Japan's magnitude 9.0 earthquake triggered the release of a methane plume from the ocean crust to the east of Japan - carrying microbes that live in the crust along with it.
When the earthquake struck the Pacific coast of Tohoku on 11 March 2011 it shifted the seafloor 7 metres vertically and 50 metres horizontally. Thirty six days after the quake, Shinsuke Kawagucci and colleagues at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology took water samples from depths of up to 5.7 kilometres at four spots along the Japanese trench, near the earthquake's epicentre.
They detected a large plume of cloudy sea water - some 500 km long, 400 km wide and 1.5 km tall - as measured from the lowest point of the trench. (newscientist.com)
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