4 ms·
> Through eating krill and then defecating, whales release iron locked within krill back into the water, making that iron available to phytoplankton, which need
by fallingknife 5y ago
> Through eating krill and then defecating, whales release iron locked within krill back into the water, making that iron available to phytoplankton, which need it to survive.
So sounds like removing the whales has removed iron from the system permanently and it can't recover then.
- ajmurmann 5y agoSeeding the ocean with iron had previously been suggested for carbon sequestration as well https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.article https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.artic...
- _3u10 5y agoI believe the numbers work out to sequestering 1/3rd of CO2 output for around $4 billion per year and creating hundreds of billion in fish as well as untold benefits for the ecosystem
- gscott 5y agoCanadian tribes have tried it https://www.q13fox.com/news/canadian-tribes-ocean-fertilization-project-attempts-to-boost-salmon-population https://www.q13fox.com/news/canadian-tribes-ocean-fertilizat...
- beloch 5y agoWould having more whales boost CO2 sequestration, or just increase the ammount tied up in the oceans at any given time? If the former, gradual seeding could leave a persistent effect behind in the form of increased whale populations. Seeding wouldn't just be a one-time exchange of money for CO2 sequestration.
- goda90 5y agoDoesn't carbon get sequestered on the ocean floor quite a bit? I imagine more in the ocean would mean more getting trapped in the ocean floor.
- ruined 5y agolimestone is the largest carbon reservoir in the world, storing about 80% of all the world's carbon, and nearly all limestone is former marine organisms. organisms like krill that now have difficulty accreting carbonate structure and surviving due to the increased co2 acidity of the oceans :D
- colechristensen 5y agoThere are always several cycles going simultaneously in ecology, nothing is permanent.
- smt88 5y agoExtinction is permanent. There are also lots of spirals like this that lead to rapid population collapse. The thing that scares people about climate change is that we don't know when humans will be caught in one of those collapses, but we know that it will happen eventually. There are lots and lots of species that we need to sustain billions of humans.
- nyokodo 5y ago> Extinction is permanent. You never get quite the same thing but convergent evolution can mean extinction isn’t 100% permanent given enough time.
- mellavora 5y agobadgers vs kiwis you mean. key words "given enough time"
- aeternum 5y agoNew species also sometimes need an empty niche to evolve. It's pretty tyrannical of us humans to decide that the species that exist now are the ones that get to inhabit that niche forever.
- ruined 5y agoall of humanity stands on the bedrock of a diverse and complex ecosystem. what's tyrannical is the set of people and institutions that unaccountably insist it's their right to go around systematically poking out thousands of fresh empty niches under the world's collective feet you're not actually concerned about the space available for new species. you're not even concerned with the species we have now. if you were concerned about species diversity, you would be concerned that we are way below replacement rates. you can't spin a mass extinction as some kind of victory for the liberty of nature.