Novel device to collect deep-sea porewater in situ: A focus on benthic carbonate chemistry

Abstract

We have designed, built, tested, and deployed a novel device to extract porewater from deep-sea sediments in situ, constructed to work with a standard multicorer. Despite the importance of porewater measurements for numerous applications, many sampling artifacts can bias data and interpretation during traditional porewater processing from shipboard-processed cores. A well-documented artifact occurs in deep-sea porewater when carbonate precipitates during core recovery as a function of temperature and pressure changes, while porewater is in contact with sediment grains before filtration, thereby lowering porewater alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC). Here, we present a novel device built to obviate these sampling artifacts by filtering porewater in situ on the seafloor, with a focus near the sediment–water interface on cm-scale resolution, to obtain accurate porewater profiles. We document 1–10% alkalinity loss in shipboard-processed sediment cores compared to porewater filtered in situ, at depths of 1600–3200 m. We also show that alkalinity loss is a function of both weight % sedimentary CaCO₃ and water column depth. The average ratio of alkalinity loss to DIC loss in shipboard-processed sediment cores relative to in situ porewater is 2.2, consistent with the signal expected from carbonate precipitation. In addition to collecting porewater for defining natural profiles, we also conducted the first in situ dissolution experiments within the sediment column using isotopically labeled calcite. We present evidence of successful deployments of this device on and adjacent to the Cocos Ridge in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific across a range of depths and calcite saturation states.