"Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you the next ice age." What if there was a way to capture more CO2 than we’ve ever dreamed, reduce the surface dedicated to farmland, plant more trees, increase life around the world, solve world hunger, grow the economy, and make money along the way?
Excellent summary on helping ocean deserts bloom and sequester carbon. Phytoplankton feeds the food chain When those animals respire below 100m (e.g. anchovies at night) that CO2 dissolves and stays in solution for decades, even 100s of years. When organic matter from decaying zooplankton and diatoms remineralize into their base elements, that carbon sequesters for generations. When iron is added and phytoplankton grows, the blooms often attract fish and whales that cause vertical mixing. This brings nitrogen and nutrients from deeper levels to the surface which can keep the bloom going. Mimicking nature by adding iron and missing minerals is an inexpensive way to sequester carbon and help restore our oceans. Kevin Wolf, Co-chair Ocean Iron Fertilizatioin Alliance, https://oifalliance.org kevinjwolf @ gmail.com
I forgot to mention that some experts think 50% of the CO2 absorbed by the phytoplankton is sequestered for an average of 500 years. In Peter Fiekowsky and Carole Douglis' book Climate Restoration. There a review of John Martin's early work on OIF that shows one ton of iron added to the ocean can result in 1 million tons of CO2 absorbed by phytoplankton. That is a massive and the reason why OIF is a very inexpensive way to sequester carbon.
Tomas, Now I can't find the reference for how Martin came up the the calculation. It involved a tanker holding 1 milllion tons and 1 trillion tons removed. Below is a reference showing significantly less but still very strong absorption rates (2500 tons absorbed per 1/2 ton applied). The key problem with most researchers did not include in their calculations the upwelling of nutrients the food chain brings to the OIF induced phytoplankton bloom (e.g. Coale's experiment below). That often extends the bloom for months so the initial application of iron results in many times more CO2 absorbed by the micro algae that is calculated from the initial iron applications.
For two days, while the Columbus Iselin traversed a 25-square-mile grid of HNLC ocean, Barber's team dumped 1,000 pounds of granular iron sulfate, dissolved in a weak acid solution, into the ship's wake. Lasers from a NASA P-3 Orion airborne optical lab zapped the waters from above, scanning for new chlorophyll.
The results were promising but mixed: IronEx produced phytoplankton, but it yielded four times less biomass than Martin's team had predicted. In 1995, a project led by Kenneth Coale (now the acting director of Moss Landing Marine Labs) tried to increase the yield in a follow-up expedition called IronEx II. This time scientists ladled out the thousandd-pound iron payload in three separate servings. And this time the dead seas sprang dramatically to life. Overnight, the HNLC waters clouded green. Fish were attracted by the harvest, and within days sharks and turtles were chasing the new food supply. By the end of two weeks, IronEx II had produced the biomass equivalent of 100 full-grown redwoods - touch-of-life results that inspired Johnson to rave about "a phytoplankton explosion of almost biblical proportions." The experimenters calculated that they had pulled 2,500 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, and claimed they could do it again in desolate zones all over the world.
Living in the Sonoran desert of Tucson, here is the biggest problem. While obviously we need water and more of it, we lack an essential ingredient - Humidity.
Even fully watered plants will desiccate by mid day in our 95 to 105F, 5 to 15% RH. And we have dust.
An interesting observation. Where we live, are the "Sky Islands". Because of course, we once had seas here.
Driving along in the desert with a decent vista, you can se where once were beaches. Its the slope change from steep coming downhill to shallow. Every angle from the flat land-gentle slope on every mountain and large hill, is pretty much the same gentle beach slope.
Well they were all underwater at one time. The base was below the sea. As the seas subsized and eroded, the last final shallow seas lapped the structures... so beach.
Consider that almost everywhere, all of these intersections of high peaks and columns have the same shallow slopes. Only a large unitary effect..the ocean/sea/water I believe could do it. And beaches are slow slopes.
The Sky Islands of southern AZ are called such because they are surrounded by the desert "sea", forming isolated eco-regions, not because they were once islands separated by water. The mountains out here formed tens of millions of years after any sea was near here. We do have some dry lake beds - called playas - that had water more recently.
I think it sounds like a great idea but what would be the unintended consequences that we do not know yet or have not thought about. I believe the below book gives a few great examples of something that started as a good idea ended up creating a disaster.
The above book also talks about other ideas such as "geoengineering," where global warming is countered not by reducing fossil fuels but by literally rewiring the atmosphere. As Kolbert shows, the lurking, unintended consequences geoengineering can be pretty frightening. One plan to cool the planet by spraying tiny sunlight-reflecting particles high into the air would turn the sky from blue to white.
