Abstract
Hydrocarbon releases, either natural or due to anthropogenic activities, are of major relevance for the marine environment. In this work we specify our approach to quantify these seeps by subsea imaging utilizing camera systems and frontal illumination setups on board remotely operated vehicles. This work showcases, based on a campaign in the region west of Svalbard, improved methodological guidelines for the seep quantification operation together with a novel automated post-mission evaluation. The comparison of automated quantification with manual information extraction illustrates the efficiency of this new method while processing comparable estimates of seep characteristics.
Highlights
Oil and gas in the subsea environment can emerge from natural seeps or anthropogenic activities
Methane bubbles are of high relevance of their global warming potential of at least 20 times as the same mass of carbon dioxide [1]
This need for additional estimations of the methane transport process is underlined by new temperature and salinity gradient studies showing much higher estimations of hydrocarbon flux from natural vents in the Golf of Mexico (GoM) than previously expected [5]
Summary
Oil and gas in the subsea environment can emerge from natural seeps or anthropogenic activities. Apart from natural seeps and their need for quantification, anthropogenic sources, such as pipeline leakages, are likely to have significant ecological and economic impact, and it needs in situ detection and rapid quantification to mitigate adverse effects [12] To match these requirements optical as well as acoustical methods have been developed over the last decades addressing the in situ bubble measurement. Routines implemented for automated analyses make intensive use of image algorithms like optical flow, edge detection and dilation [14] They require being adapted to the video material available and appropriate bubble tracking strategies. Received December 18, 2014; revised ms. received March 25, 2015; published April 09, 2015
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