ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,601,726, issued on April 14, was assigned to GUANGZHOU MARINE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY (Guangzhou, China) and Qingdao Saintblue Technology Co. Ltd. (Qingdao, China).

"Methane monitoring apparatus and system for stereoscopic and real-time methane monitoring of ocean profile" was invented by Qianyong Liang (Guangzhou, China), XuWen Qin (Guangzhou, China), Binbin Guo (Guangzhou, China), Li Li (Qingdao, China), Danyi Su (Guangzhou, China), Huice He (Guangzhou, China), Yifei Dong (Guangzhou, China), Xuemin Wu (Guangzhou, China), Zhigang Wang (Guangzhou, China) and Xiaoyu Wu (Guangzhou, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for stereoscopic ...