Replies

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.

Here is the Oil Drum subthread. They got their first rebuttal. My response follows.

Oil Drum Thread

First response on the Oil Drum.

This is ROV thrust stirring up sediments. Here, look at my neat and clear video of oil seepage.

Look at the altitude. Double digit number. Physically impossible to be ROV thrust. The oil seepage video is the canned response. This is not a shallow oil deposit with leak through a crack. This is a deep, large, high pressure reservoir. Get it ?

PS - I do not have a posting account on the Drum and do not want one. Just too busy. And perhaps we all need to think about what this means. The seafloor is a breaching. BP/Obama have failed us big time.

Good continue reporting. As Smokin Joe commended Ernest. I commend both of you for your continued deligence in helping keep many of us informed on all aspects of this spill.
Those few days I was able to communicate rather currently with you both on these issues came to a stop when I went back on a string of work days with variant time schedules.
So I have quite a bit of catching up on the past few days threads.
Yes I also noticed today the ROV's are back in action and some cams are on the air. And with the now passing storm it will be interesting as how quickly they get the RW cmt and final drilling under way.
Will we now see a reduced amount of particulate in the water as well as reduced clahrate generation yet remains to be seen. Perhaps there where sufficient strong under currents that where partly responsible for stiring up the bottom and allowing for more gas release the a few weeks back. Just a wild guess on my part that soon shall be proven totally wrong or perhaps partly right.
Time will tell.