Seafloor methane emission on the Makran continental margin

Abstract

Seafloor methane emission is widespread on both active and passive continental margins, which may exerts significant impact on global climate change, ocean acidification, cold seep ecosystem, and global carbon cycle. However, due to the limitation of the thick water body, systematic knowledge of detection, quantification and activity of the submarine methane seepage is still unreachable, which greatly limits the assessment of the environmental impact. In 2018, a comprehensive geological survey, including multibeam mapping, seafloor observation, and seismic reflection profiling, was conducted using R/V “Haiyangdizhi 10” on the Makran continental margin. Sixty-five gas flares, which indicated seafloor methane seepage, were detected in a total survey area of 32,000 km2. The total methane flux of the surveyed area is estimated to be 4.7-5.9 × 103 Mg/yr, accounting for 0.013-0.016% of the global seafloor methane emission. In addition, three gas seeps, which were active in 2007, were inactive during our survey in 2018. It is inferred that the intermittent activity might be related to the periodic pressure release and accumulation in the system. All the flares vanish in the water column, which indicates that all the methane gas was oxidized and/or dissolved by seawater. No methane was observed entering the atmosphere in gas phase. In this study, we present new data sets of methane seeps on the Makran continental margin, which are useful to better understand the behavior of the submarine methane seepage.