This full-sized Junction Box frame was sucessfully deloyed and recovered in the International District Hydrothermal Field at Axial Seamount using the ROV ROPOS during the August 2011 VISIONS '11 expedition. During the VISIONS'13 cruise two fully built out medium-power J-Boxes will be deployed here that will provide power and communications to extension cables and sensors deployed at the vent sites. The sensors will include a digital still camera, mass spectrometer, fluid and DNA samplers, bottom pressure and tilt sensor, a temperature-chlorinity probe to measure boiling fluids exiting the vents, and a short-period seismometer.

Rattail fish swims slowly in 2.4°C seawater at a depth of nearly 5000 feet beneath the ocean's surface at Axial Seamount. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/CSSF, V11.

An acoustic current meter deployed on a lobate basalt flow just south of the International District Hydrothermal Field

A small collapse zone north of the International District Hydrothermal Field showing characteristic bathtub rings and talus rubble that is the remanents of the roof.

Scaleworms, about 1 inch long, have already colonized the Marker 33 site that was covered by the April eruption. Also shown are dense microbial mats. Green lasers are 10 centimeters apart.

Brendon pulling in the line of the transponder that was cut by ROPOS.

The ROPOS room

Matt and Brendan lowering a CTD into the water

The submerged CTD

ROPOS!

Audrey, taking photography to the next level

Martha taking a picture

Cody and Martha enjoying the sunshine on the bow

Theme V:  Sulfide Chimneys and Hydrothermal Vents

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Navigation screen for the ROPOS team showing "snail tracks" of the ROV as we were pirouetting around the hydrothermal vent called Hell. The small rectangle-shaoed object is the location of ROPOS when this image was taken. This system allows us to return to the same spot within a couple meters for every single dive back to the same location.

A real time CTD record in the computer laboratory on the R/V Thompson as the rosett was being lowered to 10 meters above the seafloor at the International District vent field. The CTD vertical cast was done over the ~60 foot tall black smoker called "El Guapo". It record shows salinity (yellow), temperature (orange), Flourescence (blue-chlorophyll) and particulates in the water column (green).

Small spigots on the ~4 m tall vent called Mushroom issue clear high temperature fluids. Healthy communities of sulfide worms and tubeworms cover the outer surfaces of the chimney. The tubeworms have no mouth or anus, but their tubes are filled with symbiotic microorganisms that process carbon which sustains the worms. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/CSSF; V11.

The base of the small, 4 meter tall structure called Mushroom, is encased in a dense covering of tubeworms, palmworms, and limpets. Other life seen in this image includes  a sea anemone, and "spiders of the deep" called pycnogonids.

Dense colonies of tubeworms, limpets and palm worms cover the outer walls of the blacksmoker chimney called Mushroom in the ASHES hydrothermal field on Axial Seamount. Credit; UW/NSF-OOI/CSSF; V11.

Tube worms encased in dense mats of filmentous bacteria cover a portion of the Inferno black smoker in ASHES vent field.

The black smoker Inferno rises 4 meters above the seafloor in the ASHES hydrothermal field at Axial Seamount.

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A Flapjack Octopus swims in the waters above Axial Seamount, ~300 miles offshore. Credit: UW/NSF-OOI/CSSF; ROPOS DIve R1466, V11.

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