Collaborative Research: RAPID: Seafloor Eruption Opens a Window into Productivity and Ecosystem Recovery at Deep-Sea Vents

About This Grant

A recent deep-sea volcanic eruption on the East Pacific Rise provides a rare, time-sensitive opportunity to investigate how deep-ocean ecosystems recover from catastrophic disturbance. Because this site has been studied for decades, researchers can compare current events to data from before the eruption and from past eruptions, offering insight into how ocean life responds to sudden natural change. Through this project, the scientific team is investigating how microorganisms and animals return to the area, how chemical conditions influence their survival, and whether early colonizers influence the long-term development of the communities. By examining a range of organisms from microbes to drifting larvae and newly-settled animals, the investigators are building a detailed understanding of how deep-sea ecosystems recover and how carbon and energy move through these systems after a disturbance. The project is supporting the training of graduate students and early-career researchers and is leveraging collaboration across multiple institutions. More broadly, understanding how seafloor communities recover is increasingly important as society considers the benefits and risks of deep-sea mining. On April 29, 2025, an eruption started at the 9°50'N vent field on the East Pacific Rise (EPR), presenting a unique chance to understand factors governing biological production in the ocean and to observe how vent ecosystems recover. Scientists have been monitoring this site for decades and these sustained data sets provide essential context for interpreting the influence of this most recent eruptive perturbation on the ecosystem. Through this project, the investigators are seeking to understand the biogeochemical and ecological processes that govern ecosystem recovery across microbial and animal communities. They are using integrative techniques to examine the eruption-related impacts on microbial activity and community structure, including measurements of microbial primary productivity, exoenzyme activity, and associated in situ fluid chemistry. When combined with a characterization of the microbial community’s diversity (amplicon-based), gene expression (metatranscriptomics), and protein production (proteomics), the investigators are identifying active microorganisms, quantifying their contribution to deep sea carbon cycling, and exploring their potential as settlement cues for pioneer animal colonists. The microbial studies are co-located with sampling of animal colonists on the seafloor to identify the pioneers and document their association with microbial consortia. The investigators are identifying and quantifying larvae in the plankton to compare pre-and post-eruption availability. The range of data collected is laying the foundation for understanding the drivers of post-eruption succession and for testing a biophysical model currently in development to explore the influence of mesoscale eddies on inter-segment vent larval dispersal. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.