Submarine Alteration of Seamount Rocks in the Canary Islands: Insights from Mineralogy, Trace Elements, and Stable Isotopes

Sammanfattning: Seamounts play an important role in facilitating the exchange of elements between the oceanic lithosphere and the overlying seawater. This water-rock interaction is caused by circulating seawater and controls the chemical exchange in submarine and sub-seafloor rocks. The exchange mechanism plays a major role in determining the final composition of these submarine rocks. This investigation is designed to evaluate the (i) degree of alteration and element mobility, (ii) to identify relations between alteration types and (iii) to characterise the chemical processes that takes place during seafloor and sub-seafloor alteration in the Central Atlantic region. The investigated submarine rocks are typically altered. They are composed mostly of calcite and clay minerals in addition to original magmatic feldspar, olivine, pyroxene, quartz, biotite, and amphibole.  Elemental analyses show that submarine rocks with high water-rock ratio have experienced near complete loss of Silica and alkali elements to seawater but are enriched in calcium and phosphorous. In addition, there is a strong enrichment of trace elements such as Sr, Ti, Rb and trivalent REEs in altered submarine samples that are likely residual in character. Oxygen and hydrogen isotopic values indicate a low temperature alteration process at less than 50℃.  Nannofossils were present in one sample and investigation suggests that the seamount south of El Hierro evolved from a young Canary activity rather than the early Cretaceous magmatic events as has been argued previously.