Fertilise the Oceans

As we all know, biomass doesn't only grow on land. Actually, biomass production in the Oceans are vastly more efficient than on land. In addition, the world is comprised of 70% water, and only 30% landmass.

So if we could find some way of utilising this fact, to boost biomass production in the seas, we might also find a way of binding carbon in a more efficient way. After all, land based biomass combustion combined with CO2 sequestration is one of several promising measures to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Could this be done also in the oceans, and what could we expect of results from this?

Let's say we could find an area of the world's oceans where there is but one limiting ecological factor, say e.g. iron. Then, fertilise this part of the ocean with iron particles. This would boost the production of plankton and other simple lifeforms. A lot of this biomass would then be absorbed by higher forms of life, thus in the end producing, amongst other things, proteins for people to harvest. Strike one! We need more protein, so that we could be able to free land area that is today used for cattle fodder etc. But in addition, some of this biomass would eventually end up on the ocean floor. With time, this biomass would be covered by sediments, and thus sequestered from the ecosystem. The end result: vast amounts of carbon material removed from the biosphere. Think of this as a slow way of reversing the current release of fossil materials to the atmosphere (combustion of coal, oil and gas).

There has actually been scientific trials at this measure. Dr Victor Smetacek (Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany) and his team aboard the vessel RV "Polarstern" conducted in early austral spring 2000 in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean an experiment of fertilising the ocean with dissolved iron solution. The result was a fourfold increase of phytoplankton production. Large amounts of this will eventually end up on the sea floor.

As science on this is immature, we do not know how much this could potentially soak up of CO2, but the numbers must be insane.