I believe that only doing the above things won't be enough even they work and have a limit the unintended consequences. We will have to reduce our consumption.
Here is the quote from Jorgen Randers:
“Humanity’s main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population. The places where population is rising fastest have extremely small environmental footprints per person compared with the places that reached peak population many decades ago.”
Everything has unintended consequences. The question is how likely and how bad. For most of these things, we’re reasonably confident of what would happen. We shouldn’t prefer the bad we know to the good we don’t know.
If you will read the above book, you will realize that people also thought they knew what they are doing and had a good understanding of what could go wrong. I am not saying we should not try things as unless we try we do not know what will work but the bigger questions are how to limit the unintended consequences and what else should happen (technology advancement) to ensure that we do not make the situation worse.
I also read another article last night a different situation we are creating by trying to control the nature:
And if you read the below book you will know it would take about 10k years (it is just from my memory so it may be more) nature will make almost everything man-made disappear so we need to focus on aligning ourselves more to the nature as it will outlive us all eventually:
A total ban on gas power, a forced move to huge cars with huge batteries, and no clear quantitative understanding that this actually saves any carbon at all, let alone the other environmental consequences of massively increasing resource extraction, will obviously end badly. Freeman says "they're coming for your cars." They may, but we are still a democracy. More likely, this will join corn ethanol, switchgrass, high speed trains, urban mass transit, and a hundred other enthusiasms in a pile of eternal subsidies while the chattering classes move on to the next great enthusiasm. I can bet what will happen in California. The ban will take effect, but there will be a mechanism to plead for exemptions. Once again large well connected people and companies will get exemptions, smaller businesses will shut down, and everything gets more expensive. The sad effect of all of this is that slow diffusion of sensible electric cars may be stalled, along with development of the technology--whatever it is--that will eventually win out 20 or 30 years from now.
We have to consume less and reduce our overall footprint to save this planet for the future generations until we figure out how to go to another planet and live. That has its own challenges.
I have seen the seabed damage caused by net fishing. It is utterly catastrophic! Everything but everything is killed and after a few weeks the area is completely lifeless. The result is mud, sand and pebbles; an underwater desert.
Any method of fishing that drags something across the seafloor must be stopped.
Very interesting! Caution seems justified, however. Given the complexity of oceanic currents, upwelling, downwelling, thermoclines, wind patterns, etc there is high potential for local manipulations spreading out and for unintended consequences. Here in the Pacific Northwest salmon farming seemed like a good idea. But there are many incidences of farmed fish escaping and breeding with wild salmon, to the detriment of the wild fish gene pool. These farms also becomes sources of pollution from food wastage and salmon excretion, and this can lead to undesired algal blooms. Agricultural run-off shows how too much nitrogen can devastate local marine life. This isn't to say that we shouldn't explore the ideas you discuss, but it is prudent to use caution. In the mean time a proven way to increase marine protein production is to set catch limits in traditionally rich fishing grounds or place them off limits for a few years. There are numerous examples of wild fish stocks recovering spectacularly if given the chance and then fished at sustainable levels.
I hear you. There have been many mistakes. A few thoughts:
- the issue is not the mistakes, it’s that we haven’t learned fast enough from them. You have to try things to learn, and mistakes are made. A fish escape is not catastrophic, but doing them recurringly is.
- since iron fertilization seems dirt cheap compared with the catch, coordination could be easy between fertilizers and fishermen / sea farmers
- I will write about the precautionary principle. It’s a hard, important concept and I don’t understand all it’s aspects yet
I agree with caution and am much more nervous about this option to tackle global warming compared to "Seaflooding", because of the extreme sensitivity indicated by Chart 01 for algal beds & reefs. It seems like fiddling with a course volume control whilst knowing there's extreme positive feedback in action.
That said, I recognise the problem of "regressive environmentalists" (who can be too eager to ban rather than test options) and would agree with research, subject to careful regulation ("guidelines and red lines").
So why don't commercial organisations invest in seeding the ocean?
Because the reward is earned by every business that jumps on the opportunity. The investor pays, but only gets a part of the return.
I live near a beach that is being eroded. If someone built a submerged reef then the beach would grow instead of being eroded, and everyone would win. But the individual businesses can only see the short bit of beach in front of them. They build a concrete wall which makes the erosion worse.
This sort of action needs governmental intervention. But even national governments will see this size of action as benefiting the neighbours instead of their own national GDP.
As we now know, the UN is a useless and counter-productive body that needs to be dissolved and replaced by something else. Maybe we need continental sized versions of the UN.
