Click on the photos below to download a high resolution copy. Credit and caption information appears below each photo.
Caption: A tremendous mussel biomass adorns the lava ridges at the crest of submarine NW Eifuku volcano north of Uracus near the proposed monument. These seven inch mussels are so densely massed that they obscure the bottom. The white galatheid crabs are 2.5 inches long.
Credit: Image courtesy of the NOAA Submarine Ring of Fire 2004 Exploration and the NOAA Vents Program
Caption: Brown Booby and nest on Maug Island. Seabird populations in the Northern Mariana Islands are significant for Micronesia, and Maug and Uracus islands support regionally important seabird colonies.
Credit: NOAA, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Russell Moffitt, photographer
Caption: Yellow Tang near Maug Island in the Mariana Archipelago.
Credit: NOAA, Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, Coral Reef Ecosystem Division, Robert Schroeder, photographer
Caption: Soft corals and tropical fish share a paradise of habitat on the summit of an underwater volcano over 500 feet deep in the Mariana Island Arc, a 900-mile chain of volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean that includes the Northern Mariana Islands. These underwater volcanoes, some of which emerge as islands, rise almost 10,000 feet from the deep-sea floor just west of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth.
Credit: Image courtesy of the NOAA Submarine Ring of Fire 2004 Exploration and the NOAA Vents Program
Caption: Champagne Vent is a remarkable hydrothermal site discovered by scientists in 2004 near the proposed Mariana Trench Marine National Monument. Underwater chimneys vent cloudy white fluid measured at 217°F and supercharged with dissolved gases into the surrounding seawater of 36°F. More than a mile below sea level at the summit of NW Eifuku volcano, this vent has the highest carbon dioxide concentration recorded for oceanic hydrothermal fluids. Scientists named this vent "Champagne" for the bubbles of liquid carbon dioxide exiting the sea floor around the chimneys in never-seen-before abundance. It is one of the few places in the world where this phenomenon occurs.
Image courtesy of the NOAA Submarine Ring of Fire 2004 Exploration and the NOAA Vents Program
