March 3, 2003: Leg 2, Day #2

The Busted Mushroom Site

Today we successfully deployed one of our thermocouple arrays at the “Busted Mushroom” site, so named because we knocked over a large mushroom-shaped deposit (see left) so that we could get to the vent opening. Many of the hydro-thermal structures are built of awnings, flanges, or pagoda structures. Trapped underneath these structures is extremely hot fluid, which pours upward around the edges. The Busted Mushroom had 300° C fluid pooled beneath it, as measured by Tiburon using the high temperature probe (see right).

The pilots did a wonderful job of placing the array in the flow. They were able to monitor the temperatures of the eight thermocouples in the array as they put it into place using the inductively coupled link (ICL) (see left). They then hooked the ICL loop over the cone of the datalogger, which is now recording temperatures every 5 minutes. To make sure everything was working, we hooked Tiburon’s ICL loop over the second cone of the datalogger. So we already have some of our data.

We’ll visit the array again tomorrow to see whether the vent deposit has grown back at all. Ultimately, we will compare the measured temperatures with the hydrothermal minerals that have grown from these fluids.

Debra Stakes

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