BLOG 11: Researcher Profile: Dr Rebecca Carey

By Chris Meagher

What is your job title and role on this voyage?

My name is Dr Rebecca Carey and I am a researcher and senior lecturer in Earth Sciences and the University of Tasmania.  On this voyage I am the Deputy Chief Scientist and which means I assist the Chief Scientist in planning and running the science team and preparing the voyage report.

How did you become interested in geology?

We had a quarry on our farm in Queensland and I spent lots of time in the quarry looking for gold and diamonds (i.e. Quartz and minerals).

What is your favourite thing about your job?

When I go into the field to actually measure things and do science. Here on the RV Investigator I enjoy working as part of a small, but very close knit team. When you’re in the field or on a ship you develop these really strong relationships, and I like the good, positive culture that forms.

Have there been any unexpected results so far?

I know we’re sort of mid-voyage but I think things are going exceptionally well. Old seafloor volcanoes are notoriously difficult to dredge because we have relatively poor resolution of the sea floor. In my experience dredging these old volcanoes is very difficult and they often need 3 or 4 dredges to get the types of rocks you are looking for. It’s been a surprise that we’ve managed to get good rocks from all but one seamount and I think we’re up to dredging 10 seamounts so far.

How important is the mapping being done on this voyage?

The mapping data gives us information about the geomorphology of the seamounts, and this tells us a lot about the ancient tectonic setting where these volcanoes and seamounts were formed. So for example one of our hypotheses is that these really big seamounts that we are going over are really intra-plate edifices (or hot-spot volcanoes) meaning that magma has come up through the crust and not at a tectonic plate boundary. This means that they have had a very long supply of magma to which allows the seamount edifice to grow very large. Over the next few months the undergraduates who are on board will do a geomorphological analysis of these seamounts and compare that to modern day active submarine seamounts to see if we can find what they are most similar to on the modern sea floor.

What do you hope are the outcomes from this voyage?

Our hypothesis is that the volcanism responsible for these seamounts is related to a mantle plume, and that the mantle plume potentially could have been responsible for some of the volcanism that we see in the submarine environment around Tasmania and also onshore Tasmania.

Explain why you think it’s important for students to study geology at school.

I think it’s important to understand Earth processes and how humans interact with the environment, and to give students more respect for the environment. Also geology is cool!