Seafloor methane emissions associated with cold-water corals have been reported worldwide. Yet, there are still knowledge gaps regarding their ecological relationships. We studied the geology, chemistry and biology of methane seeps in a coral area off northern Norway. We found that corals thrive in areas with methane-rich sediments and benefit from strong currents that deliver food, but the seep activity itself does not directly determine coral distribution.

Planktonic gastropods (pteropods and heteropods) have been investigated in cores collected in the eastern Mediterranean along the Israeli coast in coral, pockmark, and channel areas. The sediment spans the last 5300 years. Our study reveals that neglecting the smaller fraction (> 63 µm) may result in a misinterpretation of the palaeoceanography. The presence of tropical and subtropical species reveals that the eastern Mediterranean acted as a refugium for these organisms.

This study is the first to show non-selective deposit feeding in the foraminifera Nonionella labradorica and the possible uptake of methanotrophic bacteria. We carried out a feeding experiment with a marine methanotroph to examine the ultrastructure of the cell and degradation vacuoles using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results revealed three putative methanotrophs at the outside of the cell/test, which could be taken up via non-targeted grazing in seeps or our experiment.

In this editorial we expand upon the brief advice in the first editorial of Geoscience Communication (Illingworth et al., 2018), illustrating what constitutes robust and publishable work for this journal and elucidating its key elements. Our aim is to help geoscience communicators plan a route to publication and to illustrate how good engagement work that is already being done might be developed into publishable research.

We investigated sulfate and methane cycling in sediments of the SW Barents Sea associated with a shallow gas accumulation. The depth of the sulfate-methane transition zone ranges between 3.5 m and 29.2 m, and all methane is consumed within the sediment. Results from this study are important to better understand the dynamic of the sulfate-methane transition and to predict its response to future scenarios of increasing methane fluxes in Arctic continental shelves affected by ocean warming.