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A sinuous (curvy) lava flow is very well displayed in this DSL-120 sonar record. The two yellow arrows point to the edges of it. Can you follow where the flow went? The black line points to the fissure, or crack, where we think the lava probably erupted. The red arrow at the top points to the cracks and fissures of the axial summit trough. The blue line is the nadir, or centerline, of the record and marks the line along which the sonar fish was towed.

One interesting observation is that the fissure where we think the lava erupted is not very near to the edge of the axial trough. Yet we thought that lavas erupted from fissures and cracks in the axial summit trough. Are our current ideas wrong? These types of records are making us rethink the ideas that we came out here with about how lava erupts on the East Pacific Rise.

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