The technology developed for making artificial gas hydrates in the deep sea later enabled investigation of the impact of deep ocean CO₂ sequestration. Initially, the project focused on questions related to CO₂ hydrate formation, long-term hydrate stability and measurements of hydrate dissolution rates. When this work attracted the interest of biologists who were concerned about the impact of high CO₂ levels and low pH on the animals in the deep sea, we partnered with the Benthic Biology and Ecology team to conduct studies of benthic ecology. This work would eventually lead to the FOCE project.

In order to more fully understand the hydrate synthesis process, we developed the first deep ocean Raman in situ spectrometer (DORISS) to allow spectroscopic measurements of the composition and crystal structure of the hydrates formed. Following our successes with synthetic hydrates, we then pursued the investigation of naturally occurring gas hydrates at Eel Canyon, Hydrate Ridge and Barkley Canyon.

The work with naturally occurring gas hydrates led to physical chemistry studies of the associated gas and oil seeps. With the laser Raman spectrometer we were able to measure the gas composition in situ and study the release of light-weight hydrocarbon gases from rising droplets of oil. In order to further understand the chemistry of these processes, we performed a series experiments to investigate the loss of methane and other gases from small scale releases of surrogate oils in Monterey Bay.

More recently, with the development of a pore-water sampling probe, we have used DORISS to make in situ measurments of the interstitial fluids in reducing sediments. The laser Raman spectrometer allows the determination of sulfate, hydrogen sulfide, bisulfide, and dissolved methane in these fluids. When the concentration of hydrogen sulfide is sufficiently high, we can estimate the pore-water pH from the ratio of the hydrogen sulfide and bisulfide peaks.