Abstract
The Mienhua submarine volcano (MHV) is located in the southernmost Okinawa Trough and exhibits vigorous hydrothermal activity. This paper presents a detailed volcanic morphological analysis of the MHV, which has not been fully explored or discussed in terms of its hydrothermal characteristics and their relationship to hydrothermal activities. The MHV is situated at a water depth of 1370 m and has a width of 2.2 km and relief height of 220 m. The MHV is an asymmetric volcano composed of two summits in the center, rugged mounds in the west, and flat regions in the east. Two hydrothermal vents, Devil Chimney and Witch Mound were discovered through acoustic flares and a high backscatter intensity in the eastern flank. Based on three repeated mappings, no noticeable depth changes were observed at the acoustic flare zone compared to the area of the rugged mounds and two summits. In addition, a sediment core collected in a high backscatter intensity patch displayed low magnetic susceptibility, which could be influenced by the high methane levels in hydrothermal fluid that flows through sediments. An acoustically transparent zone adjoining active flares was observed in the sub-bottom profiles in the southeastern flank of the MHV, suggesting that the morphological and volcanic features are mainly concentrated in the southeast. Based on the seabed characteristics and the distribution of sills and reflectors in the multichannel seismic profiles, we inferred that the MHV is an off-axis vent that has experienced at least two stages of morphological development.
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Some datasets related to this article can be found at https://www.odb.ntu.edu.tw/, the Ocean Data Bank (ODB) hosted at Founded by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan. This study was conducted as a part of a national project of mineral resource research offshore northeastern Taiwan, so we do not have permission to share a part of the data obtained in this project.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the crew of the R/V Legend, Ocean Researcher 1, New Ocean Researcher 1, 2, and 3 and the operation teams of the TORI ROV for their considerable efforts. We also would like to thank S.D. Chiu and Y.F. Ma for the assistance at sea and in the laboratory and IHS Global Inc. Educational/Academic Grant Program for the use of the Kingdom Software, as well as Teledyne CARIS, Inc. for providing academic licenses of the CARIS HIPS software.
Funding
This work was supported by the geological investigation of mineral resource potential offshore northeastern Taiwan project awarded by the Central Geological Survey, Ministry of Economic Affair, Taiwan. This study was also funded in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) in Taiwan (Grant No. MOST109-2611-M002-012 and MOST 110-2116-M-002-008).
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T-TC and C-CS: conceptualization, writing—original draft preparation, investigation, methodology, software, visualization preparation. H-HH and C-SL: investigation, resources, review and editing. YW and S-CC: review and editing, resources, funding acquisition. ETYC: resources, review and editing, visualization preparation. F-HH, L-FL, J-HC, J-NW, T-WH and S-FW: investigation, review and editing.
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Chen, TT., Hsu, HH., Su, CC. et al. Hydrothermal characteristics of the Mienhua submarine volcano in the southernmost Okinawa trough. Mar Geophys Res 44, 10 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-023-09517-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11001-023-09517-0