Science

Seafloor Mineralization Working Group Update 2010

Chair: Maurice Tivey

As no major meeting of general interest to the deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecology and biology community was organized this year, the Vent Ecology WG has mainly been interacting at distance, through the internet.

The 2010 MoHole workshop in Kanazawa, Japan, followed on from several recent scientific planning meetings on ocean lithosphere drilling, in particular the Mission Moho Workshop in 2006 (Christie et al., 2006; Ildefonse et al., 2007), and the "Melting, Magma, Fluids and Life" meeting in 2009 (Teagle et al., 2009). These previous meetings eached consensus that a deep hole through a complete section of fast‐spread ocean crust is a renewed priority for the ocean lithosphere community.

Long-Range Exploration of the Ridge Crest

WORKSHOP FINAL REPORT

WG update for 2009 Vent Ecology Chairs – Stéphane Hourdez (France) and Yoshihiro Fujiwara (Japan) The Vent Ecology WG (http://www.interridge.org/WG/VentEcology) took advantage of the 4th Chemosynthesis-Based Ecosystems (CBE) Symposium to meet on July 2, 2009.

Mantle Imaging

Chair – Nobukazu Seama (Japan)

2009 Final report of Monitoring and Observatories

Chairs - Javier Escartin (France) & Ana Colaço (Portugal)

The InterRidge Mantle Imaging Working Group would like to promote large-scale seismic/EM experiments to image the mantle structure at ridge systems. We encourage PIs with cruises for these experiments to consider availability of bunks for graduate students (esp. students from a different country) and/or to enable international collaborators to deploy additional instruments on the cruises. For the current list of OBS and OBEM projects, please see: http://www.interridge.org/OBS-OBEM

"Race to the Ridges," an article in the Sept. 2009 issue of Marine Technology Reporter, highlights the workshop on deep-sea mining of seafloor massive sulfides that was convened earlier this year by the InterRidge Working Group on Seafloor Mineralization.
To access the PDF of this magazine issue, please go to:
http://former.seadiscovery.com/MTIssues/mt200909o2.pdf
To access the e-book, please go to:
http://dwp.marinelink.com/pubs/nwm/mt/200909/

Vent Ecology
2008 Working Group Update
Stéphane Hourdez and Chuck Fisher, Working Group Co-Chairs

Members
The Vent Ecology WG was officially created in 2008. It comprises members from 11 different countries and is chaired by Stéphane Hourdez (France) and Charles Fisher (USA). As proposed when the WG formed, C. Fisher will rotate off as co-chair at the end of 2008, but will stay on as a WG member. We will select a new co-chair from the current WG members.

Recent and upcoming meetings

Seafloor Mineralization
Working Group Update 2008
M. Tivey, Working Group Chair

The Thematic Review on "Oceanic Crustal Structure and Formation: IODP and ODP Achievements November 2002 - December 2005" is now posted at the IODP website (http://www.iodp.org/trc) and as a PDF file listed below. As stated in the Executive Summary, "The formation and alteration of the oceanic lithosphere are important components of the Solid Earth Cycles and Geodynamics theme of the IODP Initial Science Plan (ISP).