"Natural Plankton Blooms From Space: A slide show"

Plankton populations have been observed to be collapsing worldwide in the past 30 years, according to pivotal work sponsored by NASA and NOAA. This decline closely correlates with a decline in iron-rich dust reaching the oceans, the critical ingredient in ocean photosynthesis. A greening of dry grasslands, especially in Asia, has reduced the availability of iron-rich dust normally picked up from arid lands and deposited by wind events onto the ocean surface thousands of kilometers away. This has coincided with rapidly declining plankton populations. And of course as the ocean plants disappear less CO2 is removed from the atmosphere/ocean and less food is made available to marine food webs. 

 
Life-giving dust from N. Africa swirls over the Atlantic

Many open ocean ecosystems depend on dust clouds originating from land to bring vital micronutrients. Each year 500 million tonnes of dust from Africa lands in the North Atlantic ocean sustaining the ocean forest. Globally it is estimated that 900 million tonnes of dust blows in the wind each year.

In spite of the many reports of desertification, and the real crisis it is, in the most arid parts of the world desertification is not winning against CO2 greening. The dust the oceans depend upon for their productivity is dramatically reduced as shown below. The most likely culprit for the cause of this missing dust in the wind is CO2 stimulated plant growth creating increasing ground cover.  Report clearly show that the traditional sources of long range aeolian dust is dramatically reduced. This fact becomes obvious when one considers that during the 1930's in North America, the period known as the dust bowl days, saw hundreds of millions of tonnes of precious topsoil blowing in the wind in the American Mid-West. The crisis was so great that the US Soil Conservation Service was created by Congress and it's historic success is chronicled in history.

The scientists of the Soil Conservation service reasoned that it was improper agricultural methods that were causing the topsoil to blow away. The solution they provided was simple: change the grain crops grown from summer to winter wheat. Winter wheat, also called spring wheat, was to be planted in the fall after the first rains arrived. The wheat would germinate and then go dormant over the winter months. As spring arrived with plenty of water accumulated from the winter precipitation available the wheat would grow and produce a bumper crop to be harvested in the spring. Instead of plowing the ground at the beginning of summer, the remains of the stubble were to be left on the ground as "ground cover" protecting the soil from being blown away. In a few short years a new crop and method stopped the loss of topsoil and the great dust storms ended.

Dirty Thirties Dust Storm, A Black Blizzard that would darken the skies for days.

While this "modern" agricultural method became commonplace in the 1930's in North America it was not adopted in other parts of the world until 20 years later. In the 1950's China's growing population needed wheat and introduced topsoil sparing methods on much of their vast dusty grasslands. An enormous area came under this ecolocigally sensitive agriculture within the effect of greatly reducing aeolian dust. For China this was a good thing but it was another nearly 50 years before science realized that the Chinese dust had been a major source of nutrients for the oceans of the Northern Hemisphere.

Global Dust 'Sunscreen' Has Likely Thinned, Report NASA Scientists  2007

A new NASA study has found that an important counter-balance to the warming of our planet by greenhouse gases – sunlight blocked by dust, pollution and other aerosol particles – appears to have lost ground.

Image above: The average amount of dust, pollution and other aerosol particles in the atmosphere has dropped since the 1990s. Global averages were relatively low in the period 2002 to 2005, shown here (highest aerosol levels in light blue, lowest in magenta). Credit: NASA Global Aerosol Climatology Project. read more...

Planktos Science is engaged in development scale test restorations of selected regions of declining ocean regions. In these research projects we will restore plankton blooms by adding natural iron micro-nutrients, mineral dust, to the surface ocean in infinitesimal amounts. Where natural iron levels in the ocean are normally 3 parts per trillion we will raise the iron concentration to 50-100 parts per trillion.  Equatorial regions are often perfect locations for managed plankton blooms, owing to their warm water temperatures, high nutrient availability, and low iron concentrations. Planktos’ stimulated plankton blooms mimic natural processes and are roughly one percent the size of naturally occurring blooms. Each tonne of iron dust added can generate a plankton bloom that replenishes the food chain for months at a time and can sequester thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Greenhouse gas sequestration includes the removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide and the subsequent storage of carbon in plant and animal material for decades or longer. In a managed bloom, carbon sequestration occurs when dead plankton and other organic waste material sink to the deep ocean as “marine snow". The duration for which the carbon is sequestered is measured by the depth it reaches. Carbon that sinks below 200m will be sequestered for decades, carbon that sinks below 500m will be sequestered for centuries, and carbon that sinks below 1000m will be sequestered for millennia.

Researchers using 'bongo nets' to collect marine snow, sinking dead organic matter.

