Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: Come on!

There he is, there he is, there he is.

[ exclaims ] Get him out of there, buddy!

Good boy!

[ laughing ] WOMAN: Whoo, high five!

Yeah!

JAHN: Next, on Oregon Field Guide: This could be good.

Bill Chadwick is on a quest to learn the secrets of an underwater volcano that lurks right off the Oregon coast.

We're on our way.

Then, we'll take you behind the scenes as the Oregon Field Guide crew balances round-the-clock science and fun aboard the RV Thompson.

[ laughter ] And finally, a relaxing photo essay that brings you up close with the life that makes its home around this underwater volcano.

Over 200 miles that way is one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.

It's called the Axial Seamount.

It erupted in 2011, 2015, and every time it erupts, we learn something because scientists will spend sometimes weeks at sea studying it.

And on one expedition, Oregon Field Guide's Jes Burns and Stephani Gordon got to witness what was happening right alongside them.

[ indistinct chatter over PA ] MAN: Okay, we're going to let her go.

MAN [ over PA ]: Bridge to bow, line's on deck.

BURNS: There's an underwater volcano off Oregon's coast... [ boat horn honking ] ...and it's been a little grumpy.

We're moving!

Woo-hoo!

It's happening.

That's why these scientists are headed out to sea.

Volcanologist Bill Chadwick is chief scientist on this cruise.

He's been on dozens of these research trips to undersea volcanoes all over the world.

BILL: I remember somebody telling me, "Yeah, being at sea, it's kind of like being in jail, except you can drown."

[ laughs ] Bill's family has come to bid bon voyage to him and his daughter, Kelly, who's come along as a data logger on the trip.

CHILD: Honk the horn!

[ boat horn honking ] [ crowd cheers ] KELLY: Well, back in the old days, they didn't have Internet on the ship.

Dad telling me that when he would call my mom when I was a baby, it was over the radio.

Yeah, it was like ham radio from the ship.

"I love you, over."

[ all laugh ] "Your love for me is over?"

[ all laugh ] BILL: Yeah.

The ship's destination for the next two weeks is the Axial Seamount, a highly active volcano located 300 miles off the Oregon coast.

BILL: Axial is the most active volcano in the northeast Pacific, which maybe some people don't know because it's hidden under the ocean.

But it's actually more active than any of the volcanoes we're familiar with, like the ones in the Cascades-- Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, Mount Rainier-- because it's erupted three times in the last 25 years.

Bill has been studying the Axial Seamount for more than two decades, in part trying to figure out how to predict volcanic eruptions.

This is kind of a natural laboratory where we can make forecasts without worrying about if it's going to be a false alarm.

You know, here there's just a bunch of tubeworms and octopuses on the seafloor.

They... they don't care.

The Axial Seamount sits on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, where two tectonic plates are spreading apart.

There's volcanic activity all up and down the ridge.

And that's where new seafloor is created by eruptions.

It's a shield volcano, like you'd find in Hawaii or Iceland, meaning it doesn't blow its top when it erupts.

Instead, the magma below causes it to crack open on its slopes and ooze syrupy lava.

As chief scientist on the ship, it's Bill's job to make sure all the science that needs to get done gets done.

Launch when ready.

WOMAN [ over walkie ]: We are ready to go.

MAN: Copy that.

BILL: We're working around the clock.

We don't want any downtime.

We want to be go, go, go, go, go.

One of the first tasks for the team is to recover a pressure recording instrument that's been sitting atop the volcano, now a mile below the ship.

We just sent the release code to an instrument that's been on the seafloor for the last two years.

MAN [ over radio ]: Let us know when it's on the way up.

You got it.

Will do.

The code is sent by this transducer as a sound through the water.

[ high-pitched beeping ] Okay, now I'm going low power.

MAN: Okay.

[ laughs ] [ chirping sound ] When the instrument on the bottom hears the right sequence of chirps, it releases from its weighted base and floats to the surface.

BILL: Coming up.

Yay!

MAN: Bridge, bridge, back deck.

MAN [ over radio ]: Yeah, I got it.

MAN: Hey, it's on its way up.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Over the next week, everyone settles in on the ship.

Aft is clear.

Aft is clear.

Ready to come up?

Moving up.

The scientists and engineers get all the different research projects going.

Ryan, that's good, that's good.

Here we are, one piece.

Gotta open it up.

Here we go.

MAN: There's not many opportunities in life to spend all of your waking moments interacting with other scientists and doing research.

It's very busy.

There's a lot going on.

It is a very science-focused time.

It's also a lot of hard work and often we don't get enough sleep.

MAN: Rotate!

Bill's research involves measuring the movement of the volcano as it's pushed up by the magma below.

BILL: So the seafloor goes up and down, you know, like two and a half to three and a half meters, which is, you know, eight to ten feet, so that's a lot of motion.

