Search

We conducted water column surveys to search for hydrothermal plumes over the spreading axes in the Gulf of Aden between 45°35′E and 52°42′E. We measured light transmission and chemical tracers Mn, Fe, CH 4 and δ 13 C of CH 4 in seawater taken using a CTD-Carrousel multi-sampling system at 12 locations including a control station in the Arabian Sea. We recognized three types of hydrothermal plumes at depths of ~650 to ~900 m (shallow plumes), ~1000 to ~1200 m (intermediate plumes), and >1500 m (deep plumes). The shallow plumes were apparently originated from newly discovered twin seamounts (12°03–06′N and 45°35–41′E) at the westernmost survey area, where two-dimensional distributions of light transmission and Mn were mapped by tow-yo observations of the CTD-sampling system with an in situ auto-analyzer GAMOS. The maximum concentrations of Mn, Fe, and CH 4 of 46 nM, 251 nM, and 15 nM, respectively, were observed for collected seawater within the shallow plumes. The intermediate plumes were characterized by anomalies of light transmission, Mn, Fe, and δ 13 C of CH 4 , but by little CH 4 anomalies, suggesting that CH 4 had been consumed down to the background level during the aging of the plumes. Anomalies of δ 3 He already reported by the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) program exhibited a hydrothermal plume-like peak at ~2000 m depth in the Gulf of Aden, which seems to coincide with the deep plumes observed in this study. The endmember δ 13 C–CH 4 values for the shallow and the deep plumes were estimated to be in a range between −10‰ and −15‰, demonstrating that the sources of CH 4 are not biogenic but magmatic as similarly observed at sediment-starved mid-oceanic ridges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]