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Planktos Science | Ecorestoration
Ecorestoration and Ocean Ecotechnology Company
Planktos Science is a privately held ecorestoration and ocean ecotechnology company. We call San Francisco our home port. Our mission is the restoration of damaged habitats. Simply put we restore seas and trees, but as we do this vital pioneering work our scientific teams discover priceless new knowledge and understandings of the blue world that covers most of this planet. By restoring plankton ecosystems in the oceans and growing 'newforestation' projects worldwide, we are able to help mitigate the impacts of modern society.
We engage in active ecorestoration because mere conservation and reduction of our footprint on the planet will not be sufficient to leave a healthy planet to our children.
Jenna, one of our biologists, searches for salps in the Mid-Atlantic, these gossamer creatures are best studied free diving.
A dream to save the world can come true
The harm our society has caused already is nearing a point of no return and must be healed. It will take an immediate, determined, and intelligent stewardship effort to accomplish this.
Why Ecorestoration Is Needed Now
The greatest peril facing the planet today is the overload of CO2 already spewed into our atmosphere over the course of our 150 year love affair with fossil fuel and with each other. Our population has risen from a few hundred million to over 6 billion in that time and each of us is using more and more energy every day. While it is clear the CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels is slowly causing the climate to change, the greater, very rapid and immediately perilous, impact of CO2 is in the acidification of the oceans and devastation, through disruption of vital nutrient systems, of ocean phyto-plankton - the ocean forest.
The loss of ocean plant life has been proceeding apace with an effect far greater than alarming eradication of the rainforests. By our most accurate estimates we've lost 2/3's of our rainforests, an area equal to as much as 3% of the area of the planet, but remember all land is only about 30% of this blue planet. With the tools onboard the first Earth observing satellites lofted in the 1970's our eyes have been opened to our whole earth and we have been able to see in that brief interval the loss of 17% of ocean plant life in the North Atlantic, 26% in the North Pacific, and horrifyingly 50% in the sub-tropical tropical oceans. The hundreds of billions of tonnes of anthropogenic CO2 already in the atmosphere will continue to acidify the oceans for centuries unless we do something. There are thousands of billions of additional tonnes of fossil carbon yet to be burned which will make matters worse though the situation is already so dire its hard to imagine what worse might be. The only means by which we and the oceans can reduce this certain and deadly acidification is through restoration of lost photosynthesis.
Our Work At Sea
At sea, Planktos is engages in research and development of methods of natural iron mineral dust replenishment. This key micro-nutrient will restore the declining phyto-plankton. Our plans are careful and cautious and will begin with a series of small steps, pilot scale projects far from land on the distant high seas. One unexpected but most significant consequences of our burning fossil fuels, and adding hundreds of billions of tones of CO2 to the atmosphere, is the diminishment of natural dust in the wind. Like water in the wind, rain - the oceans gift to the land, dust in the wind is the lands gift to the oceans.
Jenna's Salps, she found them!
By mimicking natural dust deposition we restore and replenish small amounts of the natural iron rich (hematite) dust our human activities have denied the oceans. Iron is a critical micronutrient needed, in incredibly tiny amounts, by phyto-plankton for photosynthesis. The amount of natural wind-borne iron-carrying dust from arid lands has fallen dramatically, 30% over the past 30 years alone. This has resulted in massive declines in plankton biomass that the science community has been able to measure with the benefit of the first earth observatory satellites launched in the 1970s. Ocean iron ecology studies date back as far as 80 years but have been the subject of intensive sturdy for only the last 20 years. This work has benefitted from the farsighted investment of hundreds of millions of dollars of publicly funded and now privately funded research over the past two decades. The result of this work have shown that adding tiny amounts of iron we can restore and potently regenerate natural plankton blooms, the ocean forest. Continuing and wisely scaling this work is a recognized international ecological priority. The size and scale of our planned pilot project series of up to six iron additions range in the tens of tones for each project, while tiny efforts compared to the hundreds of millions of tones of dust that blows to the oceans in the wind, will provide the critical data required for a comprehensive understanding of this new planet saving biotechnology. read more ...
Our Work On Land
Native Hungarian Beech Forest
On land, Planktos Science is working to plant new mixed native species forests in a number of locations worldwide. A company our founder Russ George helped start in Hungary, KlimaFa, will over the next decade restore upwards of 100,000 hectares of Hungarian lands to native mixed forests. These forests will regenerate the ancient forest grandeur and environmental health of Hungary and will be incorporated into the Hungarian National Park System as strictly protected lands. On land, Planktos Science is working to plant new mixed native species forests in a number of locations worldwide, we call these projects newforestation. KlimaFa will alone, over the next decade, restore upwards of 100,000 hectares of Hungarian lands to native forest in national parks protected forever.
In Canada, in partnership with the Haida First Nations village of Old Massett, another company we have helped create, Haida Climate , seeks to engage in ecorstoration of the Haida Gwaii homelands through the planting of mixed native species forest in old growth patterns in riparian zones, stream sides, devastated by decades of destructive clearcut logging. More newforestation ecorestoration projects will soon be developed.
Mission & Objectives
Through our pioneering efforts we develop and deliver the biotechnology and business elements these fields of planetary ecorestoration require and define. In this we engage in research and development of science, technology, and eco-asset market potential of ecorestoration at sea and on land. We are charting new courses involving credible accounting of this work in terms of the generation of verified certified ocean biomass carbon sequestration. Our work, done in accordance with the transparency of global treaties such as defined in the Kyoto Protocol, will show whether ecorestoration can offer environmentally sound and cost effective mechanisms to mitigate climate change impacts in a sustainable, innovative, cost-effective and even profitable manner.
Our Commitment
For more than 30 years our commitment to ecorestoation has remained constant and substantive. Our present opportunity to engage in this work proceeds by the grace of and within the framework of a broad spectrum on international, national, regional, and local laws, treaties, and policies. A major part of our efforts are engaged in working within the provisions of this eco-governance to insure our activities are fully and transparently compliant with and synergistic all such laws. Our work proceeds with all of the scientific safeguards and protections required by myriad laws, professional codes of conduct, deep seated moral dedication to saving the planet, and is conducted under close review by our scientific peers and the many regulating agencies. The creation of the Kyoto treaty and the emerging carbon market is being built on a foundation of transparency and multi-level governance and is by all accounts the most openly visible and intensively regulated field of work ever created. It needs to be as what hangs in the balance of this system of justice and checks and balances is the ability of this planet to sustain life.