QUANTIFYING METHANE FLUX FROM A PROMINENT SEAFLOOR CRATER WITH WATER COLUMN IMAGERY FILTERING AND BUBBLE QUANTIFICATION TECHNIQUES

Abstract:

Methane gas flux from the seafloor to atmosphere is an important variable for global carbon cycle and climate models, yet is poorly constrained. Methodologies used to estimate seafloor gas flux commonly employ a combination of acoustic and optical techniques. These techniques often use hull-mounted multibeam echosounders (MBES) to quickly ensonify large volumes of the water column for acoustic backscatter anomalies indicative of gas bubble plumes. Detection of these water column anomalies with a MBES provides information on the lateral distribution of the plumes, the midwater dimensions of the plumes, and their positions on the seafloor. Seafloor plume locations are targeted for visual investigations using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to determine bubble emission rates, venting behaviors, bubble sizes, and ascent velocities. Once these variables are measured in-situ, an extrapolation of gas flux is made over the survey area using the number of remotely-mapped flares. This methodology was applied to a geophysical survey conducted in 2013 over a large seafloor crater that developed in response to an oil well blowout in 1983 offshore Papua New Guinea. The site was investigated by multibeam and sidescan mapping, sub-bottom profiling, 2-D high-resolution multi-channel seismic reflection, and ROV video and coring operations. Numerous water column plumes were detected in the data suggesting vigorously active vents within and near the seafloor crater (Figure 1). This study uses dual-frequency MBES datasets (Reson 7125, 200/400 kHz) and ROV video imagery of the active hydrocarbon seeps to estimate total gas flux from the crater. Plumes of bubbles were extracted from the water column data using threshold filtering techniques. Analysis of video images of the seep emission sites within the crater provided estimates on bubble size, expulsion frequency, and ascent velocity. The average gas flux characteristics made from ROV video observations is extrapolated over the number of individual flares detected acoustically and extracted to estimate gas flux from the survey area. The gas flux estimate from the water column filtering and ROV observations yields a range of 2.2 – 6.6 mol CH₄ / min.