Ocean Iron Fertilization Test Not Successful

Following up on a story we brought to you a couple of months ago, the iron fertilization project in the South Atlantic Ocean has not produced the results expected by researchers.

To recap, the project by British scientists aimed to increase the amount of carbon dioxide-absorbing algae in the ocean off of South Georgia Island by adding extra iron to the water. Ideally, the extra algae would remove a large chunk of CO2 in the atmosphere and then sink far below the surface, permanently sequestering the CO2.

As expected, great amounts of algae did bloom, but there was an unexpected glitch. Instead of the algae sinking to the bottom of the ocean, they were eaten by copepods, which were then eaten by amphipods, which meant a lot less CO2 was absorbed and sequestered than thought.

Basically, the CO2 that was removed was "almost negligible" as one researcher put it. I guess it's back to the drawing board.

via Treehugger

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@ russ
written by Intracell Gold, March 27, 2009

Don't get too upset by this blog, you can't expect high standards from this kind of media. The journalists here are virtually science illiterate and depend on press releases and other journals from which they scrape together their 'own' incisive content.

-1

Fish and Coral?
written by Carl, March 27, 2009

While I'm skeptical of these kinds of "terraforming" ideas as a solution to avoiding CO2 emission controls, this research is certainly interesting. Sequestration doesn't directly need to be the goal. I wonder what the effect on the sea food chain would be with increased algal content-- would that compensate for excessive fishing? Corals are dying supposedly from the increased acidity from dissolved CO2-- would iron fertilization restore the PH?

what next?
written by D, March 28, 2009

Plants in Louisiana fresh water areas along the gulf coast are dying from the hurricanes. The reason? lots of salt thrown into the fresh water kills the plants. The more petro we have the more bad storms.... oh yeah also the polar tilt shift is to blame. Remember the little ice age in history? That was the earth changing. Pollution doesn’t help it intensifies it. Something similar to the algae case.

Any references
written by William, April 01, 2009

Hi there - very interesting, but would be helpful if you could add in links to the original research (especially to the original reports of "failure") so that it is easier to follow up.

Ditto to @russ - do you have any scientific references to link to that validate your assertions (not the commercial interests promoting this project).

...
written by Fred, July 20, 2009

thats too many -pods... eating each other

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