimneys are the subject of intense scientific research at the Museum and at the University of Washington, the cosponsor of the expeditions.
The study of these submarine structures relates directly to a wide range of Earth processes that include:
 the transfer of heat and mass from the interior of Earth
the origin and evolution of life on Earth
the chemistry of seawater
the formation of economically important metal deposits through geologic time
 |
| Click here to see nested maps that show exactly where the expedition took place |
The sulfide structures were collected from approximately 2,300 meters (nearly 1.5 miles) beneath the ocean surface on the Endeavor Segment of the volcanically active Juan de
Fuca ridge, approximately 290 kilometers (180 miles) west of the Washington-Oregon coast.
Reconnaisance Expedition: September 5--September 29, 1997
Collection Expedition: June 27--July 16, 1998
American Museum of Natural History
The University of Washington
NASA
Geologists from The American Museum of Natural History
Geologists and biologists from The University of Washington
Geologists from the Canadian Geological Survey
Biologists from Penn State University
Engineers from Deep Submergence Operations Group at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Web site created with support from NASA
The University of Washington REVEL Project
Documentary film crew from NOVA
|
 |
|
