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Hydrothermal activity along the southwest Indian ridge

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Abstract

Twenty years after the discovery of sea-floor hot springs, vast stretches of the global mid-ocean-ridge system remain unexplored for hydrothermal venting. The southwest Indian ridge is a particularly intriguing region, as it is both the slowest-spreading of the main ridges1 and the sole modern migration pathway between the diverse vent fauna of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans2. A recent model postulates that a linear relation exists between vent frequency and spreading rate3 and predicts vent fields to be scarcest along the slowest-spreading ridge sections, thus impeding migration and enhancing faunal diversity2. Here, however, we report evidence of hydrothermal plumes at six locations within two 200-km-long sections of the southwest Indian ridge indicating a higher frequency of venting than expected. These results suggest that fluxes of heat and chemicals from slow-spreading ridges may be greater than previously thought and that faunal migration along the southwest Indian ridge may serve as an important corridor for gene-flow between Pacific and Atlantic hydrothermal fields.

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Figure 1: Regional map of the southwest Indian ridge (SWIR) spreading centre.
Figure 2: Bathymetric maps of the SWIR study areas.
Figure 3: Cross-sections of plume 2, centred at 4,100–4,200 m water depth (grey shaded band), as detected from MAPRs arrayed along the tow cable above and below the side-scan vehicle TOBI.

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Acknowledgements

We thank S. Walker (NOAA/PMEL) for her assistance in development of the MAPR instruments and the Captain, crew and IFRTP team of the RV Marion Dufresne who contributed to the success of this project. The FUJI cruise was co-funded by IFRTP (France) and The Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, and Culture (Japan). TOBI support was funded through the EC TMR Grant: European Access to Seafloor Survey Systems (EASSS) whilst hydrothermal research was supported by NERC and the SOC (UK) and by the NOAA-Vents program (USA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Southampton Oceanography Centre, Empress Dock, SO14 3ZH, Southampton, UK

    C. R. German

  2. NOAA-Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, 7600 Sand Point Way NE, Seattle, 98115-0070, Washington, USA

    E. T. Baker

  3. CNRS-Laboratoire de Petrologie, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Case 110, 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Cedex 05, Paris, France

    C. Mevel

  4. Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, 1-15-1 Minamidai, Nakano-ku, Tokyo-164, Japan

    K. Tamaki

  5. Ecole et Observatoire de Physique du Globe de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    the FUJI Science Team

  6. Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Japan

    the FUJI Science Team

  7. Laboratoire d'Etudes en Geophysique et Oceanographie Spatiales, Toulouse, France

    the FUJI Science Team

  8. Dept of Geological Sciences, Durham, UK

    the FUJI Science Team

  9. Institute de Physique de Globe de Paris, Paris, France

    the FUJI Science Team

  10. CNRS-Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

    the FUJI Science Team

  11. Earthquake Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan

    the FUJI Science Team

Authors
  1. C. R. German
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  2. E. T. Baker
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  3. C. Mevel
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  4. K. Tamaki
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  5. the FUJI Science Team
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to C. R. German.

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German, C., Baker, E., Mevel, C. et al. Hydrothermal activity along the southwest Indian ridge. Nature 395, 490–493 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/26730

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