Rates of sulfate and methane turnover in sediments collected in the Campeche Hydrocarbon Province in the Southern Gulf of Mexico in 2015

In the Campeche Hydrocarbon province in the southern Gulf of Mexico, large areas of the seafloor are rich in natural gas and highly viscous crude oil. To understand the influence of these hydrocarbons on porewater geochemistry, we cored sediments from specific sites by gravity coring, multicoring and push coring during Meteor Expedition M114-2 in March 2015.To retrieve rates of sulfate reduction and methane oxidation, onboard we incubated select sediment samples with 35S-Sulfate and 14C-methane radiotracers and analyzed the formation of radiolabeled inorganic reduced sulfur and inorganic carbon.