Jens Schneider von Deimling

The Oceans host significant resources to supply mankind’s need for energy, food, and raw materials. Marine industrial exploitation of oil and gas has started decades ago close to the shore now extending further on the continental margins towards deeper waters. Near future activities include even exploitation and mining in the deep sea for ore deposits and noble earths. Gas hydrates have been discussed as a potential energy resource, where the most prospective areas occur beyond 1000m water depth. Current research also investigates a combination of carbon storage and methane exploitation, where sequestering carbon has already been successfully put in service (e.g. Sleipner, Norway). Even without catastrophic failures such massive anthropogenic interventions will certainly affect the environment to a greater or lesser extent. A main goal is to investigate this extent and the environmental response to such anthropogenic interventions on the seafloor and to evaluate proxies for potential hazards.

In view of global change, the use of sub-seafloor natural gas and methane hydrate resources, as well as marine carbon dioxide sequestration techniques, there is growing concern about the transfer of the greenhouse gases methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) from sediments through the water column into the atmosphere as well as the spreading of low-pH waters due to oxidation of emitted CH4 and dissolution of leaked CO2. Crucial for our understanding of the fate of rising gas bubbles is the measurement of gas bubble sizes and their rise velocities together with chemical investigation of the gas composition. In this proposal we present a novel approach for quantitative stereo-optic imaging and fully automated gas bubble size and flux determinations. Those results can subsequently be used as input parameters for geochemical and hydroacoustic modeling.