Amazing Dive - Part 4: Methane Mushroom

June 3rd @ 12:45pm – Finally, while recovering a piece of equipment designed to study levels of methane in the ocean sediments, we encountered a hard carbonate crust in places that seems to cap some of this seabed methane. Not surprisingly (in hindsight), when we did a push-core sample through one of these layers, there was a small eruption of gas in what looked like a mushroom cloud!

Most of these events will undoubtedly make the video highlight reel for this dive, and a number of excellent photos of sea life will likely appear in the ‘Photos’ section of the website. After this event it was a slow transit back hovering about 20m above the seafloor to put ROPOS’ multi-beam sonar system to continue to add to the high-resolution bathymetric map of the ocean floor on the continental slope.

Blog post and photos by Scott Doehler 

Marine Educator