This dataset includes the processed CTD sensor data from upcasts of a trace metal clean CTD owned by the Fitzsimmons lab and deployed on the Hydrothermal Estuaries cruise to the Endeavour hydrothermal plume, Juan de Fuca Ridge, Northeast Pacific Ocean aboard R/V Atlantis (AT50-15) from August to September 2023. Bottles were closed on the upcast only, which is why these casts were selected. Station locations were selected using modeling estimates and sensor data from the AUV Sentry; a station upstream of the hydrothermal plume was also sampled as a background. Each station (except for the background) targeted the most concentrated plume at sequential distances aimed to represent increasing plume age.

Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
  • BCO-DMO Curation Notes
• Data Files
• Related Datasets
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Deployments
• Project Information
• Funding

This dataset includes the processed CTD sensor data from upcasts of a trace metal clean CTD owned by the Fitzsimmons lab and deployed on the Hydrothermal Estuaries cruise to the Endeavour hydrothermal plume, Juan de Fuca Ridge, Northeast Pacific Ocean aboard R/V Atlantis (AT50-15) from August-September 2023. Bottles were closed on the upcast only, which is why these casts were selected. Station locations were selected using modeling estimates and sensor data from the AUV Sentry; a station upstream of the hydrothermal plume was also sampled as a background. Each station (except for the background) targeted the most concentrated plume at sequential distances aimed to represent increasing plume age.

Data were collected using a Sea-bird SBE 19+v2 CTD instrument package designed to continuously measure conductivity, temperature, and pressure, and all titanium housings were used to satisfy trace metal clean conditions. The CTD includes two components, the deck unit (SBE 33) and underwater unit (SBE 19+v2) for real-time monitoring. The SBE 19+v2 comes with the standard three sensors and can hold up to six additional sensors. Here we chose to supplement the CTD data with oxygen (SBE 43), transmissometry (C-Star), and turbidity (Seapoint Turbidity Meter and a 100x gain cable).

Profiles were taken at each of the five main vent sites at the Main Endeavour Field (between 48°00 N and 47°54 N) and stations up to 20 kilometers west from these sites. Stations were selected based on modeling and AUV Sentry surveys to target the hydrothermal plume. An upstream background station was also sampled north of the vent site. All samples taken were deeper than 1700 meters.

Real-time data monitoring during the cruise used the Sea-bird software Seasave Version 7.26.7.121, and data were processed after the cruise using SBE Data Processing to extract CTD data at bottle trip depths.

Flagging is consistent with the WOCE Hydrographic Program Quality Flags flagging scheme.

WOCE CTD Quality Code descriptions can be found at https://exchange-format.readthedocs.io/en/latest/quality.html#ctd-quality-codes, and are replicated below:

WOCE CTD Quality Codes:
1: Not calibrated.
2: Acceptable measurement.
3: Questionable measurement.
4: Bad measurement.
5: Not reported.
6: Interpolated over a pressure interval larger than 2 dbar.
7: Despiked.
(8): Not used for CTD data.
9: Not sampled.

This section documents curation actions performed prior to publication review with the submitter, and additional information relevant to understanding and reusing this dataset. It distinguishes changes made to the submitted (meta)data from unresolved issues and/or enhancements that improve future reuse and interoperability.

CURATION ACTIONS PERFORMED ON DATA

- Imported original file "2025-1104-BCO-DMO_HydEst_CTD_Upcast_Combined.xlsx" (sheet 1) into the BCO-DMO data processing system.
- Removed trailing "Z" character from ISO_DATE_TIME_START_EVENT and ISO_DATE_TIME_END_EVENT columns because these columns are reported as being in the PDT time zone.
- Renamed columns to indicate PDT local time: START_DATE to START_DATE_PDT, START_EVENT to START_TIME_PDT, ISO_DATE_TIME_START_EVENT to ISO_DATE_TIME_START_PDT, END_DATE to END_DATE_PDT, END_EVENT to END_TIME_PDT, ISO_DATE_TIME_END_EVENT to ISO_DATE_TIME_END_PDT.
- Converted ISO_DATE_TIME_START_PDT from PDT local time to UTC, creating new column ISO_DATE_TIME_START_UTC.
- Converted ISO_DATE_TIME_END_PDT from PDT local time to UTC, creating new column ISO_DATE_TIME_END_UTC.
- Converted START_DATE_PDT and END_DATE_PDT columns from format %m-%d-%y to date output format %Y-%m-%d.
- Converted START_TIME_PDT and END_TIME_PDT columns to %H:%M time format.
- Saved the final file as "1008753_v1_hydest_tm-ctd_upcast.csv".

