Memorial prof makes groundbreaking discoveries in Galapagos Islands

John Jamieson used technology developed in Newfoundland and Labrador to find new hydrothermal vent field

CORNER BROOK — It’s long been said that more is known about space than the ocean floor, but John Jamieson is helping to develop a clearer view of Earth’s watery depths.

The marine geologist and associate professor at Memorial University in St. John’s recently put a dent in the unknown as he used ocean mapping technology developed in Newfoundland and Labrador to make new discoveries on the ocean floor in the Galapagos Islands.

In October, Jamieson led an international team of researchers on a scientific expedition funded by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a United States-based foundation established to advance oceanographic research.

Integrating two groundbreaking sonar technologies, including Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Sonar (INSAS) developed by Kraken Robotics — a Mount Pearlbased underwater technology company — Jamieson and his team made some significant discoveries on the ocean floor about 2,000 metres below the surface.

To put it in perspective, previous technology could only create maps — at that depth — with a resolution of about 15 to 20 metres, at best. The technology employed by Jamieson created far more detailed images with a resolution of about three centimetres.

“It’s like returning to the moon after 50 years but with the latest technology of the 21st century,” he said in an article about his work written by Memorial University for its publication, The Gazette.

WHAT WAS DISCOVERED

First, the team found a new hydrothermal vent field which they named Tortugas — Spanish for turtle and an homage to the work evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin did in the Galapagos Islands in the 1830s.

They also identified 15 species previously unknown to the region, including a monoplacophoran mollusk.

Monoplacophorans are so rare they were thought to have been extinct for 380 million years, until the 1950s. Their primitive anatomy is considered important in understanding the evolutionary history of animals.

The team also found a Pacific white ray nursery, only the second documented in the world.

“That was a bit of a surprise, but we know so little about the seafloor that almost every time we go down, we find new things,” Jamieson said in an interview with Saltwire.

TECHNOLOGICAL SURPRISES

The most unexpected part of the experience, added Jamieson, was how easily those hitherto undiscovered features could be found using the high-resolution mapping technology that allowed them to home in on areas of particular interest. “Before this, when you’re exploring the seafloor, you’re blind and you can’t see anything because we don’t have good maps of the seafloor,” he said. “What this does is turn the daylight lights on, so you can see everything. It’s a real game changer.”

Jamieson has a team of students now analyzing samples taken from the area they explored to see what more can be gleaned.

One thing he knows already is that he can’t wait for an opportunity to expand on this sort of research, given the quality of the technology now available.

An area of interest for Jamieson’s ongoing research is deep-sea mining. The hot water vents at the bottom of the ocean are potential targets for deep-sea mining because they contain a lot of valuable metals such as copper, zinc, gold and silver.

Jamieson’s research contributes to the understanding of the feasibility of mining hydrothermal vents and the environmental impacts of doing so. He said the technology he used to find the vents in the Galapagos will undoubtedly help further that sort of work.

“One of the key things about seafloor mining is that we know very little of the ocean, so we’re always struggling to improve our understanding and the key factor to that is the technology available for studying the bottom of the ocean,” he said.