Surprising Trove of Gas Seeps Found Off East Coast

LiveScience.com via Yahoo ^ | Jun 19, 2013 | Douglas Main

[neverdem]

On the seafloor just off of the U.S. East Coast lies a barely known world, explorations of which bring continual surprises. As recently as the mid-2000s, practically zero methane seeps — spots on the seafloor where gas leaks from the Earth's crust — were thought to exist off the East Coast; while one had been reported more than a decade ago, it was thought to be one of a kind.

But in the past two years, additional studies have revealed a host of new areas of seafloor rich in seeps, said Laura Brothers, a research geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. And surrounding these seafloor vents, scientists have found a variety of unique life forms, like mussels and crabs, that survive via symbiotic relationships with methane-eating bacteria, Brothers told LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet. New technologies have allowed scientists to keep locating new seeps, including one that may be the largest in the world. The findings have changed geologists' understanding of the processes taking place beneath the seafloor.

"These newly discovered [seafloor] communities show that there is much more seafloor methane venting then we previously thought, and suggests that there are many more seeps out there that we don't know about," Brothers said. A study co-authored by Brothers, published online last month in the journal Geology, found several large communities of mussels and other animals at two spots off of the Carolinas where methane is seeping from the seafloor, Brothers said. Although one of these spots had already been discovered, the amount of life the researchers found covered an area about six times larger than previously thought, Brothers said. And the mussels cover a total area equivalent to about 40 football fields.[Photos: Unique Life Found at East Coast Gas Seep]

"We found these in an area we thought we knew well," she...

[imardmd1]

Thanks — will keep for later. I’ll keep watching for your Delaware peeps.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks neverdem.

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