A team of scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) are currently with the German deep-sea research vessel SONNE in the Pacific.

Together with partners of the University of Bremen, Jacobs University, as well as the BGR, researchers are examining the ocean floor at a depth of 4,000 meters.

There are a lot of subsea mountains which have oxygen-rich water circulating in their basaltic crust.

Sabine Kasten, AWI-geo chemist, leads the team, which together with their colleagues wants to find out how this sea water circulation in the crust affects the geochemical signatures and bio-geochemical processes in the overlying sediments.