Not just oil: Methane gas may cause 'dead zones' in Gulf

[Ed Barrow]

Source: USA Today

Levels of methane in deep-ocean waters near the Deepwater Horizon oil spill are 10,000 to 100,000 times higher than normal, and in some very hot spots "we saw them approaching 1 million times above" what would be normal, says ocean chemist John Kessler of Texas A&M University in College Station.

Kessler and a group of oceanographers from Texas and the University of California-Santa Barbara spent 10 days doing deep-water sampling from 35 different sites within 7 miles of the leak, close to the ocean floor.

The gases are coming up from the same geological layer as the oil, Kessler says.

The world is focused on the amount of oil being released, but the large quantifies of methane also are creating "a highly unusual situation" that's not going to go away anytime soon, says Peter Brewer, an ocean chemist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Monterey, Calif. Bacteria consuming the methane will "run rampant," using up all the oxygen and possibly creating localized dead zones.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2010-06-23-hnb23_ST_N.htm

[Jefferson23]

1. More bad news :(

[HCE SuiGeneris]

2. More shit sandwich from our unregulated exploitation. Thanks Dick.

:grr:

[Lost4words]

3. I think I'll get out a map and see exactly how far I live from the Gulf

This situation could become something much much worse.

[daninthemoon]

4. The Permian extinction event may well havebeen caused by

global warming, accelerated by the release of frozen methane beneath the seas. Is this the start? Too ealry to know, but...