Not needed! Fish cooperatives could easily do it. Some did in 2012 and had their best catch in years. They don’t do it anymore because it was made illegal. Governments don’t need to intervene. Just get out of the way.
Excellent presentation, marine traffic crossing those empty areas can be a solution in spreading nutrients on ocean surface, I'm just workin on this...Even a seasonal lasting bloom provide in reducinc Co 2.
Sorry to nitpick, but I wanted to add a comment about this sentence: “Fish protein could replace much less environmentally-friendly meat. This would allow us to reclaim pasture (and farmland for animal feed) and convert it back into forest.”
Cattle pastures come from deforestation only in certain parts of the world. In other parts, they are reservoirs of the last remaining parts of the prairie grasslands ecosystem. When the cattle market drops off, these pastures (which are usually marginal soil to begin with) may be converted to farmland. Natural grassland ecosystems are efficient carbon sinks which can be on parallel with forests, as carbon is pulled from the air and deposited several feet underground thanks to a dense root system. This carbon capturing effect is largely lost when grasslands are converted to farmland.
Hi Thomas. A week ago, BBC4 screened "The Witness is a Whale." I am sure you would find it as fascinating as I did. Before whaling, whales were very numerous. And they were a keystone species. And they brought nutrients from the deep to the surface, thus helping to build populations of krill, etc. - on which they later fed, of course. So, they played a big part in making sure oceans back then were not deserts. Enjoy!
Roughly fifteen years ago, during an end-of-semester engagement exercise in a bio course, I had a community college student design an alien life form he called a Plastiwhale, which functioned like a giant ocean water lily, suctioning up bottom nutrients through a long tube and photosynthesizing at the surface.
Complex ecosystems are needed with reefs and their inhabitants. Will addressing just this one factor of iron supplementation while the reefs die and inter species relationships change solve the problem ? There may be other limiting factors when the entire ecosystem is considered ? Even consider the effects of increased fishing with environmental damage and the potential of a fish epidemic like influenza or plague in humans; the ocean equivalent of the bat in transmission in new epidemics
So many aspects here. Thanks for sharing! Some reactions:
- Reefs are useful! Not always required afaik. My shallow understanding is that they allow nutrients to remain in the light region. They might have other benefits for diversity, but afaik not for organic matter generation
- iron fertilization wouldn’t cause the fish densities that cause diseases. These come from fish farming density. You could release the iron in the wild, or keep fish less dense, if there was much more in the sea
- you can fish in an environmentally friendly way, if you add more fish than you catch and don’t do bottom dragging or things like that.
Tomas, another great and well researched piece. It illustrates just one of the many ways that science can solve climate change. Progress is not the problem, it's the solution....if we allow it to be. I am going to add this to Risk+Progress's "Worthwhile Reads" section: https://www.lianeon.org/p/worthwhile-reads
Algae seems to be, more generally, an underappreciated resource. Some years ago, I read about companies using genetically-modified algae to produce carbon neutral hydrogen and methane fuel in vertical algae farms. It is not obvious to me why this idea has not caught on yet. Maybe you know?
In Baltimore (Ireland) I saw huge amounts of oyster farming. This involves some sort of box structure that the oyster fixes on, and a certain amount of rope and net.
Quote from the most wise internet:-
"oyster shells can be used to absorb carbon dioxide from the ocean. Oyster shells are made of calcium carbonate, which is a form of carbonate rock. Carbonate rocks are formed when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater and reacts with calcium ions. The reaction produces calcium carbonate, which precipitates out of the water and forms the shells of marine organisms.
When oyster shells die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, they can remain there for millions of years.
There are a few different ways to use oyster shells to absorb carbon dioxide from the ocean. One way is to simply leave the shells on the bottom of the ocean. Another way is to grind up the shells and use them as a soil amendment. The ground-up shells can also be used to make cement, which is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions."
I could not help but notice the perfect overlap of the dead zones in the map from the article with the plastic waste patches world map which was depicted at the local zoo, yesterday.
Have the dead zones always been dead? Is there historical date on this available?
That's really interesting. But I suspect that rather than plastic causing the dead zones, there is an underlying cause of both, such as water temperature and low-circulation patterns.
I've tried to research this, and this is the best I can find. It suggests there have probably always been "low productivity regions" of the ocean, but they are expanding rapidly due to global warming, which inhibits water rising up with nutrients from below.
