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Exploring the briny deep sea without leaving land
Do you want to explore over a thousand metres below the sea surface, navigate the Kermadec Arc and see underwater volcanoes – all without leaving land? GNS Science and Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington, have combined forces to create a virtual submarine dive to explore New Zealand's north-eastern deep-sea territory.
The Deep Ride, which opened at the museum at the end of September, is a New Zealand-first motion simulator ride. To create a realistic effect, the simulator submarine uses a combination of 3D animation and real film footage of deep-sea dives undertaken by GNS Science, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC).
The eight-minute Deep Ride follows the path of the Kermadec Arc, a volcanic part of the sea floor made up of some 55 large volcanoes, approximately 38 of them hydrothermally active, which stretch between New Zealand and Tonga. The arc is the result of the Pacific Plate diving beneath the Australian Plate.
The ride encounters ocean turbulence on its descent to the sea floor, adding excitement for the 12 passengers on board. Eventually, the simulator submarine arrives at the Brothers volcano, about 400 kilometres north-east of White Island. Brothers is about three times the size of White Island, with its crater floor about 1,800 metres below the sea surface. It is one of the most active of the many submarine volcanoes. The vehicle takes passengers around the Brothers crater (or caldera) and provides views of its jagged rock walls rising steeply above the crater floor.
Commentary for the journey is provided by GNS Science marine geologist Dr Cornel de Ronde, one of very few people to have explored this undersea world in real research submersibles, who appears on a large screen at the front of the simulator submarine.
Among the features Dr de Ronde points out in the most alien-looking landscape on the planet are hydrothermal venting where hot springs can be expelled into the ocean at super hot temperatures of over 300°C. There are also fields of black smoker chimneys, where mineral-laden hot water, or hydrothermal fluid, is expelled on the sea floor. The fluid mixes with the cold seawater, and the minerals that were previously dissolved in the hot water start depositing out to form mineral-laden chimneys, some as tall as seven metres high. Plumes of hot water and minerals, which look like black smoke, pour out the tops of these chimneys – which is why we call them black smokers. All these features have been discovered and mapped on real deep-sea expeditions.
Earlier this year, Dr de Ronde donated a rare deep-sea black smoker chimney to Te Papa. The one-metre tall chimney is on display in an area called Nature Space at the museum. The chimney shows readily identifiable deposits of different minerals that are particularly rich in copper, lead and zinc, with lesser amounts of gold and silver.