| People are looking for ways to capture carbon, either for credits or the greater good and Iron Fertilization is an option. The Southern Ocean Fertilization Experiment is one of the largest man-made phytoplankton blooms. Lots of Iron was dumped into the sea and it created food for algae, which bloomed, died and sank into the sea. The fallen algae sequestered carbon and supposedly stays in the deep with the carbon from the atmosphere. But, the amount of carbon that the bloom may capture, added to the amount of carbon it took to spread the iron in the first place = about 8 acres of replanted forests. To me it seems more worthwhile to replant our forests instead of messing with the fragile ocean ecosystem. Who knows what will happen to all the creatures in the Southern waters where the experiment is taking place. If you look carefully in the piece, the background is filled with Krill, which may seem tiny, but are very important in the ocean food chain. I stuck them in to signify the interconnectedness of large and small. How will our oceans change if large plankton blooms become a common carbon capturing tool?...All we know for sure is that the ecosystem is complex and often undocumented. color-reduction woodcut image size 32” x 24” |
| BACK | HOME | CONTACT | NEXT |
