Leg 195: seafloor observatories and the history of the Kuroshio Current

Leg 195 had three distinct objectives. The first was to install a long-term geochemical observatory at a cold vent in the throat of South Chamorro Seamount, an active serpentine mud volcano in the Mariana forearc which is bringing fluids, mud, metamorphic rocks and mantle xenoliths to the seafoor from the decollement 25 km below. The second was to install a state-of-the-art borehole seismic observatory almost 600 m below the seafloor in the middle of the Philippine plate to fill an important gap in the International Ocean Network (ION) net. The third was a contingency objective. If time allowed, piston cores were to be obtained at a shallow water site under the Kuroshio Current in order to study climate change in east Asia over the past 1.5 my.