CURATION ACTIONS PERFORMED ON METADATA

- BCO-DMO's standard metadata entry and text formatting steps were performed. See: https://www.bco-dmo.org/how-to/standard-curation-edits

ISSUES POTENTIALLY IMPACTING REUSE

- N/A

Coverage: Juan de Fuca Ridge

NSF Award Abstract:
Like volcanoes on land, the mid-ocean ridges that cross the ocean floor are not continuously erupting; however, the magmatic heat present just beneath the surface can continue to drive hot springs, just like the ones found within the crater of the "super volcano" at Yellowstone. In our recent work, we have shown that the chemicals released into the oceans from seafloor hot-springs can be dispersed all across the oceans. Now our interest has focused in on one element in particular, iron. This is one of the most abundant elements in every planetary body in the Universe yet it is vanishingly rare in Earth's oceans today. Set against that, it is essential to just about every form of life on Earth from the simplest and most ancient strains of microbes to the most complex animals including humans. In Earth's oceans, the lack of this "essential micro-nutrient" has been found to limit how much life can flourish near both the south and north poles in the Pacific Ocean in the sunlit surface ocean even though the supply of sunlight and other major nutrients (phosphorous, nitrogen) should be more than adequate. Our newest research suggests that iron released from hydrothermal plumes (where the concentrations coming from vents are more than 1 million times higher than normal ocean water) could play a major role. Despite undergoing massive dilution as hydrothermal solutions leave the vents and traverse thousands of kilometers through the oceans, we believe that at least some of the iron released from deep sea hot springs can survive this journey and make a significant impact on how much live exists in Earth's polar oceans and how much CO2 it draws down from the atmosphere. To investigate that idea, this project will study the fate of iron released from a hydrothermal vent over a length scale that hasn't been studied before - from the first 1km through the ocean out to 100km away from the vent-site. This will fill a gap in our knowledge between what happens right at a vent-site (as studied by research submarines) and what happens to ocean chemistry all across Earth's entire ocean basins (as studied by a huge international research project called GEOTRACES). Our work will use a 3D computational model to predict where the plume of material from a vent in the Northeast Pacific Ocean should escape to after it is erupted from some vents at a volcanic system called the Juan de Fuca Ridge. We will then use an advanced autonomous free-swimming robot to search out in the predicted plume area, first to test the accuracy of our predicted model and, second, to collect samples from the hydrothermal plume from where it first forms to as far out as we can follow it. The samples we collect will include both filtered seawater and the particulate material (whether mineralogical or microbiological) that we can extract from the filters. Together, this will allow us to track the fate of the iron and other key physical and geochemical tracers down-plume away from the vents, to work out where it ends up (in the water and in the sediments) and also how fast those processes happen. The work we do will also help plan how to conduct similar robotics-based exploration on future space missions beyond Earth where it has been hypothesized that seafloor events also exist (e.g. Saturn's moon Enceladus) and where, if we are really lucky, we may find that life is hosted based on the energy from seafloor volcanoes, just as happens here on Earth. We have a resident artist embedded in our program who has already begun experimenting with the use of air-flow and sound in her sculptures to help communicate the complex nature of these plumes. She will join our cruise, and work with our team post-cruise to design and hopefully build a sculpture that that could potentially result in a large and long-term outdoor installation.

The international GEOTRACES program has revealed that iron (Fe) is released ubiquitously from submarine ridges to the deep ocean. Results from US GEOTRACES section GP16 showed that both dissolved and particulate (colloidal) Fe may persist so far as to be able to influence primary productivity in High-Nutrient/Low-Chlorophyll (HNLC) regions of the Southern Ocean. As a complement to these sectional studies, we propose a detailed process study to elucidate the mechanisms by which hydrothermally sourced Fe can persist across the oceans at the scale that GEOTRACES has revealed. Specifically, while the "persistent" Fe in a hydrothermal plume appears to behave quasi-conservatively from 100km to 4000km across the SE Pacific Ocean, it is also known that the majority of the Fe present at the Southern EPR on that US GEOTRACES GP16 cruise did not persist over the 100km separation between that station and the next deep ocean station beyond the ridge crest. To fill that gap, this project will conduct a coupled modelling and field study to investigate the fate of hydrothermally sourced Fe at ranges of 0-1, 1-10 and 10-100km down-plume away from a well established vent-source. To begin, we will use the detailed micro-bathymetry and the long-term current meter data available from the Main Endeavour Segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge to implement a recently developed 3D theoretical plume dispersion model that can predict both the detailed 3D dispersion trajectory and the rate of flow within the hydrothermal plume away from two long-studied and well characterized Main Endeavour Field (MEF) vents. At sea, we will use that predictive model to guide Sentry autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) surveys that will follow the plume "down-wind" and "across-plume" to compile a 3D survey using in-situ sensors [optical, redox, conductivity, temperature, depth (CTD)] that will allow us to (1) confirm (and better constrain) the predictive model, and to (2) map out the shape and trajectory of the plume to provide context for discrete water column samples that we will collect - both from the AUV and from a trace metal clean CTD-rosette. Sampling from the AUV will use the latest generation of SUPR samplers designed for the CLIO trace-metal-clean water sampler. This will suffice for samples of dissolved, colloidal and particulate trace metals and collection of filtered material for grain-by-grain mineralogical and biogeochemical analyses. That sampling program will be backed up by larger volume sampling down-plume using a CTD-rosette to augment our AUV-based program with helium isotope analyses (to track extents of physical plume dilution at increasing distances downwind and across plume) and for complementary ligand and organic compound analyses to investigate the role that organic complexation might play in protecting reduced species of Fe [and manganese (Mn), too] against oxidative precipitation and removal from the oceanic water column. Post cruise, our combination of biogeochemical measurements and improved 3D physical modelling will not only be able to provide new insights into the processes that control the fluxes of Fe and Mn to the oceans from hydrothermal venting but also the length scales over which those processes take effect. Finally, because our 3D theoretical model includes velocities, we also anticipate being able to deduce the rates at which these processes occur.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.