A First: Detailed Tracking of an Erupting Undersea Volcano and its Impacts on the Overlying Ocean via a Submarine Electro-Optical Sensor Network.

The scientifically diverse and technologically advanced cabled array component of the NSF’s Ocean Observatories Initiative consists of 900 km of electro-optical fiber deployed from Pacific City, OR, across active portions of the Juan de Fuca (JdF) tectonic plate, and upward into the overlying ocean. This array, completed in 2014 on time and under budget, enables real-time, high-bandwidth, 2-way communication with seafloor and water column sensor arrays across: 1. the Cascadia accretionary prism, 2. the JdF spreading center, and, 3. portions of the overlying NE Pacific. Oceanographic processes in coastal waters, the California Current, and up to 400 km offshore, are captured by six remote-controlled, profiling moorings covering full-ocean depths. Currently, 6 primary nodes, 17 junction boxes, and ~85% of 150 instruments are transmitting data ashore to the Internet via the Pacific NW Gigapop (http://www.pnwgp.net/). All data are archived at the U. of Washington, pending completion of the OOI CyberInfrastructure in October 2015. 

In 2014, community requests to access data to assess inflation at Axial Seamount, resulted in NSF releasing real-time data from 7 seismometers and 3 pressure sensors (IRIS: http://www.iris.edu/hq/). On April 20-22, 90 participants, met in Seattle to explore scientific responses to an eruption (http://novae.ocean.washington.edu). On April 24, Axial did erupt; seismic events rose dramatically to many hundreds/hour the Axial caldera floor dropped 2.4 m in ~16 hours and water temperatures rose by ~0.7°C, then declined in 3 weeks to normal values. Water-borne acoustic signals indicated seafloor activity along the rift zone north of Axial. Water column observations also indicated that a large plume of hydrothermal fluid was released during the eruptions. Follow-on field programs documented a 127 m thick lava flow on the northern rift, and a thin eruption within the caldera. These events signal a new era in Ocean Sciences as instantaneous Internet access to events far offshore begin allowing interactive responses to complex processes unfolding within our ocean. The attached figure shows the contact between 3.5 month old lava (black) and a much older flow.