(NB. I speculate that plastics sinking down from the "great ocean garbage patches" may also inhibit that rising water. They are created by corresponding ocean gyres or whirlpools: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/9/11/1289 )
'The mixing of different layers of water is one reason that high productivity areas exist in the world’s oceans. One of the signatures of global warming is rising ocean temperatures. As the surface layer of the ocean warms, the water becomes less dense and stays on top rather than mixing down to allow cooler, nutrient-rich water to well up. Over time, areas with less mixing show reduced productivity, less phytoplankton, and so less chlorophyll. Polovina said, “Regions that have the lowest level of chlorophyll are akin to biological deserts; there’s less energy propagating up through the food web.”
“We saw that the low-productivity area of the west Pacific was expanding, and we wondered if it was unique or if it was happening globally.” Models predict that the warmest portions of the world’s oceans will become less productive because of climate change. Some people call these low productivity regions “biological deserts.” Polovina said, “The climate models are on century timescales and suggest that the rate of expansion of these expected low-productivity areas will be slow.”
Over nearly the past decade, regions with low surface chlorophyll were expanding into nearby ocean basins. The total area lost was quite enormous.” The area of new global ocean desert added up to 6.6 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles), representing about a 15 percent expansion in the area of the least productive waters between 1998 and 2006.
...this step-by-step desertification has led to a 1 to 4 percent loss in productive waters per year.
“The actual rate of expansion was much bigger than the models predicted.”
A recent study using six climate models suggested that between the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and 2050, the total growth in low-productivity areas in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres would range from 0.7 percent to 8.1 percent, depending on various parameters. Polovina said, “We’ve measured more than even the high range in only nine years.” '
4-8% p.a. growth over several decades is massive! These desert areas may well have increased in size many fold due to human impacts.
The "new global ocean desert" of 6.6 million km2 over a decade equals 4% of the total area of the Pacific.
Note this article seems to refer to separate, smaller "dead zones" of ocean closer to coasts or in seas:
It refers to "ocean deserts" as "dead zones" that are "most often found close to places with large amounts of polluted water... caused by large amounts of nitrogen that end up in the ocean from fertilizers used in agriculture, or through emissions from automobiles or factories. Nitrogen is what causes the plankton to explode and deplete the oxygen from the water.
These deserts have been rapidly growing for the past 50 years. It is believed that climate change is affecting the appearance and growth of these dead zones as well. Dead zones can be found in many places all over the oceanic bottom, but are most often found close to places with large amounts of polluted water. For example, one large ocean desert can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, and it has grown considerably during the last decade. The dead zone now covers an area of 18,000 square kilometers, all thanks to the huge amounts of polluted water dropped there by the Mississippi River."
The same theme is reflected in this & other articles:
"The has been a staggering increase in the number of dead zones worldwide over the past 60 years, from just 42 in 1950, to 405 in 2008. Dead zones now cover 95,000 square miles; this is the size of the United Kingdom.
The largest dead zone worldwide is the Baltic Sea. Overfishing of Baltic cod has greatly intensified the problem.
The second largest dead zone is the northern Gulf of Mexico, surrounding the outflow of the Mississippi River".
Excellent summary on helping ocean deserts bloom and sequester carbon. Phytoplankton feeds the food chain When those animals respire below 100m (e.g. anchovies at night) that CO2 dissolves and stays in solution for decades, even 100s of years. When organic matter from decaying zooplankton and diatoms remineralize into their base elements, that carbon sequesters for generations. When iron is added and phytoplankton grows, the blooms often attract fish and whales that cause vertical mixing. This brings nitrogen and nutrients from deeper levels to the surface which can keep the bloom going. Mimicking nature by adding iron and missing minerals is an inexpensive way to sequester carbon and help restore our oceans. Kevin Wolf, Co-chair Ocean Iron Fertilizatioin Alliance, https://oifalliance.org kevinjwolf @ gmail.com
I forgot to mention that some experts think 50% of the CO2 absorbed by the phytoplankton is sequestered for an average of 500 years. In Peter Fiekowsky and Carole Douglis' book Climate Restoration. There a review of John Martin's early work on OIF that shows one ton of iron added to the ocean can result in 1 million tons of CO2 absorbed by phytoplankton. That is a massive and the reason why OIF is a very inexpensive way to sequester carbon.
Wow!
Thanks for sharing.
Can you share the math / reasoning behind the 1:1000000 ratio?
Tomas, Now I can't find the reference for how Martin came up the the calculation. It involved a tanker holding 1 milllion tons and 1 trillion tons removed. Below is a reference showing significantly less but still very strong absorption rates (2500 tons absorbed per 1/2 ton applied). The key problem with most researchers did not include in their calculations the upwelling of nutrients the food chain brings to the OIF induced phytoplankton bloom (e.g. Coale's experiment below). That often extends the bloom for months so the initial application of iron results in many times more CO2 absorbed by the micro algae that is calculated from the initial iron applications.
