A study recently published in the journal Nature Communications reveals that methane-consuming microbes that inhabit rock buildup on the seafloor could be preventing large amounts of the greenhouse gas from entering the oceans and reaching the atmosphere.

Phys.org reports that the rock-dwelling microbes represent a biological sink for methane and could reshape the current understanding of where this greenhouse gas is being consumed in sub-seafloor habitats.

“Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so tracing its flow through the environment is really a priority for climate models and for understanding the carbon cycle,” said co-author Victoria Orphan of the California Institute of Technology.

According to Nature, Orphan and the research team examined two dozen samples collected in and around deep sea methane seeps – sites where water containing the dissolved gas leaks out of the sea floor – off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Costa Rica. Results showed the presence of genetic material connected to methane-consuming microbes, suggesting that the reservoir is much more active than previously thought.

“These data are very believable,” said John Pohlman, a biogeochemist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “Maybe we’ve been underestimating the amount of methane oxidation going on in the sea-floor setting.”

Researchers collected rock samples not only from carbonate mounds located within active cold seeps, where methane could be observed escaping from the sea floor, but also from those appearing to be dormant or non-active. “The carbonate-based microbes breathed methane at roughly one-third the rate of those gathered from sediments near active seep sites,” said co-author Jeffrey Marlow, a geobiology graduate student in Orphan’s lab. “However, because there are likely many more microbes living in carbonate mounds than in sediments, their contributions to methane removal from the environment may be more significant.”

Tech Times reports that global warming studies have failed to account for the uptake of greenhouse gases by these microbes, but results from this new study suggest that these deposits likely have a greater effect on climate change than previously expected.