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As Falco As we passed Cape Disappointment and returned to the mouth of the Columbia River, with Astoria rising in the background, I reflected on the 21 days we had spent at sea. What I remember most was that I had no idea there was so much to learn about bubbles.
I have studied animals at seeps across most of the continental margins of the United States, and have observed everything from small animals to large animals. I never imagined that scientists were doing the same with bubbles. But thanks to the work of the USGS, Schmidt Ocean Institute, and our partners at the British Geological Survey, GEOMAR, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I was able to see just how powerful these bubbles can be.
Penetrating science to scale
We have achieved really impressive results on these seeps. It is very rare that a group of scientists can combine so many disciplines to study this specific type of environment in so many ways.
We have bill and Falcon Mapping all these bubble plumes From the exudate. Diana and Nancy Viewing What causes the leak? and how the seeping fluids formed the surrounding rocks. Jens and Tim Quantifying How much methane emerging and where they are going. Tamara Viewing Methane itselfWhat it contains and how it is formed. Howard and Adam Viewing What consumes methane? and the speed at which they do things. Jenny What I’m watching Depends on the exudate Directly or indirectly in search of habitat and food.
The great thing is that we’re creating this incredible dataset that can scale from a single seep to an entire region. We’ll be able to use our work to predict habitats based on plume profiles and associated seafloor features and then apply that to the entire U.S. Pacific margin and potentially even the Atlantic as well.
Personal Focus
This has been a really rewarding experience for me. I’ve never had the opportunity to look so deeply at a habitat system. Our Astoria Canyon 500 site is a perfect example. We’ve mapped it; I think Bill and Falcon There has been no scanning and rescanning with multibeam sonar.
Additionally, thanks to Gas Quant, Bubble Box, and UNC Landers, we can be here for 12 hours and then revisit the site a few days later to see what has changed and investigate how the seepage behaves at different times of the day.
Last but not least, we are able to observe the animals living here throughout the day or even for multiple days in a row to see who is here, where they live and what they eat.
Next step
So what’s next? Well, there’s definitely a lot of lab work to do. Thanks to Schmidt’s facilities and the amazing ROV team, we were able to collect a wide variety of samples, from gases to clams to rocks. Now we’ll be taking these samples back to various labs where we’ll analyze them to answer key questions.
For example – what creates these leaky fuel systems? How does methane migrate through sediments to the seafloor? Nancy and Diana’s This work will tell us about the history of these rocks and sediments. Tamara finds more heliumwhich could indicate that some of the seeps include gases from deep within the region where the two plates of the margin interact.
Another question is, are the chemical and biological processes on the seafloor different from those that occurred in the sample in the lab? Howard and Adam’s Experiment This is the first time we have been able to measure the rates of bacterial processes important for methane dynamics under the pressure, temperature and environmental conditions that actually occur on the seafloor.
Finally, how do seeps relate to the broader marine ecosystem? We found in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico that seeps form extensive ecosystems composed of a variety of habitat types, including bacterial mats, tubeworms, clams, and authigenic carbonates, and we have confirmed this to a large extent in the Pacific by expanding previous research in the region. However, the extent to which these benthic habitats interact with the water column in terms of transferring carbon or energy to mid-water organisms, such as pelagic fish and invertebrates, is unclear.
For example, could organisms living in the mid-water column dive down to feed on the communities around the seeps, then swim up to feed on the surface communities? If so, then it means that nutrients from these deep seeps could end up being important near the surface, too. That would have major implications for overall ocean health.
Move forward
It’s important to remember that not too long ago people thought the ocean floor was an empty abyssal plain, devoid of life and features. If you’ve been following Schmidt’s live streams, you’ll see how wrong that view was. The more we map and study the ocean floor, the more we discover just how teeming with life and activity it is.
In fact, in the past five years alone, we have discovered hundreds of methane seeps along the margins of the U.S. Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico. How important are these seeps to the ocean’s overall biological activity? And how do these seeps relate to the geological forces that drive the Earth’s motion? These are questions we are trying to address on this cruise with Schmidt and on past cruises with other partners.
I hope you enjoy following us as we discover new seeps, rediscover old ones, and collect tons of new data. We still have years of work to do, but thanks to the support of Schmidt and all of our collaborators here, we are off to a great start. Thanks to the fantastic team Falco and ROV Subastianand thank the Schmidt Ocean Institute for providing this rare research opportunity.
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