Spraying fake whale poop into the ocean to stop climate change
Whales play
Scientists Are Crafting Fake Whale Poop and Dumping It in the Ocean | Smithsonian
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-are-crafting-fake-whale-poop-and-dumping-it-in-the-ocean-180985436/
Many species of whales feed in the deep sea where prey is plentiful, but because they cannot defecate in the high water pressure of the deep sea, they come to the surface to relieve themselves. This provides a steady supply of nutrients such as iron, nitrogen, and phosphorus to areas where nutrients are often lacking.
What's particularly important is that when sunlight near the ocean's surface hits whale feces, it causes a massive proliferation of phytoplankton, which are the foundation of the food chain.
'The impact of whale feces occurs very rapidly,' said David King, a chemist at the University of Cambridge in the UK. 'Within three or four days of a whale surfacing, a vast underwater green zone covering several thousand square kilometres has appeared.'
According to Heidi Pearson, a marine biologist at the University of Alaska Southeast, the 'nutrient plume,' which is the murky seawater caused by whale droppings, contains three to seven times more nutrients than usual. This causes the phytoplankton to photosynthesize and absorb about 22 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to the amount of carbon dioxide released by 4.8 million cars, and when the whales die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, trapping the carbon in the ocean for a long time.
However, past industrial whaling practices have left the total whale population much smaller than it once was, which means fewer whales pooping near the surface, slowing nutrient cycling and reducing the amount of carbon stored in the ocean.
In an effort to change this situation, the WhaleX Foundation is working to artificially synthesize whale waste. The main component of this 'synthetic whale feces' is nitrogen, and it also contains trace elements such as phosphorus, silica, and iron, and is being developed with the aim of making it function exactly like the real thing when sprayed into the ocean.
In 2021, WhaleX Foundation oceanographer Edwina Tanner and her team conducted an experiment in which they sprayed 80 gallons (about 363 liters) of fake excrement, equivalent to the plume of one whale, off the east coast of Australia. However, because the components were dispersed, they were unable to accurately measure how much phytoplankton had increased.
So in their next test, which will be conducted in early 2025, Tanner and his team plan to use two or three containers called 'biopods' to spray the equivalent of five whales' worth of fake feces. The biopods will not only keep nutrients at the surface, but also allow phytoplankton to grow inside the pods, allowing them to accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed.
The WhaleX Foundation's ultimate goal is to remove 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year by spraying fake waste into 300 nutrient-poor areas of the ocean, also known as 'dead zones' or 'ocean deserts.'
WhaleX isn't the only project trying to artificially recreate whale poop. The International Marine Biomass Restoration Project, led by Cambridge University's King, is taking a nutrient-rich approach by spreading a powder mixed with burnt rice husks on the ocean's surface. They use a powder rather than a nutrient liquid to help keep the nutrients at the surface for as long as possible.
In the future, the team also plans to collect and spray into the ocean fine, nutrient-rich powders produced when the 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano occurs, as well as fine, nutrient-rich powders produced when the Greenland ice sheet erodes granite bedrock. These powders have already been shown to cause massive blooms of phytoplankton.
If the experiment proves successful, King and his team plan to spread the powdered fake feces in the seas of Tonga and Tuvalu, and authorities in both countries have already expressed interest in the technique as a way to halt the decline of important marine stocks such as tuna.
'We believe that if we can mimic the functions of whale faeces, we could restore marine fish, mammal and crustacean populations to levels seen 400 years ago, probably within 40 to 50 years,' King said.
There are scientific challenges to overcome with either project. It's still unclear how much carbon would actually be sequestered on the ocean floor, or how many nutrients would be absorbed into the food chain, Pearson, who is not involved with either project, said. 'It's a flashy idea.'
There are also legal challenges: The WhaleX Foundation has received approval from Australia's Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment to conduct trials in the country, but many are concerned that spraying nutrients into the ocean could lead to harmful algae blooms.
In particular, if the project were to be expanded internationally, it would violate the London Convention , an international law that regulates substances discharged into the ocean, so in order to expand the project, it would be necessary to prove that the fake waste does not have a harmful impact on the marine ecosystem.
But if proven effective, fake whale waste could become an important part of global carbon reduction efforts. 'I always applaud human innovation when it comes to taking inspiration from nature, because over the course of evolutionary time, nature has always found the solutions that work first and that work best,' Pearson said of these efforts.
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in Creature, Posted by log1l_ks