His instruments are placed on the seafloor by Jason, a remotely operated submarine.

What we can learn from this system and hopefully apply to volcanoes on land that do have the potential to cause lots of harm and to kill people is really valuable.

Once Jason dips below the waves, the crew in the control center, called the van, take over.

North edge of it is just...

Being in the van is like being on another planet.

There is a bit of a "pinch myself" to check, "Oh, wait, this is amazing.

This is completely awesome."

[ ♪♪♪ ] This could be good.

JEFF: It's still magic for Bill, and I know he's done dozens and dozens of these dives.

But Bill Chadwick hasn't always been a seagoing volcanologist.

He got his start on a much more famous Northwest volcano.

The big thing for me was Mount St. Helens erupted when I was in college.

Before I knew it, I was getting in a helicopter and flying into the crater of Mount St. Helens.

I decided then, I was like an adrenaline junkie or something.

Like, I... Yeah.

Like, "I want to do more of that.

That was, like, super fun."

Volcanoes became a fixture of his life.

[ ♪♪♪ ] KELLY: My mom is also a geologist.

And so they're, like, huge nerds about this stuff.

So whenever we go on vacation, we always go-- Like, we have to go look at the cool rocks.

And so I've seen so much lava in my life.

And soon, Bill found another passion: exploring volcanoes under the ocean.

A big part of his work has been Axial.

HALEY: I think that Bill has played a huge role in the interest of Axial Seamount.

They put this pressure instrument down in 1998, and when they came back to pick the instrument up, miraculously, they had recorded an eruption.

And so that was just sort of, you know, instant interest in Axial.

Using their data, Bill and his research partner, Scott Nooner, predicted the 2015 Axial eruption about seven months in advance.

This was the first accurate volcanic eruption forecast on the planet based off ground deformation data alone.

So they won't tell you that, but... it's pretty cool.

One of Jason's planned stops is a group of hydrothermal vents in the Axial Seamount's caldera.

BILL: There's all this heat underground, the ocean water circulates underground, gets heated up, comes out at hydrothermal vents.

Swapping out the temperature gauges requires precision from the pilot controlling Jason's claws.

Rotate it 90 degrees so the thing's pointed down.

The angle has to be perfect to get the probe down into the vent.

Hold a little bit further away... BILL: You like it?

MAN: I think it's good.

With the job done, the crew takes some time to investigate the thriving life around the vents.

BILL: It's full of chemical energy, and there's microbes and whole ecosystems that have evolved to take advantage of that energy.

To the left there's the sulfide worms, have their red palm fronds sticking out.

A few scale worms crawling around, grazing on the bacteria.

[ indistinct chatter ] WOMAN: Whoa!

[ people gasping, exclaiming ] Even though the scientific work runs around the clock, the crew does take time to unwind.

It's kind of like you're going camping with a bunch of people... a floating camping.

Complete with art projects...

When everything goes well, we'll do a nice art project.

So this time we made a giant octopus.

The details.

Maybe a little higher.

[ both laugh ] Oh, wow!

...close encounters with wildlife... WOMAN: Anything?

It's there?

What?

[ people gasping, exclaiming, cheering ] WOMAN: Okay!

Oh, my gosh!

Okay.

If the boat was lower to the ocean, I feel like you could've reached out and touched it.

...and what the scientists refer to as "variable gravity ping-pong."

He's trying to cheat.

[ woman laughs ] SCOTT: Play a little ping-pong occasionally.

Yeah, that's right.

I think there aren't that many fields in science that you can make close connections with people in quite the same way.

[ distorted cheer ] The final 36 hours on the Axial Seamount is calm, and there's still a lot of science to fit in.

He's looking stressed about the schedule.

And this is where Bill, as chief scientist, earns his keep-- the schedule is proving tricky.

[ laughing ] Mad chief scientist.

That could be the story.

Yeah.

Goes insane trying to... [ laughing ] Put him in the brig in a straitjacket.

Yeah, put the manacles on him.

But with a little more juggling... All right, it might work.

Mm-hmm.

...now he needs to get everyone on the same page.

They want to capture on camera the moment when I have a mental breakdown.

Oh, good.

[ laughs ] First, the crew of Sentry, the yellow submarine.

All right, so... Then a check-in on Jason... Bill, any word on when these floats are... ...with some stops along the way.

Definitely delayed.

MAN: Oh, Bill!

What?

Which do you want to put in first?

The north one.

Got it.

All right, here we go.

So, you would still like to have some time on deck?

I would.

That'd be great.

So I have a scenario where that could barely work.

[ all laugh ] Next stop, up to the bridge to clear things with the ship's crew.

BILL: Only two more to go.

Our exercise for the day.

