Scientists have long had difficulty accessing remote volcanoes.
Pacific peoples have had the solution to this problem for millennia.
The Vaka Motu from the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea will be our mobile volcano observatory in Melanesia.
traditional transport
Difficulty of access has been one of the main reasons Melanesian volcanoes have gone unstudied. However, this problem only exists because modern science tends to ignore traditional knowledge (mātauranga): Pacific peoples have had the solution for millennia.
Traditional double-hulled sailing canoes – “waka” (in Te Reo Māori) or “vaka” (in Melanesia) – were designed specifically to transport people and goods over open oceans and into shallow coastal waters of the Pacific. A renaissance in waka has seen the establishment of a Pacific-wide network of voyaging societies and efforts to regain traditional celestial navigation techniques and to spread information about the true history of the Pacific region and European contact. We will use waka, in partnership with Māori (Ngahiraka Waka, Tauranga) and Melanesian (Okeanos Foundation, Port Vila) voyaging societies, as the platforms for transporting all equipment and personnel from volcano-to-volcano throughout the study areas.
The waka have living facilities for 12 people and electrical systems for powering equipment. All participants will live aboard the carbon-neutral and sustainable waka while traveling between target volcanoes.
high-tech capabilities
Impassable terrain or unfavourable winds often make it difficult to get our instruments right into volcanic plumes. We will employ our fleet of volcanic plume-sampling drones to access, measure, and sample otherwise-inaccessible emissions.
We will investigate and sample gases from submarine volcanoes using a state-of-the-art portable submersible. The NZ-patented BoxFish Robotics submersible will be launched directly from the deck of the waka, with high-definition cameras for underwater exploration, and submarine gas detection and analysis instruments.
We will use a full suite of modern techniques for analyzing volcanic plumes, including UV spectroscopy for SO2 fluxes (top) and MultiGAS electrochemical sensors for gas compositions (bottom). Images from Trail By Fire.
Custom-built drones and state-of-the art submersibles will allow access to even the most remote volcanic plumes.
Comprehensive measurements
We will deploy state-of-the art instruments for analysis of: gas flux (mass/time) using ultraviolet spectroscopy, gas composition using electrochemical sensors and filter packs, aerosol components using cascade impactors, carbon isotopes using Isotope Ratio Infrared Spectroscopy, and more. No component of the volcanic plumes will evade detection.