Abstract
Meteor cruise M52/1 documented the presence of gas hydrates in sediments from mud volcanoes in the Sorokin Trough of the Black Sea. In a mud flow on the Odessa mud volcano, a carbonate crust currently forms in association with anaerobic methane oxidation. Dvurechenskii mud volcano (DMV), a flat-topped “mud pie”-type structure, appeared to be very active. Pore water in sediments of DMV is enriched in several constituents, such as ammonium and chloride, which seem to originate at depth. High sediment temperatures of up to 16.5 °C in close contact to the ambient bottom water of 9 °C also suggest strong advective transport of material from greater depth. Steep temperature gradients indicate a high fluid and/or mud flux within DMV, which is confirmed by the shape of the pore water profiles. Active fluid expulsion sites are evidenced by direct seafloor observation, and a potential flux of methane from the sediment to the bottom water is indicated by water-column methane measurements.
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Acknowledgments
We greatly appreciate the support of the Captain and crew of RV Meteor as well as the excellent technical support from Bettina Domeyer, Asmus Petersen, Bernhard Bannert, Thorsten Schott, Kristin Naß, Peer Naupold and Anke Bleyer. We thank Thomas Nähr and Jordan Clark for their reviews, which improved the paper. The study was supported by grant 03G0566A (collaborative project OMEGA) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Bonn), and by grant Su 114/11–1 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). This is publication GEOTECH-25 of the program GEOTECHNOLOGIEN of the BMBF and the DFG and publication no. 84 of the DFG-Research Center ‘Ocean Margins’ of the University of Bremen.
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Bohrmann, G., Ivanov, M., Foucher, JP. et al. Mud volcanoes and gas hydrates in the Black Sea: new data from Dvurechenskii and Odessa mud volcanoes. Geo-Mar Lett 23, 239–249 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-003-0157-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-003-0157-7