Volcanoes of the Deep Sea | |
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Directed by | Stephen Low |
Written by | Alex Low Stephen Low |
Produced by | James Cameron Pietro L. Serapiglia Stephen Low Emory Kristof |
Narrated by | Ed Harris |
Cinematography | William Reeve |
Edited by | James Lahti |
Music by | Michel Cusson |
Production company | The Stephen Low Company |
Release date |
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Running time | 40 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Language | English |
Budget | 9 million USD |
Volcanoes of the Deep Sea is a 2003 documentary film in the IMAX format about undersea volcanoes directed by Stephen Low.
Richard Lutz served as Principal Investigator and Lutz and Peter A. Rona served as Science Directors of the film, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and co-produced by Rutgers University. [1]
The film included footage, research, and stories from the deep-sea Alvin expeditions of Lutz and his colleagues. [2]
Scientists use the deep-water submersible DSV Alvin to search for an organism, the Paleodictyon nodosum maker, that produces a honeycomb patterned fossil called a Paleodictyon, near volcanic vents that lie 3500 meters (12,000 feet) underwater in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
The film received the award for "best IMAX film of the Year" at the Paris Film Festival, [3] and in 2005 Richard Lutz received the Scientific Literacy Achievement Award from the New Jersey Association for Biomedical Research for his contributions to the film. [1]
The film was not shown in some US theatres because it was feared that the film's mention of evolution would provoke a negative reaction from creationist patrons. In particular, the film discussed the similarities in bacterial and human DNA. [4] [5] The film's distributor reported that the only U.S. states with theaters which chose not to show the film were Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina:
"We've got to pick a film that's going to sell in our area. If it's not going to sell, we're not going to take it," said the director of an IMAX theater in Charleston that is not showing the movie. "Many people here believe in creationism, not evolution." [6]
Alvin (DSV-2) is a crewed deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The original vehicle was built by General Mills' Electronics Group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Named to honor the prime mover and creative inspiration for the vehicle, Allyn Vine, Alvin was commissioned on June 5, 1964.
Hydrothermal vents are fissures on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at mid-ocean ridges, ocean basins, and hotspots. The dispersal of hydrothermal fluids throughout the global ocean at active vent sites creates hydrothermal plumes. Hydrothermal deposits are rocks and mineral ore deposits formed by the action of hydrothermal vents.
Riftia pachyptila, commonly known as the giant tube worm and less commonly known as the giant beardworm, is a marine invertebrate in the phylum Annelida related to tube worms commonly found in the intertidal and pelagic zones. R. pachyptila lives on the floor of the Pacific Ocean near hydrothermal vents. The vents provide a natural ambient temperature in their environment ranging from 2 to 30 °C, and this organism can tolerate extremely high hydrogen sulfide levels. These worms can reach a length of 3 m, and their tubular bodies have a diameter of 4 cm (1.6 in).
Kamaʻehuakanaloa Seamount is an active submarine volcano about 22 mi (35 km) off the southeast coast of the island of Hawaii. The top of the seamount is about 3,200 ft (975 m) below sea level. This seamount is on the flank of Mauna Loa, the largest active subaerial shield volcano on Earth. Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the newest volcano in the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain, a string of volcanoes that stretches about 3,900 mi (6,200 km) northwest of Kamaʻehuakanaloa. Unlike most active volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that make up the active plate margins on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Kamaʻehuakanaloa and the other volcanoes of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain are hotspot volcanoes and formed well away from the nearest plate boundary. Volcanoes in the Hawaiian Islands arise from the Hawaii hotspot, and as the youngest volcano in the chain, Kamaʻehuakanaloa is the only Hawaiian volcano in the deep submarine preshield stage of development.
Aliens of the Deep is a 2005 American documentary film directed in part by James Cameron alongside fellow cameraman and friend Steven Quale, and filmed in the IMAX 3D format. It was produced by Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures. Cameron teams with NASA scientists to explore the mid-ocean ridges, submerged chains of mountains in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that are home to some of the planet's more unusual forms of life.
A mud volcano or mud dome is a landform created by the eruption of mud or slurries, water and gases. Several geological processes may cause the formation of mud volcanoes. Mud volcanoes are not true igneous volcanoes as they do not produce lava and are not necessarily driven by magmatic activity. Mud volcanoes may range in size from merely 1 or 2 meters high and 1 or 2 meters wide, to 700 meters high and 10 kilometers wide. Smaller mud exudations are sometimes referred to as mud-pots.
