“Something like that. I had read about the methane- hydrate deposits found off the continental slope and wondered if instability in those pockets of gas could have caused the slump.”

“It's certainly possible,” Reed said. “There are huge pockets of the stuff off both coasts. We've found major deposits off of Oregon and New Jersey, for instance. You've heard of the Blake Ridge?”

“Sure. It's an undersea promontory a couple of hundred miles southeast of the U.S.”

“Off the North Carolina coast, to be exact. The ridge is loaded with methane hydrate. Some people think the ridge is a 'pressure cooker.' Surveys have found craters pockmarking the ocean floor where the stuff has melted and seeped out, releasing methane gas.”

Jenkins scratched his head. “I'm sorry to say I don't know a lot about hydrates. I try to keep up through the professional journals since leaving the university, but what with the lobstering and so on, I never seem to have enough time.”

“It's a comparatively new area. You're familiar with chemical composition of hydrate?”

“It's made up of natural gas molecules trapped in ice.”

"That's right. Someone dubbed it 'fire ice.' It was discovered in the nineteenth century, but our knowledge has been pretty sketchy. The first natural deposits were under the permafrost in Siberia and North America -they called it marsh gas - then in the 1970s, a couple of scientists from Columbia University found pockets under the seafloor when they were doing seismological studies at the Blake Ridge. In the 1980s, the Woods Hole submersible Alvin found stone undersea chimneys formed by escaping methane. I was on the first big survey back in the mid-1990s. That's when we discovered the deposits in the Blake Ridge. They're only a fraction of what's out there. The potential is vast.”

“Where are the major deposits?”

“Mostly along the lower slopes of the world's continental shelves, where the seabed drops from four hundred feet or so into the abyss several miles deep. There are major pockets off both U.S. coasts. As I said, you can find them in Costa Rica, Japan, India, and under the arctic permafrost. The sheer size of the deposits is astounding. The most recent estimates are ten thousand gigatons. That's double the total amount of all known reserves of coal, oil and natural gas.”

Jenkins let out a low whistle. “Waiting there to be tapped when we suck our petroleum reserves dry.”

“I wish it were so easy,” Reed said with a sigh. “A few technical problems have to be ironed out before extraction is practical.”

“Is it dangerous to drill?”