My marine biologist friends, any thoughts on this experiment? In particular, any "unknown unknowns" to be on the look out for? Anyone else Vince should be talking to?
http://cate.ai/iron/
"Normally there is a cycle of life that recycles nutrients in the ocean. The same chemicals are in phytoplankton, then zooplankton, then grazing fish, then hunting fish, then larger fish. And each of the fish poops out some nutrients that can go back to phytoplankton. Around and around it goes, powered by the sun really.
For a long time now humans have taken millions of tons of fish and other life out of the ocean. These nutrients are removed from the cycle of life in the ocean, reducing the potential for life in the ocean. The phytoplankton are the main way CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere. With less iron and phosphorus less phytoplankton can grow, so less CO2 is removed. Humans reducing nutrients in the ocean may a bigger factor is rising CO2 levels than burning fossil fuels is.
The crucial ocean nutrient missing in many places is iron. It often takes very small amounts of iron to make huge amounts of phytoplankton. One famous oceanographer said, "Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age". The ice ages may be caused by extra nutrients coming into the ocean. If some land mass with lots of iron turns into a desert and then lots of iron is blown to the ocean it could make so much more phytoplankton that CO2 is reduced and the world gets colder.
If a farmer took crops out of his land for years and did not put any fertilizer back we would expect his crop yields to fall off. The ocean is the same way. We need to research fertilizing the ocean more. See oceanseeding.com and wikipedia iron fertilization experiments for more on putting fertilizer in the ocean.
If one pound of iron turns into 1,000 lbs of fish food, it could bring a lot of small fish. These could draw in larger fish. If this concentrated the fish to a smaller area it could be an effective way to feed fish and to catch fish. But unlike catching alone, we would be helping the ocean grow more fish.
It seems we could do some useful and interesting experiments here in Anguilla. We have a regular current from the East and a large ocean territory belonging to Anguilla. We could anchor a small boat that slowly released a small amount of iron-sulfate and then measure things downstream. Below I am looking at a setup that would release less than 100 lbs per day gradually over a 7 day period."
http://cate.ai/iron/
"Normally there is a cycle of life that recycles nutrients in the ocean. The same chemicals are in phytoplankton, then zooplankton, then grazing fish, then hunting fish, then larger fish. And each of the fish poops out some nutrients that can go back to phytoplankton. Around and around it goes, powered by the sun really.
For a long time now humans have taken millions of tons of fish and other life out of the ocean. These nutrients are removed from the cycle of life in the ocean, reducing the potential for life in the ocean. The phytoplankton are the main way CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere. With less iron and phosphorus less phytoplankton can grow, so less CO2 is removed. Humans reducing nutrients in the ocean may a bigger factor is rising CO2 levels than burning fossil fuels is.
The crucial ocean nutrient missing in many places is iron. It often takes very small amounts of iron to make huge amounts of phytoplankton. One famous oceanographer said, "Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age". The ice ages may be caused by extra nutrients coming into the ocean. If some land mass with lots of iron turns into a desert and then lots of iron is blown to the ocean it could make so much more phytoplankton that CO2 is reduced and the world gets colder.
If a farmer took crops out of his land for years and did not put any fertilizer back we would expect his crop yields to fall off. The ocean is the same way. We need to research fertilizing the ocean more. See oceanseeding.com and wikipedia iron fertilization experiments for more on putting fertilizer in the ocean.
If one pound of iron turns into 1,000 lbs of fish food, it could bring a lot of small fish. These could draw in larger fish. If this concentrated the fish to a smaller area it could be an effective way to feed fish and to catch fish. But unlike catching alone, we would be helping the ocean grow more fish.
It seems we could do some useful and interesting experiments here in Anguilla. We have a regular current from the East and a large ocean territory belonging to Anguilla. We could anchor a small boat that slowly released a small amount of iron-sulfate and then measure things downstream. Below I am looking at a setup that would release less than 100 lbs per day gradually over a 7 day period."