email on land: jdelaney@u.washington.edu

I completed a degree in geology at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa before going to the University of Virginia for a Masters Degree. As an ore deposit geologist in Maine, I became fascinated with processes that concentrate metals. Gravitating to the heart of the copper mining industry, I searched for base and precious metals in Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona while studying economic geology at the University of Arizona in Tucson. After six months living in and working on active volcanoes of the western Galapagos Islands, I decided to study active volcanism the rest of my life. Upon completion of a dissertation on submarine volcanic gases, I became a marine geologist in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington, in 1977.

My research and teaching have focused on active submarine volcano-hydrothermal systems along the global spreading-center network. After recovering a unique set of rocks with the submarine ALVIN from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in 1980, it became evident that fracturing and mineral deposition in those rocks was identical to quartz veins beneath massive copper-iron sulfide deposits on land. The idea that placing instruments within active submarine vent systems would allow direct insights into the formation of metal deposits seemed to close a circle for me. The recognition that volcanic gases provide a significant nutrient source for the microbial communities that are the base of the chemosynthetic food chain at ridge crests completed another loop. With many colleagues I began to focus my energies on developing ideas and techniques for establishing a permanent seafloor observatory to study the temporal and spatial interactions among many processes involved in the mineral deposit habitats of submarine volcanoes.

I am also fascinated with the poems of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694). He was a master at capturing the essence of an experience in very few words.

Whether the pond is only a pond, or the pond is a mind and the frog is an idea, is left to the reader. In many ways, the simplicity and elegance of such a distillation is akin to what scientists strive to extract from their observations.