Scientists from the British Geological Society have joined an international expedition looking at “virtually unexplored” freshened water stored beneath the ocean floor.
The international team of scientists will be led by Professor Karen Johannesson of University of Massachusetts Boston and Professor Brandon Dugan of Colorado School of Mines as the co-chief scientists of this project.
The team departed for its expedition on May 19. They were tasked with collecting water and sediment samples from beneath the ocean on the New England Shelf. The researchers are aiming to understand the offshore aquifer system in this area with “groundbreaking research” via the collaboration of the International Ocean Drilling Programme (IODP³) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF).
“We have anecdotal evidence of offshore freshened groundwater from samples and marine geophysical surveys. We have used this evidence to develop hypotheses on timing and mechanism of emplacement,” Dugan said.
“It is exciting to use established scientific ocean drilling approaches with modern data analyses to provide direct tests of our hypotheses. Overall, this work offshore New England will help us better understand offshore freshened groundwater around the world.”
Sediment cores and water samples will be taken down to a maximum depth of 550 m below the ocean floor.
“To date, we know very little about the dynamics of these shoreline-crossing groundwater systems and the age of the water in these systems, and even less about their influence on cycling of nutrients and trace elements and their isotopes,” Johannesson said.
The BGS team is supporting the project with technical expertise. The L/B Robert is equipped with a small drilling rig to access sediments, which will be accessed from up to three locations on the New England Shelf. BGS staff have taken on critical roles in the expedition including offshore operations management (Leonardo Barbosa and Graham Tulloch), offshore project management (Jeremy Everest, Margaret Stewart and Raushan Arnhardt), IT and data management (Mary Mowat, Alan Douglas and Julian Gray), and onshore project management and leadership (David McInroy). BGS is also supporting extra hydrogeology and geochemistry technical support (Chelsea Bambrick, Rachel Bell, Bentje Brauns, Jack Brickell, Rebecca Ní Chonchubhair, Antonio Ferreira, Alex Mulcahy, Kyle Walker-Verkuil).
“The team is incredibly excited to be finally heading out to sea to begin field operations, after many years of planning with project partners. We hope to recover invaluable core material and groundwater samples to improve our understanding of the development of the New England Shelf and the freshened water reservoirs underlying it,” McInroy said.
“Scientific ocean drilling is technically challenging, expensive and therefore infrequent, which makes it a privilege to be part of such a project. We have a reasonable idea of what to expect in our boreholes, but there’s always the chance of discovering something unexpected scientifically, and that’s what makes offshore fieldwork so exciting.”
