Source: Huffington Post
Author: Chris D’Angelo
THE BOTTOM OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN — Forty miles off the coast of North Carolina, the 274-foot research vessel Atlantis paced a dark, empty swath of ocean in evenly spaced lines as the crew pinged sound waves into the deep. A quarter-mile below, plumes of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, rose from the seafloor.
Continue reading Chasing The Methane Dragon That Lurks In The Deep Sea
Source: Science Daily
Author: Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
Large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane are stored in the seabed. Fortunately, only a small fraction of the methane reaches the atmosphere, where it acts as a climate-relevant gas, as it is largely degraded within the sediment. This degradation is carried out by a specialized community of microbes, which removes up to 90 percent of the escaping methane. Thus, these microbes are referred to as the “microbial methane filter.” If the greenhouse gas were to rise through the water and into the atmosphere, it could have a significant impact on our climate.
Continue reading Observing the development of a deep-sea greenhouse gas filter
Source: New Scientist
In the depths of the ocean, the boundaries between two different domains of life, bacteria and archaea, seem to blur.
Continue reading Seabed superorganism uses electricity to lock up greenhouse gas
