The last dive of the cruise took place on August 18. We decided to return to the area where the previous dive had found traces of hydrothermal activity. The site was found on the flank of a large, oblique peridotite hill, located on the north flank of the oblique axial transfer zone. The site was… Read More
The eighth Nautile dive occurred on August 16th. It has been devoted to the exploration of a massif elongated along an E-W direction, located slightly to the South of the Romanche fracture zone, close to its intersection with the ridge axis. We reached the bottom (-3860 m) at 10H43 UT on the southern flank… Read More
The 23rd Nautile dive of the SMARTIES cruise, on August 15th, 2019, aimed at investigating the volcanic field located south of the main core complex and west of the last MAR oblique ridge axis. The main objective was to decipher the physical and morphological properties of lava flows exposed along the profile, which are critical… Read More
The 16th Nautile dive of the SMARTIES cruise, on August 8, 2019, was aimed at the investigation of the relationship between tectonics and volcanics at the southern tip of an axial volcanic ridge located between the Equator and 0°10’S. The bathymetry shows that the ridge is affected by several fault scarps. During the dive, we… Read More
This 21st dive was carried out on August 13, 2019, in a transition zone located between, an expansion zone perpendicular to the direction of the ridge, to the South, an oblique expansion zone to the North. We reached the seafloor at -4318 m at 10:44 UT on sediments. During the next 50 minutes we continued… Read More
The aim of the dive was to explore some possible young seamounts located in an intermediate position between those explored during dive 13 (south of the main core complex) and some from the central oblique ridge axis (dives 16-18). It was also Gil’s first dive and birthday, our co-pilot of the day, who by the… Read More
On the 10 of August, dive 1975 crossed a portion of the northern mid ocean ridge segment of the Mid Atlantic Ridge before abutting against the Romanche Fracture zone. Target structures to observe during the dive were a thin ridge segment and a rounded volcanic edifice. We started the working profile at a depth of… Read More
The dive was taking place on the side of the detachment faults we have been studying for the past days. Based on observations collected by the multibeam of the Pourquoi pas?, one of the graben valley cutting through the main detachment surface has a very reflective seafloor, interpreted as volcanic. The exploration dive started at… Read More
For the 14th dive, the objective is to complete the observations that have been made on the structure of the oceanic core-complex during the previous dives: Dive 09 on the front of the core-complex, dive 12 a little higher on the same front , and dive 11, which corresponds to a fault that cuts the… Read More
The 12th dive of the Nautile took place on August 3rd, 2019. The objective was to continue the exploration of the large massif located at the intersection of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Romanche Fault. The dive 12 succeeds the dives 9 and 11 on what appears as an oceanic “core complex”. During this dive,… Read More