(waves murmuring) - [Radio] Bridge, all lines on board.

- [Radio] Copy on the... - [Person] Okay, we're going to let 'er go.

- [Radio] Bridge, bow lines on deck.

- [Narrator] There's an underwater volcano off Oregon's coast.

(ship horn blaring) And it's been a little grumpy.

- We're moving.

Woo hoo!

- [Narrator] 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.

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

(laughs) - [Narrator] 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.

(ship horn blaring) (group cheers) - Well, back in the old days, they didn't have internet on the ships.

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

- Yeah, like Ham Radio from the ship.

"I love you.

Over."

- Your love for me is over?

(all laughing) - [Bill] Yeah.

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

- Axial is the most active volcano in the Northeast Pacific, which maybe some people don't know 'cause it's hidden under the ocean.

But it's actually more active than any of the volcanoes were familiar with, like the ones in the Cascades, Mount St. Helens, Mt.

Hood, Mt Rainier, 'cause it's erupted three times in the last 25 years.

- [Narrator] 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 it's going to be a false alarm.

Here there's just a bunch of tube worms and octopuses on the seafloor.

They don't care.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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 of the science that needs to get done, get's done.

- [Radio] Launch when ready.

- [Radio] We are ready to go in the van.

- [Person] Copy that.

- [Bill] We're working around the clock.

We don't want any downtime.

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

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Radio] Just let us know when it's on it's way up.

- You got it.

Will do.

- [Narrator] The code is sent by this transducer as a sound through the water.

- Okay, now I'm going low power.

- [TR] Okay.

(device chirps) - [Narrator] 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!

- [Tepper-Rasmussen] Bridge, bridge, back deck.

- [Radio] Yeah, go ahead.

- [TR] Hey, it's on its way up.

(energetic music) - [Narrator] Over the next week everyone settles in on the ship.

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

- [Sentry Crew Member] Ryan, that's good.

(energetic music) - [Pete] Came back.

One piece.

Got to open it up.

In we go.

- 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.

- Rotate!

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

- So the sea floor goes up and down, you know, like 2.5 to 3.5 meters, which is, you know, eight to 10 feet, so that's a lot of motion.

- [Narrator] 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 meant to kill people is really valuable.

- [Narrator] Once Jason dips beneath the waves, the crew in the control center, called the Van, take over.

- The north edge of it is just- - [Narrator] Being in the van is like being on another planet.

- There is a bit of a pinch myself to check, oh, wait, this is amaz...

This is completely awesome.

(gentle music) - This could be good.

- [Jeff] It's still magic for Bill.

And I know he's done dozens and dozens of these dives.

- [Narrator] But Bill Chadwick hasn't always been a sea-going 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.

Yeah, like I want to do more of that, that was like super fun.

- [Narrator] Volcanoes became a fixture of his life.

(bright music) - My mom is also a geologist and so they're like huge nerds about this stuff.

So whatever 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.

- [Narrator] And soon, Bill found another passion: exploring volcanoes under the ocean.

A big part of his work has been Axial.

- I think that Bill has played a huge role in the interest in Axial Seamount.

You know, 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] Swapping out the temperature gauges requires precision from the pilot controlling Jason's claws.

- Rotate it 90 degrees so the thing is pointing down.

- [Narrator] The angle has to be perfect to get the probe end down into the vent.

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

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

On the left there's the sulfite worm.

Have their red palm fronds sticking out.

Then a few scale worms crawling around, grazing on the bacteria.

- [Person] Woah.

Wow!

(group gasps) - [Narrator] 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, floating camping.

- [Narrator] Complete with art projects.

- When everything goes well we'll do an art project.

So this time we made a giant octopus.

The details.

- Maybe a little higher.

- [Person] Oh wow!

- [Narrator] Close encounters with wildlife.

(whimsical music) - [Jes] What you think?

Is it there?

What?!

- [Stephani] OK, oh my gosh.

Okay.

- If the boat was lowered to the ocean, I feel like you could have reached out and touched it.

(whale puffs) - [Narrator] And what the scientists refer to as variable gravity ping pong.

(whimsical music continues) (ball clanking) - Trying to cheat.

- We play a little ping pong occasionally, 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.

- [Narrator] The final 36 hours on the Axial Seamount has come, and there's still a lot of science to fit in.

- [Kelly] He's looking stressed about schedule.

- [Narrator] And this is where Bill as chief scientist earns his keep.

The schedule is proving tricky.

- Mad chief scientist, that could be the story, goes insane trying to figure out the schedule.

- Put him in the brig with a straight jacket- - And manacles on.

- [Narrator] But with a little more juggling.

- All right, it might work.

- [Narrator] Now he needs to get everyone on the same page.

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

(laughs) - Oh good.

- [Narrator] First, the crew of Sentry, the yellow submarine.

- Alright.

So.

- [Narrator] Then, a check in on Jason.

- [First Mate] Bill, any words on when these float are coming up?

- [Narrator] With some stops along the way.

- -Definitely delayed.

- Okay.

- [TR] Yo Bill, what one do you want to put in first?

- The north one.

- [TR] All right.

- All right, here we go.

So Akel, you would still like to come up and have some time on deck?

- [Akel] I would.

That would be great.

- So, I have a scenario where that could barely work.

(people laughing) - [Narrator] 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.

- [Narrator] 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!

- [Crew Member] Let's do it.

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

- [Narrator] For a while, Axial seemed like it was headed to 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.

- [Narrator] The story of Bill and the volcano is not over yet.

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

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