After about a week of data acquisition, our team was excited to finally see a “seep” in the real time monitor! Seeing our formation features like this is always exciting in real-time rather than after processing the data. A seep is a section in the seafloor that is leaking out methane. This methane that is released towards the ocean’s water may have various origins from the shallowest to the deepest parts of the Earth. One of our PI’s, Jo, had this to say about their encounter:
Today, at 07:47 UTC time/3:47AM local time, we saw THE GAS FLARE! Louis-Marin and myself!
Louis-Marin just did a noise which sounds like : “Heyuu” and pointing the screen with his finger. I turned my head and said “OH YEAH!” My enthusiasm was so big that I jumped off my seat!
We have spent lots of our night shift time during these first 10 days of acquisition on replaying the water-column to check if there is a seep or not! And after finding almost no seep since the beginning of the cruise, trust me, we were happy to see one in real time!
The seep is at ~ 2200 m depth, and, as expected, right at the turn in between the cross-line P12 and the inline P13! And trust me, this seep is beautiful, perfect, awesome! Of course, there was no time to turn on the camera to take a picture! But this is a mental picture that is going to stay long in my mind! The day that, with Louis-Marin, we saw THE plume in real-time!