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    Vailulu'u Seamount, Samoa : life and death on an active submarine volcano

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    0600830103v1.pdf (5.339Mb)
    Date
    2006-04-13
    Author
    Staudigel, Hubert  Concept link
    Hart, Stanley R.  Concept link
    Pile, Adele  Concept link
    Bailey, Bradley E.  Concept link
    Baker, Edward T.  Concept link
    Brooke, Sandra  Concept link
    Connelly, Douglas P.  Concept link
    Haucke, Lisa  Concept link
    German, Christopher R.  Concept link
    Hudson, Ian  Concept link
    Jones, Daniel O. B.  Concept link
    Koppers, Anthony A. P.  Concept link
    Konter, Jasper G.  Concept link
    Lee, Ray  Concept link
    Pietsch, Theodore W.  Concept link
    Tebo, Bradley M.  Concept link
    Templeton, Alexis S.  Concept link
    Zierenberg, Robert  Concept link
    Young, Craig M.  Concept link
    Metadata
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    Citable URI
    https://hdl.handle.net/1912/894
    As published
    https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0600830103
    DOI
    10.1073/pnas.0600830103
    Abstract
    Submersible exploration of the Samoan hotspot revealed a new, 300-m-tall, volcanic cone, named Nafanua, in the summit crater of Vailulu'u seamount. Nafanua grew from the 1,000-m-deep crater floor in <4 years and could reach the sea surface within decades. Vents fill Vailulu'u crater with a thick suspension of particulates and apparently toxic fluids that mix with seawater entering from the crater breaches. Low-temperature vents form Fe oxide chimneys in many locations and up to 1-m-thick layers of hydrothermal Fe floc on Nafanua. High-temperature (81°C) hydrothermal vents in the northern moat (945-m water depth) produce acidic fluids (pH 2.7) with rising droplets of (probably) liquid CO2. The Nafanua summit vent area is inhabited by a thriving population of eels (Dysommina rugosa) that feed on midwater shrimp probably concentrated by anticyclonic currents at the volcano summit and rim. The moat and crater floor around the new volcano are littered with dead metazoans that apparently died from exposure to hydrothermal emissions. Acid-tolerant polychaetes (Polynoidae) live in this environment, apparently feeding on bacteria from decaying fish carcasses. Vailulu'u is an unpredictable and very active underwater volcano presenting a potential long-term volcanic hazard. Although eels thrive in hydrothermal vents at the summit of Nafanua, venting elsewhere in the crater causes mass mortality. Paradoxically, the same anticyclonic currents that deliver food to the eels may also concentrate a wide variety of nektonic animals in a death trap of toxic hydrothermal fluids.
    Description
    Author Posting. © National Academy of Sciences, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of National Academy of Sciences for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (2006): 6448-6453, doi:10.1073/pnas.0600830103.
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    • Geology and Geophysics (G&G)
    Suggested Citation
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103 (2006): 6448-6453
     

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