[Coral-List] Champagne continued.
John Ware
jware at erols.com
Wed Jan 7 10:07:31 EST 2009
I now have some more information about the Champagne dive site on
Dominica and some additional information, so here goes:
1- My apologies for stating that the paper in Nature was by Spencer-Hall
et al. It is by Hall-Spencer et al. (at leasts I got the "al" right).
Nature 454:96.
2- Thanks much to Sonia Rowley who called my attention to the excellent
paper: "Geochemistry of Champagne Hot Springs shallow hydrothermal vent
field and associated sediments. Dominica, Lesser Antilles" (Chemical
Geology 224 (2005): 55-68. I must admit that my limited chemical
knoweldge prevents me from fully grasping the total import of this
paper. However, what this paper points is that there is a lot more
going on then just some CO2 bubbling up. There are fluids and
precipitates with lots of stuff in them.
3- This got me to thinking (which should have been obvious with some
thought) that the location which Hall-Spencer et al. looked at must have
the same sort of problems. However, Hall-Spencer et al. did not mention
any possible confounding issues, although they stated that "Some marine
CO2 vents are at ambient saltwater temperature and lack toxic sulphur
compounds". There was no specific statement that the vent they
investigated fell into that category. So now I am not sure how to
interpret the Hall-Spencer results which really only discuss CO2 and not
all the other stuff that could be going on.
I am sure that somebody will straighten me out.
John
--
*************************************************************
* *
* John R. Ware, PhD *
* President *
* SeaServices, Inc. *
* 19572 Club House Road *
* Montgomery Village, MD, 20886, USA *
* 301 987-8507 *
* jware at erols.com *
* http://www.seaservices.org *
* fax: 301 987-8531 *
* Treasurer and Member of the Council: *
* International Society for Reef Studies *
* _ *
* | *
* ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~|~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ *
* _|_ *
* | _ | *
* _______________________________| |________ *
* |\/__ Untainted by Technology \ *
* |/\____________________________________________/ *
*************************************************************
Become a member of the International Society for Reef Studies
http://www.fit.edu/isrs/
More information about the Coral-List
mailing list