From Wired https://www.wired.com/2000/11/ecohacking/
For two days, while the Columbus Iselin traversed a 25-square-mile grid of HNLC ocean, Barber's team dumped 1,000 pounds of granular iron sulfate, dissolved in a weak acid solution, into the ship's wake. Lasers from a NASA P-3 Orion airborne optical lab zapped the waters from above, scanning for new chlorophyll.
The results were promising but mixed: IronEx produced phytoplankton, but it yielded four times less biomass than Martin's team had predicted. In 1995, a project led by Kenneth Coale (now the acting director of Moss Landing Marine Labs) tried to increase the yield in a follow-up expedition called IronEx II. This time scientists ladled out the thousandd-pound iron payload in three separate servings. And this time the dead seas sprang dramatically to life. Overnight, the HNLC waters clouded green. Fish were attracted by the harvest, and within days sharks and turtles were chasing the new food supply. By the end of two weeks, IronEx II had produced the biomass equivalent of 100 full-grown redwoods - touch-of-life results that inspired Johnson to rave about "a phytoplankton explosion of almost biblical proportions." The experimenters calculated that they had pulled 2,500 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere, and claimed they could do it again in desolate zones all over the world.
Another fascinating article!. Thanks!
Living in the Sonoran desert of Tucson, here is the biggest problem. While obviously we need water and more of it, we lack an essential ingredient - Humidity.
Even fully watered plants will desiccate by mid day in our 95 to 105F, 5 to 15% RH. And we have dust.
I got you covered!
https://open.substack.com/pub/unchartedterritories/p/seaflooding
https://open.substack.com/pub/unchartedterritories/p/seaflooding-past-and-future?r=36xnz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I want sea flooding!
An interesting observation. Where we live, are the "Sky Islands". Because of course, we once had seas here.
Driving along in the desert with a decent vista, you can se where once were beaches. Its the slope change from steep coming downhill to shallow. Every angle from the flat land-gentle slope on every mountain and large hill, is pretty much the same gentle beach slope.
Interesting. Do you have a link to pictures?
I image googled "Arizona desert and mountains"
________
Slope change is far right. \_
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRm0UNha71ZlLzug_aMEc3Jdh673r0sSiPsmQ&usqp=CAU
________
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcShq6CZK_68ZUvOPiUyZpBbf0h3DJU0_ST1hg&usqp=CAU
This butte shows on the right side of the silhouette, 3 line outlines. |\_
Vertical changes to maybe a 30 degree slope then barely visible a 5 degree ish slope to the floor. Beach!
__________
Silhouettes
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRbubsweJjbUl4NsnFG9hfdJidNnkoZYmQWWQ&usqp=CAU
--------------
Oh I see what you mean. But does that mean they were islands above the sea? Not clear this is the geological process behind this...
Well they were all underwater at one time. The base was below the sea. As the seas subsized and eroded, the last final shallow seas lapped the structures... so beach.
Consider that almost everywhere, all of these intersections of high peaks and columns have the same shallow slopes. Only a large unitary effect..the ocean/sea/water I believe could do it. And beaches are slow slopes.
The Sky Islands of southern AZ are called such because they are surrounded by the desert "sea", forming isolated eco-regions, not because they were once islands separated by water. The mountains out here formed tens of millions of years after any sea was near here. We do have some dry lake beds - called playas - that had water more recently.
I think it sounds like a great idea but what would be the unintended consequences that we do not know yet or have not thought about. I believe the below book gives a few great examples of something that started as a good idea ended up creating a disaster.
https://www.amazon.com/Under-White-Sky-Nature-Future/dp/0593136284/ref=sr_1_1?crid=QIS74LEJ8FML&keywords=under+the+white+sky&qid=1688263302&sprefix=under+the+whi%2Caps%2C239&sr=8-1
The above book also talks about other ideas such as "geoengineering," where global warming is countered not by reducing fossil fuels but by literally rewiring the atmosphere. As Kolbert shows, the lurking, unintended consequences geoengineering can be pretty frightening. One plan to cool the planet by spraying tiny sunlight-reflecting particles high into the air would turn the sky from blue to white.
I believe that only doing the above things won't be enough even they work and have a limit the unintended consequences. We will have to reduce our consumption.
Here is the quote from Jorgen Randers:
“Humanity’s main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population. The places where population is rising fastest have extremely small environmental footprints per person compared with the places that reached peak population many decades ago.”
Interesting book. I might read it!
Everything has unintended consequences. The question is how likely and how bad. For most of these things, we’re reasonably confident of what would happen. We shouldn’t prefer the bad we know to the good we don’t know.
