Also, researchers discovered that the movement of Alvin's robotic arms disrupted their computers. Originally, Alvin was scheduled to make nine dives. But high winds and poor ocean conditions left Seyfried and Ding with only one dive under their belts. The outcome of the dives will impact the National Science Foundation's project to install monitoring devices for an unmanned sea floor observatory. The foundation hopes to study the chemistry of these hot springs that cluster around the mid-ocean ridges.
Vent fields emerge all along mid-ocean ridges, which circumvent the entire Earth.
Seyfried said vents are an important mechanism by which chemicals and heat from within the Earth are cycled into oceans. Developing the vent sensors is crucial in moving the foundation's project forward, said Michael Berndt, a senior research associate in Ding's and Seyfried's lab. If they can provide this, then they can get it going. Because the University doesn't have a marine science department, Seyfried and Ding were the first University researchers to make use of the submarine for their work. Having never seen a vent before, Berndt said the researchers' first-hand experience is valuable to the experiments they had only previously performed in the lab.