During a research expedition led by Linnaeus University and Stockholm University to the deepest parts of the Baltic Sea in the Landsort Deep researchers recently discovered an area with extensive emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from the bottom sediments.
The area where the methane leak was discovered is located in the Landsort Deep (Landsortsdjupet), about 30 kilometres southeast of the coastal town Nynäshamn. Christian Stranne, associate professor of marine geophysics at Stockholm University, is surprised by the discovery.
“We know that methane gas can bubble out from shallow coastal seabeds in the Baltic Sea, but I have never seen such an intense bubble release before and definitely not from such a deep area," says Christian Stranne.
Read more at Stockholm University
Image: Marcelo Ketzer to begin sampling from a sediment core. (Photo Credit: Christian Stranne)