If you will read the above book, you will realize that people also thought they knew what they are doing and had a good understanding of what could go wrong. I am not saying we should not try things as unless we try we do not know what will work but the bigger questions are how to limit the unintended consequences and what else should happen (technology advancement) to ensure that we do not make the situation worse.
I also read another article last night a different situation we are creating by trying to control the nature:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/out-of-the-wild
And if you read the below book you will know it would take about 10k years (it is just from my memory so it may be more) nature will make almost everything man-made disappear so we need to focus on aligning ourselves more to the nature as it will outlive us all eventually:
https://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Us-Alan-Weisman-ebook/dp/B000U20486/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3HY8ZKCQTJ7U7&keywords=world+without+us&qid=1688334607&sprefix=world+without+us%2Caps%2C68&sr=8-1
A total ban on gas power, a forced move to huge cars with huge batteries, and no clear quantitative understanding that this actually saves any carbon at all, let alone the other environmental consequences of massively increasing resource extraction, will obviously end badly. Freeman says "they're coming for your cars." They may, but we are still a democracy. More likely, this will join corn ethanol, switchgrass, high speed trains, urban mass transit, and a hundred other enthusiasms in a pile of eternal subsidies while the chattering classes move on to the next great enthusiasm. I can bet what will happen in California. The ban will take effect, but there will be a mechanism to plead for exemptions. Once again large well connected people and companies will get exemptions, smaller businesses will shut down, and everything gets more expensive. The sad effect of all of this is that slow diffusion of sensible electric cars may be stalled, along with development of the technology--whatever it is--that will eventually win out 20 or 30 years from now.
https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2023/07/freeman-on-mills-on-iea-on-battery.html?m=1
We have to consume less and reduce our overall footprint to save this planet for the future generations until we figure out how to go to another planet and live. That has its own challenges.
I have seen the seabed damage caused by net fishing. It is utterly catastrophic! Everything but everything is killed and after a few weeks the area is completely lifeless. The result is mud, sand and pebbles; an underwater desert.
Any method of fishing that drags something across the seafloor must be stopped.
Very interesting! Caution seems justified, however. Given the complexity of oceanic currents, upwelling, downwelling, thermoclines, wind patterns, etc there is high potential for local manipulations spreading out and for unintended consequences. Here in the Pacific Northwest salmon farming seemed like a good idea. But there are many incidences of farmed fish escaping and breeding with wild salmon, to the detriment of the wild fish gene pool. These farms also becomes sources of pollution from food wastage and salmon excretion, and this can lead to undesired algal blooms. Agricultural run-off shows how too much nitrogen can devastate local marine life. This isn't to say that we shouldn't explore the ideas you discuss, but it is prudent to use caution. In the mean time a proven way to increase marine protein production is to set catch limits in traditionally rich fishing grounds or place them off limits for a few years. There are numerous examples of wild fish stocks recovering spectacularly if given the chance and then fished at sustainable levels.
I hear you. There have been many mistakes. A few thoughts:
- the issue is not the mistakes, it’s that we haven’t learned fast enough from them. You have to try things to learn, and mistakes are made. A fish escape is not catastrophic, but doing them recurringly is.
- since iron fertilization seems dirt cheap compared with the catch, coordination could be easy between fertilizers and fishermen / sea farmers
- I will write about the precautionary principle. It’s a hard, important concept and I don’t understand all it’s aspects yet
I agree with caution and am much more nervous about this option to tackle global warming compared to "Seaflooding", because of the extreme sensitivity indicated by Chart 01 for algal beds & reefs. It seems like fiddling with a course volume control whilst knowing there's extreme positive feedback in action.
That said, I recognise the problem of "regressive environmentalists" (who can be too eager to ban rather than test options) and would agree with research, subject to careful regulation ("guidelines and red lines").
The problem with this research is that it takes decades and is not conclusive.
Just do it in a few big patches and see what happens. Iterate from there.
I'd support small patches to start!
So why don't commercial organisations invest in seeding the ocean?
Because the reward is earned by every business that jumps on the opportunity. The investor pays, but only gets a part of the return.
I live near a beach that is being eroded. If someone built a submerged reef then the beach would grow instead of being eroded, and everyone would win. But the individual businesses can only see the short bit of beach in front of them. They build a concrete wall which makes the erosion worse.
This sort of action needs governmental intervention. But even national governments will see this size of action as benefiting the neighbours instead of their own national GDP.
As we now know, the UN is a useless and counter-productive body that needs to be dissolved and replaced by something else. Maybe we need continental sized versions of the UN.
Not needed! Fish cooperatives could easily do it. Some did in 2012 and had their best catch in years. They don’t do it anymore because it was made illegal. Governments don’t need to intervene. Just get out of the way.
