Southern Hydrate Summit 2 Seafloor (RS01SUM2)

The Southern Hydrate Summit 2 Seafloor study site, situated on the continental slope off the coast of Oregon at a water depth of ~ 775 m, hosts abundant deposits of methane ice (methane hydrates) that are buried beneath, and sometime exposed at the seafloor. The deposits vent methane-rich fluids and bubbles that escape through seeps on the ocean bottom. At Southern Hydrate Ridge plumes of bubbles rise several hundred meters above the seafloor. Dense and fascinating communities of microbes and animals with symbiotic microbes in their guts are fueled by these escaping gases.  These seeps provide a unique opportunity to study ocean chemistry, quantifying chemical fluxes from the seafloor and the impacts of methane release on overlying seawater and biota.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and, therefore, quantifying the flux of methane from the seafloor into the hydrosphere is critical to understanding carbon-cycle dynamics and the impacts of global warming on methane release, particularly in the context of the hydrates response to seismic events.

This Medium-Power JBox (MJ01B), connected to a fiber optic cable, rests on the seafloor adjacent to a highly active methane seep called Einstein’s Grotto. Instrumentation at this site is designed to monitor chemistry of the seep, image the seep and associated biota in detail, and image the bubble plume as it rises several hundred meters above the seafloor. The fiber-optic cable provides the JBox with significant power and 1 Gb communication bandwidth for two-way communication to instruments for their operation and transmission of data to shore. This JBox is also co-located with a Low-Power JBox that collects a complementary suite of seafloor and near seafloor water column measurements.

Instruments

This site includes following instruments. To learn more about an instrument type, select its name on the left. To see the relevant data streams for a particular instrument, select the instrument code in the first column which will take you to the OOI Data Portal.