Discovery of Active Hydrothermal Sites Along the Mariana Volcanic Arc, Western Pacific Ocean

Some 20,000 km of volcanic arcs, roughly one-third the total length of the global midocean ridge (MOR) system, rim the western Pacific Ocean. But compared to 25 years of hydrothermal investigations along MORs, exploration of similar activity on the estimated 600 submarine arc volcanoes is only beginning. In February 2003, as part of the Submarine Ring of Fire project funded by NOAA's Ocean Exploration Program, we made the first systematic survey of hydrothermal activity along the 1270-km-long Mariana intraoceanic volcanic arc, which lies almost entirely within the US EEZ. Prior fieldwork had documented active (but low-temperature) hydrothermal discharge on only three volcanoes: Kasuga 2, Kasuga 3, and Esmeralda Bank. During the cruise, we conducted 70 CTD operations over more than 50 individual volcanoes from 13° N to 23° N, plus a continuous CTD survey along 75 km of the back-arc spreading center (13° 15'N to 13° 41'N) adjacent to the southern end of the arc. We found evidence for active hydrothermal venting at 11 submarine volcanoes with summit (or caldera floor) depths ranging from 50 to 1550 m. Two additional sites were identified on the back-arc spreading center. Ongoing analyses of collected water samples could increase these totals. Our results confirmed continuing hydrothermal activity at Kasuga 2 (but not Kasuga 3) and Esmeralda Bank, in addition to newly discovered sites on nine other volcanoes. Many of these sites produce intense and widely dispersed plumes indicative of vigorous, high-temperature discharge. The volcanoes with active hydrothermal systems are about equally divided between those with and without summit calderas. The addition of the Marianas data greatly improves our view of hydrothermal sources along arcs. The 20,000 km of Pacific arcs can be divided between 6380 km of intraoceanic (i.e., mostly submarine) arcs and 13,880 km of island (i.e., mostly subaerial) arcs. At present, ∼15% of the total length of Pacific arcs has been surveyed thoroughly: 2550 km of intraoceanic arcs and 350 km of island arcs. Along the carefully studied intraoceanic arcs, 36 of 104 surveyed submarine volcanoes are hydrothermally active. Projecting these results along the unsurveyed intraoceanic arcs yields an expected total of an additional 54 active volcanoes. Island arcs will add additional sites, but are too poorly studied to admit a helpful estimate. For Pacific intraoceanic arcs, the predicted frequency of active volcanoes, about 1/66 km of arc length, is similar to the frequency of hydrothermal fields found along slow and ultra-slow MORs.