Excellent presentation, marine traffic crossing those empty areas can be a solution in spreading nutrients on ocean surface, I'm just workin on this...Even a seasonal lasting bloom provide in reducinc Co 2.
Terrific idea!
Sorry to nitpick, but I wanted to add a comment about this sentence: “Fish protein could replace much less environmentally-friendly meat. This would allow us to reclaim pasture (and farmland for animal feed) and convert it back into forest.”
Cattle pastures come from deforestation only in certain parts of the world. In other parts, they are reservoirs of the last remaining parts of the prairie grasslands ecosystem. When the cattle market drops off, these pastures (which are usually marginal soil to begin with) may be converted to farmland. Natural grassland ecosystems are efficient carbon sinks which can be on parallel with forests, as carbon is pulled from the air and deposited several feet underground thanks to a dense root system. This carbon capturing effect is largely lost when grasslands are converted to farmland.
Don't nitpick, this is a good addition and you're right. My guess is the net of the process would be a huge CO2 sink
Good points with which I agree.
Hi Thomas. A week ago, BBC4 screened "The Witness is a Whale." I am sure you would find it as fascinating as I did. Before whaling, whales were very numerous. And they were a keystone species. And they brought nutrients from the deep to the surface, thus helping to build populations of krill, etc. - on which they later fed, of course. So, they played a big part in making sure oceans back then were not deserts. Enjoy!
I didn’t know. Thanks for sharing!
Roughly fifteen years ago, during an end-of-semester engagement exercise in a bio course, I had a community college student design an alien life form he called a Plastiwhale, which functioned like a giant ocean water lily, suctioning up bottom nutrients through a long tube and photosynthesizing at the surface.
https://evostudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Hayes_Vol5Iss1.pdf
You’re going to love an upcoming article!
Also noticed this, after meeting some Liberland enthusiasts earlier this week.
"Aisland, established by Samuele Landi, is a community of seasteaders situated in international waters on the barge Aisland 1."
https://liberlandpress.com/2023/04/26/memorandum-of-understanding-with-aisland/
Complex ecosystems are needed with reefs and their inhabitants. Will addressing just this one factor of iron supplementation while the reefs die and inter species relationships change solve the problem ? There may be other limiting factors when the entire ecosystem is considered ? Even consider the effects of increased fishing with environmental damage and the potential of a fish epidemic like influenza or plague in humans; the ocean equivalent of the bat in transmission in new epidemics
So many aspects here. Thanks for sharing! Some reactions:
- Reefs are useful! Not always required afaik. My shallow understanding is that they allow nutrients to remain in the light region. They might have other benefits for diversity, but afaik not for organic matter generation
- iron fertilization wouldn’t cause the fish densities that cause diseases. These come from fish farming density. You could release the iron in the wild, or keep fish less dense, if there was much more in the sea
- you can fish in an environmentally friendly way, if you add more fish than you catch and don’t do bottom dragging or things like that.
Tomas, another great and well researched piece. It illustrates just one of the many ways that science can solve climate change. Progress is not the problem, it's the solution....if we allow it to be. I am going to add this to Risk+Progress's "Worthwhile Reads" section: https://www.lianeon.org/p/worthwhile-reads
Algae seems to be, more generally, an underappreciated resource. Some years ago, I read about companies using genetically-modified algae to produce carbon neutral hydrogen and methane fuel in vertical algae farms. It is not obvious to me why this idea has not caught on yet. Maybe you know?
Interesting.
I will write about seaweed, but I had heard about the algae for biofuels and know an expert. I’ll ask. Thx for your comment as always!
I saw seaweed farming in Ireland
It uses lots of plastic rope that is entering the system Small pieces litter the beaches
In Baltimore (Ireland) I saw huge amounts of oyster farming. This involves some sort of box structure that the oyster fixes on, and a certain amount of rope and net.
Quote from the most wise internet:-
"oyster shells can be used to absorb carbon dioxide from the ocean. Oyster shells are made of calcium carbonate, which is a form of carbonate rock. Carbonate rocks are formed when carbon dioxide dissolves in seawater and reacts with calcium ions. The reaction produces calcium carbonate, which precipitates out of the water and forms the shells of marine organisms.
When oyster shells die and sink to the bottom of the ocean, they can remain there for millions of years.
There are a few different ways to use oyster shells to absorb carbon dioxide from the ocean. One way is to simply leave the shells on the bottom of the ocean. Another way is to grind up the shells and use them as a soil amendment. The ground-up shells can also be used to make cement, which is a major source of carbon dioxide emissions."
