I am delighted to have this new paper out. This is a culmination of a real multidisciplinary team effort arising from our time onboard the RV Celtic Explorer in 2014. The work involved researchers from Dublin City University, National University of Ireland Maynooth, the Geological Survey of Ireland, the British Geological Survey, Géoazur in France, and the Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale in Italy.
After a rush through rough seas to escape from the tail end of a hurricane on the Celtic Shelf, we sheltered in Bantry Bay. Work on a research vessel never stops, so we took this as an opportunity and did some multibeam scanning of the seabed. When we came across a pockmark field, shallow craters dotted across the seafloor, we decided to investigate further. We took sediment cores throughout the bay and analysed the gas and porewater chemistry as well as the organic signatures of microbial communities back in the lab.
The results shed light on methane gas, a powerful greenhouse gas, below the seafloor throughout Bantry Bay which probably formed the pockmarks observed there. They also suggest that the microbes in the sediment are probably consuming this gas and preventing it from escaping the seafloor and potentially reaching the atmosphere. There are other similar locations to this around the coast of Ireland, which may have implications for future climate change. Hopefully we’ll see some more research in these areas over the coming years.
Have a read of the full article here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272771419301040
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecss.2019.05.014
Sean F Jordan 