Contributions from the 9th International Conference on Gas in Marine Sediments, University of Bremen, 15–19 September 2008

Following the first International Conference on Gas in Marine Sediments in Edinburgh, UK (1990), another eight successful conferences have provided a continuous forum for scientists from a variety of disciplines, organisations and countries. The 9th meeting of the Shallow Gas Group was held in September 2008 in Bremen, a hanseatic city more than 1,200 years old in northern Germany. The Shallow Gas Group was joined for this conference by participants of the HERMES EU-funded project and by members of an industry-funded project. Volume 30 (3/4) of Geo-Marine Letters is a double issue containing 25 selected papers from the 9th conference in Bremen, guest edited by G. Bohrmann and B.B. Jørgensen. The papers represent the broad spectrum of oral and poster contributions from the conference, covering a wide range of aspects of gas in marine sediments from many parts of the world. The next conference of the Shallow Gas Group is planned to be held in Listvyanka at Lake Baikal, Russia, in September 2010.