Oceaneos Environmental Solutions works to restore ocean life and feed the growing world population with sustainable fish. Oceaneos has a strong management team covering many years of oceanographic and environmental science supported by a Scientific Board of Advisors of leading scientists. This company performs ocean seeding in small and controlled environments.
“Ocean Seeding is based upon a simple idea: adding nutrients to a depleted marine ecosystem will stimulate plankton growth, restoring the bottom of the food chain.” This process mimics natural iron deposition. One of our largest issues in the ocean is the depleting fish. Part of this is due to over-fishing, and some of it is also due to lack of phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are at the base of the food chain and when there is no food for zooplankton, there is no food for fish, and so on. By adding in the nutrients that phytoplankton grow on, the food chain can be restored.
This process consists of iron deposited as dust which creates a plankton bloom (which are not always bad). These blooms create food for fish and this restores the fish population. There have been past research by academic institutions testing ocean seeding. Dr. Victor Smetacek from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, investigated how Ocean Seeding would not just stimulate plankton blooms, but also sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Ocean seeding should still be tested more, but this could be a very important tool in our future.
Written by Elise Mazur, 8/03/2015