Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field

The Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field is located on the Mid-Cayman Spreading Centre, in the Cayman Trough.[1] At approximately 5000 m below sea level, it is the world's deepest known hydrothermal vent site. The hydrothermal plume emanating from Beebe was detected in 2010,[2] and the site was discovered later that year.[1] The vent field hosts two main areas of black smoker venting, with a fluid at temperatures of over 400 °C and a low salinity of about 2.3 wt% NaCl. Under these conditions, the venting fluid is supercritical at the vent orifice,[3] and is the only site shown to host sustained supercritical venting.

## Naming confusion

The convention, according to the Interridge Database, is to name vent sites when they are visually confirmed. When a hydrothermal plume was discovered in 2009 (published in 2010[2]) in the area of the Beebe Vent Field, the field which that plume originated from was pre-emptively called the Piccard hydrothermal vent field before the exact location of that field was known. When the vent site was visually confirmed later in 2010, it was named Beebe.[1] This convention exists for a reason. When a plume is discovered, it can be difficult to know from which vent site that plume actually originated, and likewise, when a vent site is found it can't be known for sure which plume it created. So, there is no real certainty that the vent site which was discovered in 2010 is the "Piccard" site - if it were later to turn out not to be, then this would be a large error. Instead, it is better to name vent sites only when you know exactly where they are, which means visually confirming them. This break from convention has led to some confusion in the literature, with some publications referring to the site as Piccard, and some as Beebe. At this point, it is known for certain (by visual comparison and navigation) that the papers using these different names refer to the same vent field, but it is not known for certain that the plume discovered in 2009, and its respective "Piccard" vent site, is the same vent site that is now referred to as Beebe and Piccard. This article follows the naming convention set out by Interridge.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Connelly, Douglas P.; Copley, Jonathan T.; Murton, Bramley J.; Stansfield, Kate; Tyler, Paul A.; German, Christopher R.; Van Dover, Cindy L.; Amon, Diva et al. (10 January 2012). "Hydrothermal vent fields and chemosynthetic biota on the world's deepest seafloor spreading centre". Nature Communications 3 (1): 1–9. doi:10.1038/ncomms1636. PMID 22233630. PMC 3274706. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n1/full/ncomms1636.html.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 German, C. R.; Bowen, A.; Coleman, M. L.; Honig, D. L.; Huber, J. A.; Jakuba, M. V.; Kinsey, J. C.; Kurz, M. D. et al. (21 July 2010). "Diverse styles of submarine venting on the ultraslow spreading Mid-Cayman Rise". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (32): 14020–14025. doi:10.1073/pnas.1009205107. PMID 20660317.
3. ↑ Webber, A.P.; Murton, B.; Roberts, S.; Hodgkinson, M.. "Supercritical Venting and VMS Formation at the Beebe Hydrothermal Field, Cayman Spreading Centre". Geochemical Society. http://goldschmidt.info/2014/abstracts/abstractView?abstractId=2504. Retrieved 29 July 2014.

## External links

* Beebe vent site in the Interridge Database

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