To date, there have been ten major iron-enrichment experiments conducted around the world. These experiments have studied the effects of iron dust on plankton growth and have confirmed the concept and ecological success of iron-enriched plankton blooms. Planktos uses this scientific foundation as the base of its project design. Building on these previous iron-enrichment experiments and well-known plankton ecology and ocean carbon cycle sciences, Planktos will quantify the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere, the amount of carbon sequestered to the deep ocean, and the depth to which the carbon is sequestered (and thus the length of time). Planktos will also be the first institution to study an iron-stimulated plankton bloom for its entire life cycle. The company intends to share in a transparent fashion a great deal of new data supporting the fields of oceanography, marine biology, and the value of in tact ocean ecosystem services. 

Planktos uses strict scientific protocols and overlapping sampling techniques to measure the effects of iron dust on plankton productivity, the amount of carbon sequestered, and the benefits of restored plankton communities on marine ecosystems. Some examples of equipment Planktos will make use of are: ship-borne sampling, CTD and rosette, towed body, tracking buoys, aerial and satellite telemetry. Some examples of data Planktos will collect are: physical & chemical properties of ocean water, nutrient concentrations inside and outside of the bloom, and quantitative measurements of plankton productivity. All measurements will be made before, during, and after the iron-enrichment project.

Planktos’ project work and scientific methodologies will be overseen by independent third-parties, including scientists, government employees, NGO representatives, and the media. Approved (certified) performance standards will ensure that Planktos’ results are real, additional, verifiable, permanent, enforceable, and transparent.

Why might we look to the oceans to address imbalances
in the global carbon cycle.

Where Might We Find A Means To Restore Natures Balance
RAIN AND DUST, The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.

Plankton blooms, like this one off the west coast of Namibia, are amongst the largest living features on this planet. With the recent observational platforms of satellites and manned orbital vehicles we have come to appreciate their beauty. 

                                     In a ecological yin & yang sort of way,
                                    just as plants on land depend on water,
                                      ocean plants depend on dust from the land.

This dust in the wind arrives only episodically though in some regions it can be both predictable and substantial. This gigantic dust storm blows off the Sahara enshrouding the Canary Islands. In a few days it left a gritty layer on car windshields in Florida. Each year hundreds of millions of tonnes of this mineral rich dust blows onto the Atlantic Ocean.

Ocean Acidification

Ocean Acidification is an inevitable result of the most basic chemical processes. Water and CO2 are readily mixed and when they do the reaction H2O+CO2 «» H2CO3 (carbonic acid) happens. The controlling influences on this reaction are time, concentration of CO2, and temperature. In the global perspective there is infinite time and infinite water so what remains to control the reaction is the concentration of CO2. Prior to the emergence of the fossil fuel age of human society CO2 was relatively constant over the course of millions of years at levels of  under 300 ppm. Today we have levels that are approaching 400ppm, as a high altitude global average. At sea level in many regions where the CO2 enters the ocean the levels are much much higher.

Let's look at the system before man and the fossil fuel age came on the scene. The ocean’s last big splurge on CO2-fueled acidification was 55 million years ago. That catastrophe caused by volcanic eruptions and possibly by disturbance of vast undersea gas deposits triggered a mass extinction of marine organisms. It took the oceans over 100,000 years to recover.

Today the ocean is becoming chemically hostile to many of its inhabitants especially in colder seas like Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and also the vast Southern Ocean. 

In 2005, Victoria Fabry, a biologist at California State University San Marcos, showed that seawater from the Gulf of Alaska had become acidic enough to dissolve the shells of tiny creatures called pteropods a major food source for salmon, cod, pollock, herring, and many other species. Other scientists amassed 77,000 measurements at sea and proved just how rapidly fossil fuel emissions are acidifying the ocean.

Every day, 22 million tons of CO2 sea, reacting with seawater to produce carbonic acid. The oceans soak up enough CO2 every five days to outweigh the entire year’s catch of wild fish for the entire planet. Fossil fuel emissions make up 90 percent of this acidifying flux.

Below 100 meters, the ocean off Alaska is now so acidic and so depleted of calcium carbonate that some shellfish and zooplankton species dissolve while they’re alive. Off the Pacific Northwest coast, the same deadly conditions prevail below 200 meters. And throughout the Pacific, this acidic “horizon” is now rising at a rate of one meter per year.

If CO2 emissions continue their unregulated increase conservative predictions have these acidic conditions filling the North Pacific all the way to the surface by 2050. The pace of acidification is accelerating with emissions. By the end of this century, it will have increased 150 percent, and with it acidification’s insidious effects. As the acidification worsens it depletes the rich soup of calcium carbonate in seawater a key nutrient at the foundation of the food web. Most calcifying organisms corals, zoo plankton, clams, urchins, even king crabs rely on this calcium soup for raw material to build and repair themselves. As acidification steals their calcium supply, these organisms literally start dissolving. Many die outright. Survivors weaken. The swimming and scuttling shelled creatures lose their knack for hunting evading predators, and reproducing. Add enough CO2 to the water and all sea life begins to go into CO2 shock, the same effect that you or I experience if we rapidly hyperventiate into a paper bag, we simply lose consciousness and stop breathing.