As part of our highlight of SES adventures at sea, we highlight the team of SES scientists (Professors Ann Cook, Professor Derek Sawyer, and postdoctoral scholar Dr. Rachel Coyte) who were in the Gulf of Mexico on a rig collecting deep marine sediments this month. They teamed up with other scientists from all over the U.S. on a mission to sample and study frozen methane (also called methane hydrate). Methane hydrate is a difficult to reach and poorly understood substance with potentially wide-ranging effects on the planet’s environment, climate and energy resources. The project is ten years in the making and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The team is acquiring rare pressure cores in hydrate-bearing sediments, as well as hundreds of meters of sediment cores in the overlying mud. After the expedition concluded in late August, the acquired cores were transferred to laboratories across the U.S. for further analyses and will stimulate research projects to understand the origin, age, chemistry, microbiology, and physics of this methane hydrate system.