Esther Sumner on Turbidity Currents

About this episode

Though turbidity currents are massive and frequent underwater events, we have rarely observed them directly. Esther Sumner is one of the few researchers who has. In the podcast, she describes what it's like to instrument an active submarine canyon, what these flows have revealed about the way sediment moves across the seafloor — and the day her team accidentally flew an underwater robot into a live turbidity current in the Mendocino canyon off the coast of California. She is an Associate Professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Southampton. Illustrations and full transcript: https://geologybites.com/esther-sumner