18 July 2014, by Matt Shupe, [76N, 124E]:
Over the last two days we’ve been in open water, moving towards the Siberian Shelf. Sometime in the night we really started moving up along the shelf break, apparently near a sub-sea canyon feature. The ship went back and forth to map out the area with a downward looking radar. And, it seems, we have now found the mother lode: a location where there is active venting of methane from the sea floor. This is really the reason why Oden has come out into the Arctic; many on board are quite happy. It is interesting to see the downlooking radar images…. Plumes of bubbles extending up from the ocean floor. We’ve now dropped anchor and will spend some time in this region making sediment measurements, ocean water sampling, profiling the ocean state. Well, when I say “we” I really mean others. As for “we” the meteorology people, there is really not much of a change. The fog comes, the fog goes. We did get a little view of the sun for a few minutes this morning. Nice multi-level clouds…. probably oblivious to the methane seeping up from below.
