posted 10-06-2002 07:37 PM               

Is Dyn-O-Gel the Missing Link?

A giant area of mysterious "black water" in Florida Bay was first detected in satellite images in mid-December 2001. The area expanded over time, and at its peak in February, the "black water" covered an estimated 700 square miles, larger than Lake Okeechobee, from Naples to Key West.

Researchers who have been studying the area of "black water" have no clear explanation. Some marine biologists, like Scott Willis at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, believe the black water may be an algal bloom. Algae are microscopic, often unicellular, plants that live in the ocean and serve as food for many fish and other marine life. When they multiply rapidly and become very dense it is called a "bloom." Although algal blooms are not rare in Florida waters, blooms of this size are.

The "black water" does seem to be associated with a diatom, a type of alga, yet it does not appear to be killing fish like the infamous "red tide" (now renamed "Harmful Algal Bloom" or HAB). HABs, such as Karenia brevis, produce potent neurotoxins that kill higher forms of life such as zooplankton, shellfish, fish, birds, marine mammals, and even humans that feed either directly or indirectly on them. (See Red Tide for more information.) Yet fishermen have reported few fish, either dead or alive, in the "black water," in locations where the fish are normally found in abundance. The fishermen also said the water looked "snotty," "like sewage," and "nasty." Their most surprising observation was "schools of fish that swam into the black water began jumping and running at high speed and acting oddly" (Naples Daily News, March 24, 2002), as if trying to leap out of the water. The fishermen had never seen this before.

Although marine scientists suspected the area might be a "dead zone," Mote Marine Laboratory, in Sarasota, FL, found there was oxygen in the water column. Scientists also theorized that it had something to do with an inrush of fresh water and runoff from a river near the Everglades, but water testing disproved this. Another theory is that it might somehow be linked to a recent red tide event near Naples, just to the north.

As of May 4, the Florida Marine Research Institute, of St. Petersburg, FL, stated: "At this time, investigators are still undecided about the initial cause, its composition during January and February, and its effect on Gulf marine communities."

There may be an explanation that has been overlooked. On July 19, 2001, an experiment to alter weather took place over the Atlantic Ocean, 10 miles off the coast of Jupiter, FL. Eight thousand pounds of a product called Dyn-O-Gel, a powdery polymer substance that forms a gel when mixed with water, was sprayed from a jet into a storm cloud. (Dyn-O-Gel) Within moments the cloud had vanished from the radar screens. The Dyn-O-Gel had combined with the moisture in the storm cloud to form a gel that, presumably, fell into the ocean. According to the producer, Dyn-O-Mat, of Riviera Beach, FL, the gel is "bio-degradable, non toxic and not hazardous to anyone's health." (See Dyn-O-Mat.)

And yet, within six months, strange, "gelatinous blobs ... and spider-weblike filaments" (Naples Daily News, March 24, 2002) were found floating in Florida Bay. The Naples Daily News, March 19, 2002, reported: "Fishermen who've spent a lifetime on the water say they've never seen anything like the black mass of water that is now breaking up in the reefs and churning waters where the gulf meets the Atlantic."

posted 10-07-2002 12:36 AM            

Dumping iron?

Ocean Fertilization @ MIT
http://web.mit.edu/jadhiya/www/textframe.htm

EXCERPT:

Markels Jr. M and Barber R.T. (2000) The sequestration of carbon to the deep ocean by fertilization.

ACS Symposium on CO2 Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration. August 20-24, 2000.

[Proposes a demonstration experiment over 13000 sq. km in the Equatorial Pacific, and contains a discussion of never-published results of privately-funded field tests in the Gulf of Mexico.

Claims costs of $1-2/ton of CO2 captured.]

References are included for issued patents and the pending "iron chelate " patent application.

See also, the company's website:
http://www.greenseaventure.com

23 October 2000
Cape Cod Times

Team tests iron to boost algae growth
http://www.capecodonline.com/cctimes/archives/2000/oct/23/teamtests23.htm

EXCERPT:

posted 10-07-2002 04:07 PM            

CASE TEACHING NOTES for

"Is Iron Fertilization Good for the Sea?"

by LeLeng To

Department of Biological Sciences, Goucher College
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/iron_case/geritol_notes.html

EXCERPT:

.....Michael Markels and Ocean Farming Inc. (OFI)

Inspired by the IronEx studies, the chemical engineer Michael Markels established Ocean Farming Inc. to profit commercially from iron-induced phytoplankton blooms. OFI has signed an agreement with the government of the Marshall Islands for private property rights to the 800,000 square miles of ocean around the archipelago. For a sliding yearly fee of $3 million or less, depending on the size of ocean area used, OFI will have the commercial rights to ocean products.

OFI conducted studies in the Gulf of Mexico to determine the best way of delivering trace elements, but the results of these studies have not been published.

Markels proposes to package iron, phosphate, and key trace elements in buoyant time-release capsules and seed the ocean continually. Through this approach, he hopes to mimic the iron upwelling off the coast of Peru and increase fish populations sufficiently for ocean farming.

He estimates that the boost in primary productivity in a 100,000-square-mile area of iron-enriched ocean should fix enough CO2 to counteract the emissions of the U.S. by one-quarter to one-third.

None of the IronEx studies were of the magnitude and length suggested by Markels. Since phytoplankton species do not all bloom in a similar fashion with iron enrichment, it is difficult to predict with any certainty what species will bloom. In both IronEx I and IronEx II, the bloom consisted predominantly of pennate diatoms while a major component of the picophytoplankton, Prochlorococcus, actually decreased in numbers.

The specter of 100,000 square miles of toxin-producing harmful algal blooms (HABs) concerns scientists. [_HELLO_]

There is some evidence that diatoms may clog animal gills. Brood sizes of copepods on a diatom diet are actually smaller.

Furthermore, surface algal blooms may cut off light and oxygen to subsurface layers. Anaerobic conditions can favor methanogenesis and methane is another greenhouse gas.

Sallie Chisholm of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT has also pointed to the long evolutionary history of the upwelling systems. She is skeptical that the system can be easily mimicked.