Methane from Nord Stream leakages may threaten ecosystem: research

More than two months after the first Nord Stream gas leak was reported, methane levels are still elevated and may pose a threat to the ecosystem, researchers at a Swedish university said on Sunday.

Research has shown that "a significant part of the methane gas that leaked from the pipelines on the bottom of the Baltic Sea did not rise into the atmosphere. Instead, it dissolved in the water and spread with the currents," the University of Gothenburg said in a press release.

"During the first two weeks, we saw extremely high levels of methane, almost too high for our sensors to measure and probably up to a hundred times higher than normal. Only now are we seeing a decrease back to normal levels, and even yet, we still sometimes see patches of very high methane," said Bastien Queste, an oceanographer at the university.

The research was done in cooperation with the Swedish marine research foundation Voice of the Ocean. Researchers deployed underwater robots to make continuous measurements and the data was sent to researchers via satellite.