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Meet Your Worst Nightmare: Plankton
Discover June 26, 2008
PICOPLANKTON
Call it a happy accident: Phytoplankton in tropical areas of the Atlantic Ocean are helping to break down greenhouse gases.
After analyzing data gathered by airplane and in a lab at Cape Verde, a chain of Atlantic islands not far from West Africa, a team of British researchers was pleased but puzzled to find that ozone in the atmosphere near the islands had decreased 50 percent more than climate modelers had predicted.
The reason, they think, is that phytoplankton produce chemicals like bromine monoxide and iodine monoxide that get pulled up into the atmosphere. Once aloft, these chemicals can break apart ozone molecules. Not only that, says Alastair Lewis, of the U.K.’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science, but the byproducts of that first chemical reaction then broke down methane, a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, into non-harmful components. read more...
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ScienceDaily
(July 18, 2008) —
Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean.
Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.
They found that plants are able to grow in these regions because they are able to take advantage of iron minerals in Saharan dust storms. read more...
Decline of Antarctic blue whale led to paradoxical fall in krill
Aug 13, 08 Die Zeit
Marine biologist Victor Smetacek told the German weekly Die Zeit that blue whales had once consumed 180 million tons of krill a year in the Southern Ocean - more biomass than the entire world fishing and aquaculture industry produces annually.
The 'Antarctic Paradox' results from a biological cycle in which the whales play a key role in providing the iron to surface waters needed by the algae on which the krill feed.
The whales release the iron in their excrement, restarting the cycle from algae to krill to whale.
'The numerous whales maintained a very productive ecosystem as environmental gardeners. It collapsed with their decimation,' Smetacek, a marine biologist with the Alfred Wegener research institute in the German port of Bremerhaven, said.
New
studies reveal climate models have been wrong in predictions that
forest emissions add to global warming burden. Natural forests such as
those in this study in
pristine regions of South America release gases called volatile organic
compounds, VOC's., dominated by isoprene. Previously it was
proposed
that such VOC's, the emission of which is greater that emissions of
vehicles, are a large component of the
natural greenhouse gas inventory.
The research showed that in
regions where other pollutants are low the forest VOC emissions create
a
balance with ozone which they reduce. Thus the natural forest manages
to keep its emission footprint on the atmosphere a net zero., meaning the biomass they grown in a fabulous carbon sink.
No Precedent in all earth history.
HONOLULU — International Fishers Forum meets in Honolulu June 18
Charlie Veron, former chief scientist of the Australian
Institute of Marine Science, opened the Forum with a
presentation on ocean acidification.
He says, "Anthropogenic carbon dioxide is increasing so abruptly that it is now causing fatal mass bleaching of corals worldwide and is set to trigger global mass extinctions through ocean acidification. The rate at which this is happening has no precedent in all Earth history." read more ...
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NASA Top Scientist: 'This is the last chance'WASHINGTON (AP) 23 June 08 — Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist told congress the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.
James Hansen said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, and ecosystem collapse.
"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance." read more ...
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a biodiversity
disaster of enormous proportions
BBC News 10 July 08
Experts
on invertebrates have expressed "profound shock" over a government
report showing a decline in zooplankton of 73% since the 1960s. The
rate of decline is increasing, with a 50 per cent loss between 1960 and
1990 and then another 50 per cent loss in the next 16 years.
The tiny animals are an important food for fish, mammals and
crustaceans.
Figures
contained in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra) document, Marine Programme Plan, suggested the fall in
abundance could be a "biodiversity disaster of enormous proportions".
welcome
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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
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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 tonnes 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 natual 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
tonnes for each project, while tiny efforts compared to the hundreds of
millions of
tonnes 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
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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 committment 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.
Visit some of the ecorestoration projects we support on land.
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Check Out Some of Our Multimedia Resources
BBC 4 Special
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| Dr. Noel Brown,
former director UN Environment Program introduces Planktos at National Press Club  |
"Twenty years from now.
You will be more disappointed by the things
you did not do than by the things you did do.
So, throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover - M.Twain
Join Us, lend a hand, bend a line.
Help take care of this small blue planet.
Contact: info(at)planktos-science(dot)com San Francisco