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The submersible Fendouzhe being deployed off a Chinese icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: Courtesy of the Fendouzhe Research Team<\/p>\n The submersible Fendouzhe being deployed off a Chinese icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean. Credit: Courtesy of the Fendouzhe Research Team<\/p>\n
One of the most remote and unexplored parts of the planet has been visited by a\u00a0 submersible crewed by Chinese geophysicists and marine scientists for the first time ever.<\/p>\n
Having been researched from the surface by Russian scientists, and the western side with robotic submersibles by a US-German team in 2001, no one has ever explored the eastern side of the undersea mountain chain called the Gakkel Ridge.<\/p>\n
Stretching from Greenland to Siberia, this underwater ridge sits along a volcanic fault line where repeat volcanic eruptions create new sections of sea floor crust that spread away from the ridge slower than the growth of human fingernails.<\/p>\n
On the western side of this ridge, which is easier to reach as it remains under open water, surveys found that it hosted ecosystems clustered around hydrothermal vents\u2014ejections of gas from the volcanic plumbing below that host a bizarre and rich array of life where there\u2019s virtually no light.<\/p>\n
These ecosystems are hypothesized as one of the best places to look for signs of alien lifeforms on ocean worlds like the frozen Jovian moon of Europa.<\/p>\n
The eastern side, however, has never been reached with a dive vehicle. This year, an expedition organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Natural Resources undertook a major endeavor to study the eastern side of the Gakkel Ridge.<\/p>\n
It involved an icebreaker ship, as the eastern ridge is located where the sea ice can remain permanent, and a scientific submersible with room for 3 called Fendouzhe.\u00a0Together the team completed more than 40 dives, including one deeper than 14,000 feet (5,277 meters).<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the last piece of the puzzle,\u201d says Xiaoxia Huang, a marine geophysicist at the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering in Sanya, China, and the expedition\u2019s chief scientist, in an interview with Nature.<\/a><\/p>\n