ocean floor

The second weekly update from IODP leg 340.

At about 5 o’clock this morning (local time) we finished drilling the final site around Montserrat and are preparing the ship for a 12 hour transit to our next site off the coast of Dominica.

Scientists based at the National Oceanography Centre, NOC, are onboard the RV JOIDES Resolution as part of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, IODP. Expedition 340 will look at volcanism and landslides around the Lesser Antilles.

Bottom trawling fishing boats have devastated many cold water coral reefs along the margin of the North East Atlantic Ocean. Now, researchers have found large cold water coral colonies clinging to the vertical and overhanging sides of submarine canyons 1350 metres below the surface of the Bay of Biscay.

A shipboard expedition off Norway, to determine how methane escapes from beneath the Arctic seabed, has discovered widespread pockets of the gas and numerous channels that allow it to reach the seafloor.

Up in the Artic, at this time of the year, there are still 24 hours of light. It is such a weird sensation arriving to your cabin at 4 am (after some hours looking at seismic lines, maps of the seafloor, and images of bubble plumes) and having to close the window blind!

Cruise JR269A, west of Svalbard: Understanding gas escape from the ocean floor

Methane hydrate is formed from methane and water at high pressures and low temperatures, both of which are found at the bottom of the deep ocean.