Since methane is a greenhouse gas, this leads to more global warming, causing more hydrate decay, and the start of a nasty climatic cycle.Its volatility means that the number of people who have actually seen methane gas hydrate in its fizzing state is tiny. The fact that methane hydrates are only stable under narrow temperature and pressure conditions makes them especially vulnerable to climate change. Russian experts expect up to 5 per cent of their total methane production to come from permafrost gas hydrate by 2000, while Japan plans a demonstration project of ocean hydrate harvesting in the Nankai Trough by 1999.The news may not be all good, though. “Just 1 per cent of the most conservative estimate of gas hydrates is equivalent to half the current proven conventional gas reserves.”Methane gas hydrate, says Miles, is “the last remaining hydrocarbon” waiting to be exploited, and leading industrial nations are already setting up both ocean and permafrost drilling projects to do so. Remember, one helping of methane in its pressurised hydrate form is equivalent to 167 helpings of free methane. The US Geological Survey has estimated that just two relatively small areas off the North and South Carolina coast (part of the Bermuda Triangle) contain over 70 times the annual gas consumption of the US, while putting 16 noughts after a two gives you an idea of the current global estimate for cubic metres of methane gas locked in hydrates.”The present oil-based economy may well be replaced by a natural gas- based one as early as the first or second decade of the next century,” says Peter Miles of the Southampton Oceanography Centre.

Hydrates store immense amounts of methane, not counting the methane natural gas that exists in conventional form beneath the hydrate layers themselves. Sonar surveys have now shown that the vast majority of breakages occur at the site of seafloor landslides. Such slumps can be massive – one was 40 miles wide – and would easily rupture gas hydrate layers beneath the seafloor, freeing the gas trapped beneath the hydrate “cap” as well as liberating the massive amounts of methane trapped within the hydrate itself, which would break open as the pressure changed.But a substance that is bad news for any ship or plane passing at the wrong moment also offers an amazing solution to the energy demands of the next century. Nature, however, offers a solution in the shape of underwater landslides, and McIver’s proof came from an unexpected source when he discovered that telephone companies had long suffered cable breakages all along the North American continental shelf. A methane gas blowout, however, would not make you feel good. The massive surge of negative ions generated by its eruption on the surface would create a powerful magnetic field (electric charge and magnetism being inextricably linked), which could send compasses and other instruments haywire on any ship or plane in the vicinity.McIver’s theory, of course, depends on there being something to cause the gas blowouts, since the Bermuda Triangle isn’t yet an area of heavy gas drilling.

Agitated water generates negative ions, a fact that ioniser advertising plays on with references to babbling mountain brooks or waterfalls. No Mayday, no nothing, just a sudden disappearance off the radar screen.McIver’s theory can also explain reports of instrument malfunction but, again, no Atlantean forces need to be called upon, just the principles you find at work in a household ioniser. Debris from the resulting explosion would also sink rapidly in the low-density, gasified water beneath it. Such a mix is explosive and not the place you want to be with hot engine exhausts. Another supernatural disappearance or just another natural disaster?Planes, too, could fall prey to the deadly blowout.

A plume of methane gas would continue to rise once it had reached the ocean surface since methane is lighter than air, and any aircraft flying into this invisible zone of danger would face two hazards. If the methane were very concentrated, its engines would fail through lack of oxygen. A more likely disaster, however, would result if the plume mixture was between 5 and 15 per cent methane. The vessel would plunge into the depths, where it would be covered up as sediment disturbed by the blowout settled back on the seabed. The maelstrom lasted for three minutes before suddenly calming, leaving the sea looking normal.