Funds are provided to study the effect of seawater on newly formed oceanic crust during hydrothermal circulation processes. This will be accomplished through the analysis of elemental flux between seawater and crust by studying 500 m of layer 3 gabbros cored during ODP drilling on SW Indian Ridge. These processes exert major control over the chemistry of elements in ocean and their understanding is thus important to the study of paleoechemistry.
