Shallow gas and gas hydrates in the Anaximander Mountains region, eastern Mediterranean Sea

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Abstract
Gas hydrates have been sampled from a mud volcano in the eastern Mediterranean for the first time, during a recent expedition to study the nature and origin of the Anaximander Mountains offshore from southwest Turkey. Seven mud volcanoes were sampled as part of a successful strategy to obtain rocks which had been brought up from the deeper parts of the mountains themselves. The mud volcanoes seem to be associated with cross-cutting strike-slip faults defining individual blocks in this mountain complex, and may permit overpressured fluids from thrusts in this compression zone to be expelled at the surface. There is ample evidence in many parts of the area studied for the widespread presence of gas in the sediments, such as pockmarks, acoustic turbidity and acoustic wipeouts in sub-bottom profiles, gas in sediment samples, and mud volcanoes with carbonate crusts and benthic communities typical of those found elsewhere near gas seeps and fluid vents (e.g. vestimentifera worms, bivalves). It is postulated that the high mobility of some of the sediments is promoted by excess fluids possibly released in part from gas hydrates in the Plio-Pleistocene sediments. A good example of the sediment deformation is shown by a large area of moving sediments.