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The point is to do this in the marine deserts where it is already mostly a dead zone
by colechristensen 1y ago
The point is to do this in the marine deserts where it is already mostly a dead zone
- rickydroll 1y agoThere are multiple kinds of dead zones. The Gulf dead zones are caused by a lack of oxygen. Iron fertilization, afaik, works in a dead zone that lacks nutrients. A hypothesis for why the dead zones exist is whaling. What poop fertilized the ocean waters, boosting plankton populations, which made whale food. This observed cycle leads to the conjecture that iron is a necessary core nutrient, but you need other nutrients found in whale poop, leading to the creation of synthetic whale poop. https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-are-dumping-fake-whale-poop-into-the-ocean/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/scientists-are-dumping-fake-... We do have evidence of iron fertilization boosting algae growth from the Australian fires' iron-rich smoke. https://nicholas.duke.edu/news/australian-wildfires-triggered-massive-algal-blooms-southern-ocean https://nicholas.duke.edu/news/australian-wildfires-triggere... The big but is whether the iron-based fertilization will grow the right algae or not. Whatever works, we need boatloads of this stuff stat