And then right back down again to the main lab.

All right, so, this is called the board of lies.

The more items I put on here, the more chance of it being a lie.

I'm getting into deep-lie territory here.

That's what the rest of the cruise looks like.

Whew!

MAN: Let's do it.

BILL: You know, at the beginning of my career, not much was known about deep-sea volcanoes at all.

For a while, Axial seemed like it was headed for another eruption, but the data collected on this cruise shows that it's still likely several years away.

If you think you know what's going on, nature will usually make you humble-- humbler by doing something you didn't expect.

Yeah, it's just really fun to try to figure it all out.

And the story of Bill and the volcano is not over yet.

There's still plenty more to learn about Pacific Northwest's most active volcano.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Got it.

WOMAN [ whispering ]: Oh, my God, that is so cool!

Look at the purple!

[ ♪♪♪ ] I'm Jes Burns.

I'm a science producer for Oregon Field Guide.

And we spent two weeks out in the ocean filming scientists studying an underwater volcano.

I didn't really know how I was going to pull this off, and luckily we had Stephani on staff who had done this a million times.

I was a marine biologist for about 12 years.

Loved it, spent a lot of time in the field.

It's kind of the nexus of the two worlds that I've invested a lot of time in, science and then filmmaking.

It's definitely my sweet spot.

[ ♪♪♪ ] BURNS: People are working around the clock, and so we were on call basically for 14 days straight.

Part of my job is like figuring out what we need to be awake for... [ laughs ] is what it comes down to.

We decided, the first few days, it was going to be all wide shots, and that served two purposes.

One, we could just figure out what was going on.

But it also just kind of kept us out of people's way.

We wanted people to get comfortable with us being there and being there all the time.

[ laughs ] I mean... With the help of Jason, a remotely operated submarine, the science team is trying to figure out how to predict volcanic eruptions months or even years in advance.

BURNS: They just put it in the water, and so it's dropping down.

STEPHANI: It takes time to do science.

If you get to be there for some of the moments of discovery, some of the wonder... Oh, yeah, here's a fissure.

...I know we get deeper stories that way.

BILL: So this is lava that erupted in 1998.

STEPHANI: So, like, what is it like to be there?

What is it like to peer over the shoulder of a scientist who's doing this very careful thing with the arms of Jason, like picking up a sample or, like, placing a temperature probe?

BURNS: They adjust it to within millimeters.

And to me, that is indicative of how painstaking they are about their work and about the trustworthiness of their work.

That is so cool!

BURNS: You walk into the Jason van, and it's like walking into another world.

It's dark and it's cool and it's quiet, and there's this mechanical shudder that happens with the waves, it's like this "wah-wah-wah-wah," and it would just be the place that you would go to, like, at 3:00 a.m. if you couldn't sleep.

You'd just sit on the back wall and you'd watch.

Those moments were just really kind of the most magical for me.

[ ♪♪♪ ] STEPHANI: Some days it's flat and calm, and other days you're just trying to focus on staying upright as you walk down the hall carrying, like, for me, a camera, right?

When you're working that many days and that many hours in a row, we definitely had our grumpy moments, but you kind of gotta let some things be fun.

I don't know if I'm surviving if I get in the water.

Jes is definitely the better ping-pong player.

BURNS: Being with people that long, you actually do form relationships with them.

Barriers come down... Oh!

[ both laughing ] WOMAN: There it is again!

Okay.

Oh, my gosh!

BURNS: One day, a five-star whale just came up, and it triggered, like, pandemonium on the boat.

BILL: When you can hear 'em breathe, that's five-star.

BURNS: You saw just how huge this fin whale was.

WOMAN: God!

Oh, my God!

MAN: Wow!

BURNS: Everybody just kind of had this shared sense of awe and wonder for the world.

STEPHANI: To want to do our best for the ocean and to not take it for granted, you also have to see these moments of joy.

So I know that's an important part to share.

The most challenging drone flying I have ever done is from ships.

The drone's coming in, and it looks like the drone is going "rrrr, rrrr" like an eight-foot swing.

I was like, "Stephani, keep it level."

[ laughs ] And she'd be like, "It is level!

We're not level!"

And so she had to time it, and I'd have to try to grab it.

And occasionally I missed.

Got my first drone casualty.

Never miscalculated again.

I got really good at catching that drone.

STEPHANI: I loved having the chance to tell a rich science story...

Atmosphere, ready to come up.

Like walking a dog.

A really big dog.

...that other people get to see what it was like and get to feel and get to experience it.

With Oregon Field Guide, you get information, you get context, and you get people, you get humanity... BILL: Whoo!

First seal!

To understand people who have experiences that are different from you, which is just super valuable right now... it's a gift to the region, and it's a gift being able to work on it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... and the following... and contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.