A related article - http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2014/04/03/298778615/the-power-of-poop-a-whale-story
"We know how much whales eat today. We know that a hundred years ago, there were lots more whales in the southern oceans. We can guess what the whale population was in 1910. If we multiply the number of whales back then times the size of their meals, we can imagine how much krill had to be in the ocean. It comes out to 1.5 billion tons of krill. " .... Nicols' team analyzed 27 fecal samples from four species of baleen whales, reported New Scientist <http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=52937108061>. "He found that on average whale faeces had 10 million times as much iron as Antarctic seawater." ... "And guess what? When Antarctica's great whales were nearly destroyed in the 1960s, the krill population, instead of expanding, collapsed, by some 80 percent." ... "Smetacek got it right. Whales do, in fact, garden the ocean, fertilizing the seas to grow their own food. Whales recirculate the iron. Even the bits that slip down to the dark bottom get pulled back up by whales. Sperm whales dive to terrifying depths, 3,000 feet below, to hunt iron-rich prey like giant squid. Pressed by the weight of the ocean, their digestion stops; they don't excrete. They consume the iron below, hold it in, climb back to the surface, and that's where they poop. Every sperm whale,it is said <http://www.npr.org/books/titles/249234104/the-once-and-future-world-nature-as-it-was-as-it-is-as-it-could-be>, draws 50 tons of iron to the surface every year." http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/phytoplankton-population/ "Researchers at Canada's Dalhousie University say the global population of phytoplankton has fallen about 40 percent since 1950. " A Whale of a decision - http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/148/18160.pdf International Court of Justice held that Japan's whaling was illegal and asked it to stop. So we can expect number of whales to increase and fertilize oceans with Iron and restore the Diatom and Krill population. Dr Smetacek's paper www.fbbva.es/TLFU/dat/02SMETACEKSEPARATA.pdf Diatom - Krill - Whales is the "food chain of giants" Whales got it right, you have to fertilize the oceans with Iron to grow more Diatoms and Krill. I wonder when people will understand this. I have posted about the decline in number of whales and Phytoplankton on this discussion group earlier too. Regards Bhaskar On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 01:06:44 UTC+5:30, Greg Rau wrote: > > From the article: "At the very moment it revealed its promise, the white > whale of iron fertilisation seems to have slipped under the waves anew." > > As I mentioned in my June 10 post, how policy drowned OIF research is > cogently detailed here: > http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/lawreview/vol54/iss1/5/ > > I'm not a big fan of OIF, but do think its hypotheses deserve to be > tested, as do other forms of ocean-based Earth management methods (e.g. > attached). After all, do we seriously think we can solve the global CO2 > problem by ignoring 70% of the Earth's surface? However, actions by the > "Ocean Policy Police" (e.g. London Protocol) have made scientific > exploration of these ideas a whole lot harder by requiring international > approval of such research. If the COP process is any indication, both > researchers and funding agencies will be unwilling to risk precious time > and effort on seeking approval, a process that may have no end, like > climate negotiations. > > It would seem that under the rather grave CO2 circumstances we now face > that we need to rapidly seek and carefully test all possible solutions. But > instead of finding ways to chill the climate, policy instead has found ways > to chill research on this topic. Needless to say, that could prove to be a > very large and long-lived mistake for the planet's inhabitants. Let's > figure out a way of carefully and expeditiously exploring what our options > are, if any, and not, out of unfounded fear, blindly assume that the > negatives of such approaches will alway be greater than the benefits. > > Greg > > ------------------------------ > *From:* [email protected] <javascript:> [ > [email protected] <javascript:>] on behalf of Andrew Lockley [ > [email protected] <javascript:>] > *Sent:* Tuesday, July 01, 2014 10:25 AM > *To:* geoengineering > *Subject:* [geo] Can tiny plankton help reverse climate change? - David > Biello - Aeon > > > http://aeon.co/magazine/nature-and-cosmos/can-tiny-plankton-help-reverse-climate-change/ > > Extract > > But Smetacek’s research cruise already demonstrated that iron > fertilisation works, and the science behind it has been vetted and > published in the journal Nature, as recently as 2012. Despite this > progress, there have been no scientific research cruises since 2009, and > there are none planned for the future. At the very moment it revealed its > promise, the white whale of iron fertilisation seems to have slipped under > the waves anew. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
