September 13th, 2009
Jellyfish and plastic pieces from the Pacific Ocean.
Crabs, Algae, and Flying Fish Eggs on Ocean Plastic.
Barnacles living on plastic bottles in ocean.
A research ship recently docked back home after weeks out at sea studying plastic in the ocean. You can read about the fascinating trip and see amazing photos on their blog. Or check out the official website.
Their destination was a location in the Pacific Ocean, far off the coast of California, where sea currents converge and cause a mass gathering of plastic. The plastic gathering isn’t a floating raft; but small pieces suspended at varying depths.
These plastic pieces probably leech chemicals into the water but they also act like magnets attracting hydrophobic industrial and agricultural chemicals – which are suspected to be consumed by small fish and work up the food chain to top-level-consumers like us.
Interestingly, larger pieces of ocean plastics become homes to pelagic creatures like crabs, algae, flying fish eggs. They anticipate needing six months (or more) to analyze all the data – should be some interesting results!
Tags: fish, ocean, plastic, research, resources, science, sustainable, websites
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January 14th, 2009
Phytoplankton Bloom off Namibia. NASA Photo
From an article in Nature:
“The German science ministry has suspended a planned Indo–German ocean fertilization experiment in the Southern Ocean, and asked the German research institute behind it to commission an independent assessment of the study’s environmental safety.”
“The scientists had planned to dump their cargo of 20 tonnes of iron sulphate over a 300-square-kilometre study area to induce an algal bloom. Stimulating algal growth with extra nutrients is believed to be one possible way of sequestering carbon dioxide from the air.”
At least one blogging scientist thinks the idea has merit.
At first, it sounds like a really bad idea. But we are in a dire situation, and if dumping iron into the ocean helps mitigate climate change it may be well worth the risk. I believe the concept is that the bloom of algae and the carbon it takes prisoner will die and sink to bottom of the ocean and be trapped there “forever” sequestering the carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere for the foreseeable future. It would be awesome if the solution (or at least part of the solution) to climate change was so easy!
Tags: carbon, climate change, iron, ocean
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