This is great method to secure carbon
The seaweed method needs improvement perhaps using natural fiber rather than plastic ropes and ties
PFAs are now associated with birth defects in studies The net fishing industry also needs a reassessment as fish kills and seabed damage results
From the ocean plastics articles I wrote, my guess is those nets would not be a significant contributor to ocean plastics.
I could not help but notice the perfect overlap of the dead zones in the map from the article with the plastic waste patches world map which was depicted at the local zoo, yesterday.
Have the dead zones always been dead? Is there historical date on this available?
That's really interesting. But I suspect that rather than plastic causing the dead zones, there is an underlying cause of both, such as water temperature and low-circulation patterns.
Tomas writes about it here: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/ocean-plastic
I've tried to research this, and this is the best I can find. It suggests there have probably always been "low productivity regions" of the ocean, but they are expanding rapidly due to global warming, which inhibits water rising up with nutrients from below.
(NB. I speculate that plastics sinking down from the "great ocean garbage patches" may also inhibit that rising water. They are created by corresponding ocean gyres or whirlpools: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/9/11/1289 )
From:
https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/sensing-our-planet/an-ocean-full-of-deserts
'The mixing of different layers of water is one reason that high productivity areas exist in the world’s oceans. One of the signatures of global warming is rising ocean temperatures. As the surface layer of the ocean warms, the water becomes less dense and stays on top rather than mixing down to allow cooler, nutrient-rich water to well up. Over time, areas with less mixing show reduced productivity, less phytoplankton, and so less chlorophyll. Polovina said, “Regions that have the lowest level of chlorophyll are akin to biological deserts; there’s less energy propagating up through the food web.”
“We saw that the low-productivity area of the west Pacific was expanding, and we wondered if it was unique or if it was happening globally.” Models predict that the warmest portions of the world’s oceans will become less productive because of climate change. Some people call these low productivity regions “biological deserts.” Polovina said, “The climate models are on century timescales and suggest that the rate of expansion of these expected low-productivity areas will be slow.”
Over nearly the past decade, regions with low surface chlorophyll were expanding into nearby ocean basins. The total area lost was quite enormous.” The area of new global ocean desert added up to 6.6 million square kilometers (2.5 million square miles), representing about a 15 percent expansion in the area of the least productive waters between 1998 and 2006.
...this step-by-step desertification has led to a 1 to 4 percent loss in productive waters per year.
“The actual rate of expansion was much bigger than the models predicted.”
A recent study using six climate models suggested that between the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and 2050, the total growth in low-productivity areas in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres would range from 0.7 percent to 8.1 percent, depending on various parameters. Polovina said, “We’ve measured more than even the high range in only nine years.” '
4-8% p.a. growth over several decades is massive! These desert areas may well have increased in size many fold due to human impacts.
The "new global ocean desert" of 6.6 million km2 over a decade equals 4% of the total area of the Pacific.
Note this article seems to refer to separate, smaller "dead zones" of ocean closer to coasts or in seas:
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-are-ocean-deserts.html
It refers to "ocean deserts" as "dead zones" that are "most often found close to places with large amounts of polluted water... caused by large amounts of nitrogen that end up in the ocean from fertilizers used in agriculture, or through emissions from automobiles or factories. Nitrogen is what causes the plankton to explode and deplete the oxygen from the water.
These deserts have been rapidly growing for the past 50 years. It is believed that climate change is affecting the appearance and growth of these dead zones as well. Dead zones can be found in many places all over the oceanic bottom, but are most often found close to places with large amounts of polluted water. For example, one large ocean desert can be found in the Gulf of Mexico, and it has grown considerably during the last decade. The dead zone now covers an area of 18,000 square kilometers, all thanks to the huge amounts of polluted water dropped there by the Mississippi River."
The same theme is reflected in this & other articles:
https://www.sailorsforthesea.org/programs/ocean-watch/ocean-dead-zones
"The has been a staggering increase in the number of dead zones worldwide over the past 60 years, from just 42 in 1950, to 405 in 2008. Dead zones now cover 95,000 square miles; this is the size of the United Kingdom.
The largest dead zone worldwide is the Baltic Sea. Overfishing of Baltic cod has greatly intensified the problem.
The second largest dead zone is the northern Gulf of Mexico, surrounding the outflow of the Mississippi River".
I guess those cooperatives were in the USA. I have some doubts that the European fisheries could ever agree.
They were!
I don't know the market well enough to judge
Do you really want to sequester huge amounts of carbon ? What will the plants up top eat?
We need more CO2 in the atmosphere not less
https://youtu.be/LmmmgiPha_Y
I have a full article on this coming!