Tom Schweich  

Mullet Island directly to the west.

The crumbling adobe building was part of a factory that extracted carbon dioxide to make dry ice. There are many mud pots within 200 yards of the adobe.

Mud Volcanoes

Mud Volcanoes	Mud Volcanoes	Mud Volcanoes	A geothermal plant goes up behind the mud volcanoes.

The volcanoes are on private land, pay appropriate respect! Do not drive into the field. CAUTION! Boiling mud and water are hot and soft.

Water-, mud-, gas-, and petroleum-bearing seeps are part of the Salton Sea geothermal system (SSGS) in Southern California. Seeps in the Davis-Schrimpf seep fi eld (~14,000 m2) show considerable variations in water temperature, pH, density, and solute content. Water-rich springs have low densities (<1.4 g/cm3), Cl contents as high as 45,000 ppm, and temperatures between 15 and 34 °C. Gryphons expel denser water-mud mixtures (to 1.7 g/cm3), have low salinities (3600–5200 ppm Cl), and have temperatures between 23 and 63 °C. The main driver for the seep system is CO2 (>98 vol%). Halogen geochemistry of the waters indicates that mixing of deep and shallow waters occurs and that near-surface dissolution of halite may overprint the original fl uid compositions. Carbon isotopic analyses suggest that hydrocarbon seep gases have a thermogenic origin. This hypothesis is supported by the presence of petroleum in a water-dominated spring, composed of 53% saturated compounds, 35% aromatics, and 12% polar compounds. The abundance of polyaromatic hydrocarbons and immature biomarkers suggests a hydrothermal formation of the petroleum, making the SSGS a relevant analogue to less accessible hydrothermal seep systems, e.g., the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California (Authors' Abstract).