M192 – BridgeHell

A team of 6 scientists, students and technicians from Andrea Koschinsky’s working group at Constructor University will be on board the RV Meteor from the 8th of August to the 5th of September to investigate and sample shallow and deep sea hydrothermal outflow and venting in the Mediterranean close to the island of Milos during cruise M193. The cruise will be separated into two parts. The first part of the cruise will be dedicated to localizing the hydrothermal sites along a depth profile from 10m to 900m depth. During the second half of the cruise, all the participants will sample the newly discovered vent sites for fluids, rocks, fauna and sediments. The topic of our team will be the geochemistry of hydrothermal fluids and plumes with focus on trace metals and their interactions with organisms.

The planned work consists for the whole cruise consists of three parts:

  1. Mapping the hydrothermal sites during the first part withthe multibeam echosounder of the ship and the AUV MARUMSEAL 5000.
  2. Sampling of the newly discovered sites for plume geochemistry and (micro-)biology in a transect from shallow to deeper sites using a CTD rosette water sampler and ROV MARUM-SQUID.

Cooperating institutions:

  • MARUM Zen­trum für Ma­ri­ne Um­welt­wis­sen­schaf­ten, Uni­ver­si­tät Bre­men (lead PI)
  • Con­struc­tor Uni­ver­si­ty Bre­men gGmbH, De­part­ment of Phy­sics & Earth Sci­en­ces
  • In­sti­tut für Che­mie und Bio­lo­gie des Mee­res (ICBM), Uni­ver­si­tät Ol­den­burg
  • Geo­Zen­trum Nord­bay­ern, Fried­rich-Alex­an­der-Uni­ver­si­tät Er­lan­gen-Nürn­berg (FAU)                    
  • Na­tio­nal & Ka­po­dis­tri­an Uni­ver­si­ty of Athens, De­part­ment of Geo­lo­gy & Geo­en­vi­ron­ment
  • Hel­le­nic Cent­re for Ma­ri­ne Re­se­arch, In­sti­tu­te of Ma­ri­ne Bio­lo­gy, Bio­tech­no­lo­gy and Aqua­cul­tu­re (IMBBC)
  • Max-Planck-In­sti­tut für Ma­ri­ne Mi­kro­bio­lo­gie, Bre­men
  • GEO­MAR Helm­holtz Cent­re for Oce­an Re­se­arch

Follow the position of the RV Meteor and the team from Constructor University online:

https://marinetraffic.live/meteor-position/319269000/

Homepage of M192 at the MARUM (Zen­trum für Ma­ri­ne Um­welt­wis­sen­schaf­ten; Uni­ver­si­tät Bre­men) website:

https://www.marum.de/Dr.-solveig-bhring/M-192.html

MARUM press release:

https://www.marum.de/en/Discover/M192.html

Cruise Blog:

https://www.marum.de/en/Discover/Ship-s-log-M192.html

Overview of the proposed working area in the mediterranen sea close to the Island Milos. Dashed polygons indicate planned working areas off the Greek island of Milos (A,B,C and D), yellow lines indicate 6 nm zone around the island (red stars indicate confirmed hydrothermal sites). Source: MARUM − Zen­trum für Ma­ri­ne Um­welt­wis­sen­schaf­ten; Uni­ver­si­tät Bre­men.