Ocean Nourishment - Iron Fertilization

Iron Fertilization

In large areas of ocean, there are very few phytoplankton, despite there being high levels of nutrients. John Martin, director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, came up with a hypothesis that the low levels of phytoplankton in these regions are due to a lack of iron. To test this hypothesis (known as the Iron Hypothesis) he arranged an experiment where samples of clean water from Antarctica were collected. To some of these samples iron was added but not to others. They were then left for several days and the phytoplankton in the samples with added iron grew much more than in the untreated samples. This lead Martin to speculate that increased iron concentrations in the oceans could partly explain past ice ages. This experiment was followed up by a much larger field experiment (IRONEX I) where 445 kg of iron was added to a patch of ocean near the Galápagos Islands. The levels of phytoplankton increased three times in the area where the iron had been added. The success of this experiment and others has led to proposals to use this technique to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a commercial basis.