Gas‐induced erosion features in the North Sea

Abstract

AbstractPockmarks are prominent features on the seafloor at two main regions of the North Sea, the South Fladen area and the Norwegian Trench.The pockmarks vary in size from 5 m across to about 150 m and in depth from 1 m to about 20 m. Some of the features consist of several very small ‘unit‐pockmarks’. These are probably gas‐induced erosion features and found only in soft, finegrained, marine and glaciomarine sediments. They are probably caused by shallow‐ or deep‐seated gas (or fluid) release through the seabed, whereby the finest particles are thrown into suspension and redistributed by nearbottom currents.On the North Sea Plateau a small pockmarked area has recently been found. A close relationship exists here between mobile gas in the upper sediments, faulting in the soft sediments and the morphology of the seabed.Other morphological features in the North Sea such as ‘coast parallel depressions’ and ‘elongated depressions’ or terraces are also interpreted here as gas‐induced erosion products. This applies, yet again, to the ‘mottled seabed’ features, which appear as patches of high reflectivity on side scan sonar records from the North Sea Plateau; they correspond to shallow seabed depressions on the deep towed boomer records. Judging from reported observations from several shallow seas world wide volatile transport through the seabed is probably quite common and several morphological features are undoubtably induced by this process. Several erosion features of similar origin are probably common, also, in deep ocean basins.