3:30AM was brutal. Limped to work. Hard day. Lots of idiots interupted every attempt at shelf maintenance and stocking. Alone for almost six hours in a very large department.
I am not going into all the stuff produced and shared since last night. But thanks for all the pings.
Finally someone on The Oil Drum has posted a video documenting clathrate ejections and possible smokers. They are not certain of what they are looking at however. Posted by gmf from Oly2. Good shots but the video recording changed color from green to orange and flipped it upside down, but that does not alter the cool stuff. Note how all these ejections go in the same general direction. We can assume that is up. The ROV, if you flip this upside down, is looking down and back at the ejections. The bright objects are Clathrate (methane hydrate) ejections. They shoot out of the sediment. This is due to them being formed under the pressure of the sediment as the methane was rising. They get close to the surface and shoot out at varying speeds. Note the vapor trail they leave. Animal organisms do not leave vapor trails. Clathrate objects do because they are dissolving into the water. The smokers or plumers are very visible at the 3:26 mark. Going from the center to the upper left. Note they travel in the same direction. I have seen ROV take shots this way before. Basically looking down and back. Sometimes the ejections are dark, that could be due to lighting or due to a clathrate and oil mix. Dont see true oil seepage here. This is what I saw a couple of days ago only the Clathrate chunks were larger. Note how the ground flashes white when the clathrate chunk breaks the surface. That is the clathrate chunk breaking out. The vapor trails here are not as visible as they are in the greener and bluer lighting. Will be interesting to see how the Oil Drum crowd, which has been ignoring this for 3 days, handle the video.
Clathrate Ejections and a Smoker/Plumer
It makes sense that the Methane might separate out of the oil on the way up through the sediments ahead of the oil.