WASHINGTON – Methane is leaking into the atmosphere from unstable permafrost in the Arctic Ocean faster than scientists had thought and could worsen global warming, a study said Thursday.

From 2003 to 2008, an international research team led by University of Alaska-Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov surveyed the waters of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which covers more than 772,200 square miles (two million square kilometers) of seafloor in the Arctic Ocean.

“This discovery reveals a large but overlooked source of methane gas escaping from permafrost underwater, rather than on land,” the study said.

“More widespread emissions could have dramatic effects on global warming in the future.”

Earlier studies in Siberia had focused on methane escaping from thawing permafrost on land.

Scientists learn red grouper operate as underwater architects

Coleman didn’t suspect initially that red grouper were capable of such engineering feats. Years ago, she was on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration vessel in the Gulf of Mexico looking at images from a remotely operated camera and noticed the large holes on the sea floor.

“I was just sitting there, thinking, ‘Why are there holes?’ It came like a flash: The only thing it could be is red grouper,” she said.

Coleman and a few colleagues, including her husband, Christopher Koenig, a fellow FSU professor, and Margaret Miller, an ecologist at the NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center, tested her hypothesis. They trapped red grouper in a cage without a bottom; the fish dug out of it. The scientists placed black charcoal the size of sand grains on the sea floor to see whether the fish would move it; they scattered it everywhere.

“They started digging almost right away,” Coleman said of the fish, adding that it was almost as if the scientists had offended the grouper’s aesthetic sensibilities. “It was like, ‘I just cleaned this place.’ ”

By building complex, three-dimensional structures that expose the hard rock beneath the sand, Miller said, red grouper create an environment in which seaweed, coral and sponges can thrive. These communities then attract everything from cleaner fish to female grouper seeking a mate.

“It’s just a very cool ecological story,” Miller said. “They really have this tremendous ability in getting these diverse communities of organisms to exist in a place that otherwise wouldn’t be there.”