The Lost City Hydrothermal Field, often referred to simply as Lost City, is an area of marine alkaline hydrothermal vents located on the Atlantis Massif at the intersection between the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Atlantis Transform Fault, in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a long-lived site of active and inactive ultramafic-hosted serpentinization, abiotically producing many simple molecules such as methane and hydrogen which are fundamental to microbial life. As such it has generated scientific interest as a prime location for investigating the origin of life on Earth and other planets similar to it.
Stephen Low is a Canadian film director and screenwriter who works extensively in the IMAX and IMAX 3D film formats. Based in Montreal, Quebec, over his 30-plus year career Low has directed numerous award-winning film documentaries including Challenger: An Industrial Romance (1980), Beavers (1988), Titanica (1991), Super Speedway (1997), Volcanoes of the Deep Sea (2003), Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag (2004), Ultimate Wave Tahiti 3D (2010), Legends of Flight 3D (2010), Rescue 3D (2011), Rocky Mountain Express (2011) and Aircraft Carrier (2017).
Adolf "Dolf" Seilacher was a German palaeontologist who worked in evolutionary and ecological palaeobiology for over 60 years. He is best known for his contributions to the study of trace fossils; constructional morphology and structuralism; biostratinomy, Lagerstätten and the Ediacaran biota.
Paleodictyon is a trace fossil, usually interpreted to be a burrow, which appears in the geologic marine record beginning in the Precambrian/Early Cambrian and in modern ocean environments. Paleodictyon were first described by Giuseppe Meneghini in 1850. The origin of the trace fossil is enigmatic and numerous candidates have been proposed.
The Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents are a group of hydrothermal vents in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean, located 260 kilometres (160 mi) southwest of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The vent field lies 2,250 metres (7,380 ft) below sea level on the northern Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge. In 1982, dredged sulfide samples were recovered from the area covered in small tube worms and prompted a return to the vent field in August 1984, where the active vent field was confirmed by HOV Alvin on leg 10 of cruise AII-112.
9 North, or Nine North, is a region of hydrothermal vents on the East Pacific Rise in the Pacific Ocean, 900 kilometers off the coast of Acapulco, Mexico; it has been so named by scientists because its latitude is 9°50' N. It was first seen to erupt in 1991 by the deep submersible Alvin during a survey for the Ocean Drilling Program. In November 1999, scientists, students, education specialists, and film crews returned to 9 North to see how the biology and landscape had changed over time. IMAX, National Geographic, and BBC film crews have made videos about the vents at 9 North, most noticeably Volcanoes of the Deep Sea (2003).
Richard Arthur Lutz is an American marine biologist and deep-sea oceanographer. He is known for deep-sea research using the Alvin submersible, and is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the ecology of deep-sea hydrothermal vents.
Paleodictyon nodosum is a living creature thought to produce a certain form of burrow nearly identical to Paleodictyon fossils. The modern burrows were found around mid-ocean ridge systems in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Although scientists have collected many of the burrows of Paleodictyon nodosum, they have never seen a live one. What a live specimen would look like is widely debated, with the debate being split into two main sides.
The Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival (WSFF), founded by Brenda Sherwood in 1994, was an annual film festival held over several days in Toronto, Ontario in June, at The Annex-Yorkville area venues; including the Bloor Cinema, the University of Toronto, and the Isabel Bader Theatre, among others. As well as film screenings, the festival hosted parties and the CFC's annual picnic.
Cindy Lee Van Dover is the Harvey Smith Professor of Biological Oceanography and chair of the Division of Marine Science and Conservation at Duke University. She is also the director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory. Her primary area of research is oceanography, but she also studies biodiversity, biogeochemistry, conservation biology, ecology, and marine science.
Peter Arnold Rona was an American oceanographer. He was also a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University.
Kenneth Craig Macdonald is an American oceanographer and marine geophysicist born in San Francisco, California in 1947. As of 2018 he is professor emeritus at the Department of Earth Science and the Marine Sciences Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). His work focuses on the tectonics and geophysics of the global mid-oceanic ridge including its spreading centers and transform faults, two of the three types of plate boundaries central to the theory of plate tectonics. His work has taken him to the north and south Atlantic oceans, the north and south Pacific oceans, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Sea of Cortez, as well as to the deep seafloor on over 50 dives in the research submersible ALVIN. Macdonald has participated in over 40 deep sea expeditions, and was chief- or co-chief scientist on 31 expeditions.
John Frederick Matthews ("Fred") Grassle was an American marine biologist, oceanographer, professor, and distinguished research scientist, notable for early work on the communities associated with deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and for his involvement in the creation of the Census of Marine Life and the first integration of marine biological data on a global scale, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System.
Deborah Sue Kelley is a marine geologist who studies hydrothermal vents, active submarine volcanoes, and life in these regions of the deep ocean.