The Pacific Ocean Sprung A Spring
About 50 miles off the Oregon coast, water is shooting into the Pacific Ocean from the floor
Hiya!
What a time to be alive, amiright? I mean, if you want to write a novel but lack inspiration, all you need to do is read through the headlines from the last few years. Most of which seem more fictitious than real life — global pandemics, global warming, not to mention the ongoing saga of mainstream politics and culture wars. But my favorite subject of our bizarre times is Science.
Maybe it’s just me, but it appears that, for some reason, everything is falling into some sort of alignment, inspiring spontaneous breakthroughs and lucky discoveries that are reshaping everything we thought we knew about, well, everything. For instance, a few years ago, a grad student randomly glanced at a boat’s sonar and spotted something experts had never seen — a spring on the ocean floor.
The Surprise Discovery - Pythia’s Oasis
Back in 2014, Brendan Philp — a Washington University grad student at the time and now a White House policy advisor — was waiting out a weather delay on a boat with other scientists while embarking on a different oceanic mission when he happened to notice some unexpected bubbles nearly a mile under the ocean’s surface on the ship’s sonar.
The boat was held up about 50 miles (80 km) off the Oregon coastal town of Newport when Philp spotted the bubbles. Evan Solomon, a UW associate professor of oceanography who studies seafloor geology and co-author of the eventual study, explains that once Philip pointed out the bubbles:
“They explored in that direction and what they saw was not just methane bubbles, but water coming out of the seafloor like a firehose. That’s something that I’ve never seen, and to my knowledge has not been observed before.”
In 2015, researchers led by Philips returned to investigate the source of the bubbles using a robot and discovered an underwater spring shooting chemically distinct water up from the seafloor. The team published their findings about the underwater spring in Science Advances on January 25, 2023.
The team named the spring Pythia’s Oasis after the ancient Greek oracle at Delphi. Pythia was known to have a temple residing over a seismic fissure said to release mind-altering vapors. It’s there she’d fall into a trance and begin prophesizing.
You can see a video of the spring below:
The Details
If you don’t already know, a subduction zone is where Earth’s tectonic plates move to the point of one or more sliding beneath another. Movement between the plates in these areas is responsible for many disasters, including landslides, powerful earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.
The Cascadia subduction zone, where the spring was found, extends from southern British Columbia to northern California and reaches from inland eastern Washington and Oregon to miles out into the Pacific Ocean. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS):
“[The Cascadia subduction zone] contains many features of a textbook subduction zone, with the exception of having extraordinarily low earthquake rates. Seven of its volcanoes have erupted since the start of the 18th century.”
Further observations of the newly found spring show it consists of low-saltiness, mineral-rich, high-temperature water coming from a source about 2.5 miles (4 km) below the seafloor along the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
Calculations indicate the fluid comes directly from the Cascadia megathrust, an area with temperatures ranging between 300 to 500 degrees Fahrenheit (150 to 250 degrees Celsius). Though, the seafloor around the spring is only about 16 degrees Fahrenheit (9 degrees Celsius) warmer than the surrounding seawater. In the press release, Solomon explains:
“The megathrust fault zone is like an air hockey table. If the fluid pressure is high, it’s like the air is turned on, meaning there’s less friction and the two plates can slip. If the fluid pressure is lower, the two plates will lock – that’s when stress can build up.”
Unsurprisingly, the area is home to an abundance of life, including anemones, clam beds, crabs, eelpout fish, hagfish, rockfish, sea pig sea cucumbers, snails, and soft corals.
The researchers believe there may be other similar sites along the sea floor — after all, if there’s one, there are probably more. The primary problem, and likely the reason none had been discovered before, is that they’re extremely challenging to detect from the surface. A UW professor of oceanography and co-author of the paper, Deborah Kelley, states:
“Pythias Oasis provides a rare window into processes acting deep in the seafloor, and its chemistry suggests this fluid comes from near the plate boundary. This suggests that the nearby faults regulate fluid pressure and megathrust slip behavior along the central Cascadia Subduction Zone.”
Regarding any potential impacts, the experts suggest that a significant fluid leak off the coast of central Oregon “could explain why the northern portion of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, off the coast of Washington, is believed to be more strongly locked, or coupled, than the southern section off the coast of Oregon.”
Should We Worry?
As for how dangerous this spring is regarding potential earthquakes, the press release presents conflicting information. At the beginning of the release, in the bullet points summarizing the article’s contents, they declare:
Scientists are not alarmed at discovering this geologic feature, which does not trigger earthquakes but may regulate friction in the fault zone
This discovery does not change the current risk of a large earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
However, near the bottom of the release, they state:
“Fluid released from the fault zone is like leaking lubricant. That’s bad news for earthquake hazards: Less lubricant means stress can build to create a damaging quake.”
Other news sources reporting on the discovery claim “the offshore fault has the potential to cause a magnitude-9 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest.”
Most articles I found about this discovery focus on how it might impact earthquakes, but I wonder how the additional liquid will contribute to rising sea levels. It seems to me that now oceans will rise from melting glaciers and springs across the ocean floor. Though, I suppose that largely depends on how many more springs there are.
So… I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens — which is a pretty unnerving thought considering I live in Oregon.
Perspective Shift
Regardless of how dangerous this spring may or may not be, it’s a remarkable discovery made by complete chance that adds vital information to our knowledge about how the planet functions. I imagine this is just the beginning, too.
After all, we know more about Outerspace than our oceans or even the interior of our own planet. As we progress in exploration, we’re bound to uncover unbelievable discoveries that will undoubtedly reshape everything we think we know — again and again. Every day reality is already quickly turning into a sci-fi novel. It’s hard to fathom the discoveries yet to come. But gosh, am I excited to find out.
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