Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate

[Greg Rau]

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/12052023/seabirds-restoration-climate-change/

"They [seabirds] distribute nutrients, in the form of guano, that’s beneficial to plankton, seagrass and coral reefs, which, in turn, nurtures fish populations that are eaten by seabirds and marine mammals in a cycle that forms a biological carbon pump. The stronger the pump, the more carbon dioxide it pushes into seabed sediment storage."

GR - I don't follow. As air breathers, seabirds remove carbon (biomass) from the ocean and respire (most of?) that C directly into the atmosphere as CO2. This therefore reduces the marine bio C pump (by removing at least some C biomass that would have otherwise sunk), enhances the sea to air CO2 flux,  and lessens the ocean CO2 sink. On the nutrient side, birds remove vital nutrients from the ocean and in a perfect world would excrete/defecate all of those nutrients back into the ocean, causing no net gain in ocean nutrients and therefore no net change in the ocean's bio C pump. But its worse than that. By nesting/resting on land, a significant fraction of those nutrients never make it back to the ocean; guano piles represent the highest concentrations of sequestered (once-marine) P on the planet. Again, birds cause a net reduction in surface ocean nutrients and hence a reduction of the bio C pump relative to the case where seabirds are absent. What am I missing?  

By all means let's preserve/restore seabirds and other marine airbreathers, but for the right reasons, not some sort of wishful mythology.

[Eelco Rohling]

Agreed Greg. It’s a red herring (pun intended)

Eelco

Sent from my iPhone

On 14 May 2023, at 07:10, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:



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[Michael Hayes]

They can and should play a role in most marine biomass operations because of their guano. We'll never know how to factor for their input at the CDR level, yet free fertilizer is free fertilizer. Pathogens are the only worry. We need clean, healthy, happy birds, and clean, healthy, and happy bird poop.

--

[Michael Hayes]

Producing a guano enriched Blue Biochar should find customers at all levels. If the combination can rightfully carry the C negative value, funding a rapid expansion of such mCDR operations becomes reasonable to believe.

Bat farms are an old farmer's go-to fertilizer station. Designing seabird care and feeding/pooping stations into an offshore platform is likely not overly hard.

Regenerative agricultural has little to no waste, mariculture level CDR can likely reach that standard. The birds will show up one way or another.

[Tom Goreau]

As Greg rightly pointed out, birds that take a dump on land are removing nutrients from the ocean.

 

Floating solar panels are another story, birds love to take a dump on them, and the waves and rains wash the goodies right back into the water, fueling phytoplankton, and feeding fishes that love to hide in the shadow of floating objects, intensifying nutrient recycling.

 

Upside-down floating Biorock reefs can grow coral reefs full of life in deep blue waters, attracting dense schools of pelagic (open water) fish like tunas and mahi-mahi.

 

We’re designing floating Biorock reefs to protect large floating solar panel arrays on atoll islands from waves, for sustainable mariculture, and as seabird toilets.

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CABjtO1ffGY3PKfpYH%3DC3JTyqvKHma8jPGUSMmcHDsCJff4GkMA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ronal Larson]

Tom et al:  

Several thoughts below

On May 13, 2023, at 4:45 PM, Tom Goreau <gor...@globalcoral.org> wrote:

As Greg rightly pointed out, birds that take a dump on land are removing nutrients from the ocean.

RWL1:   Most of the land-ocean nutrient flow must be in the other direction.  Sounds great to see guano going back to land - where it is needed..   

 

Floating solar panels are another story, birds love to take a dump on them, and the waves and rains wash the goodies right back into the water, fueling phytoplankton, and feeding fishes that love to hide in the shadow of floating objects, intensifying nutrient recycling.

[RWL2:   All positive sounding.  Any downsides to this placement of solar panels?

 

Upside-down floating Biorock reefs can grow coral reefs full of life in deep blue waters, attracting dense schools of pelagic (open water) fish like tunas and mahi-mahi.

RWL3:  I have read at least a hundred Goreau reports on coral reef retention via Biorock.  This is the first I have heard of “upside-down floating Biorock reefs"

 

We’re designing floating Biorock reefs to protect large floating solar panel arrays on atoll islands from waves, for sustainable mariculture, and as seabird toilets.

RWL4:    The word “designing” suggests there are none yet in operation; true?   Might the savings be largest because:: 

a.   The needed small current is available from the panels rather than cabling from panels on land

b.   The iron coral support lattice is smaller (less weight) to hang down from the floating panels than to anchor to the ocean floor

c.   The cost of installing on the ocean floor is removed;  maybe almost no extra cost for installing panels with a coral aspect?

And/or:

d.  There are plenty of freshwater floating PV panels systems;  any that already include “hanging” features?

e.    Are there natural occasions where coral growth is downward rather then upward?

f. Will it be appreciably easier for tourists to visit and see these “inverted colonies”?

g. Much more of the ocean will be available.  Are there enough areas more pole-ward where the local temperatures can be ideal and sufficient nutrients will be available?

h.   Which is likely more important for implementation - saving coral or mariculture?

i.   If the panels are well away from land, presumably you need another way to use the electric generation.  Hydrogen?  Anything possible with a coral aspect?

.j. Anything in your design activities that include seaweed or see grasses?

Should all ocean seaweed production systems also be producing electricity via floating panels (with coral) ?

k.    Is there data on how floating off-shore systems can protect the shore?

l.   Have you a more serious design issue than the above?

RWL5 What can this list do to help?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B86CB297-E5F4-431E-A99B-D5016F237B03%40globalcoral.org.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

The second paper referenced in Berwyn's Inside Climate News piece  tells the rest of the story. It's about biodiversity loss and ecosystem functionality where the more functional and complete an ecology is, the greater its carbon sequestration (generally).

What's going on with this piece by Berwyn is pretty classic legacy climate culture in that; there is widespread wish-restoration of ecologies projected where most have already begun collapsing because they are beyond their evolutionary boundaries.

Anthropogenic changes of many kinds can create these collapse conditions, and sometimes the ecologies are restorable. But with climate change, fundamental boundaries must be restored (temperature regime and hydrologic cycle) to similar conditions where the original ecology evolved before restoration can be achieved. We can attempt to modify species assemblages to adapt, but who we kidding? Earth systems are modest sequesterers when their assemblages are fine tuned over millennia of evolution.

The concept that we can continue to warm to 1.5 C and expect ecologies that are already in collapse to achieve restoration or self-restore: Well Captain, you just can't go-round breaking the laws of Mother Nature.

Steep Trails,

B

From the Press Release:

" In their study, the experts describe the rapidly worsening loss of species with the aid of sobering figures: they estimate that human activities have altered roughly 75 percent of the land surface and 66 percent of the marine waters on our planet. This has occurred to such an extent that today e.g. approximately 80 percent of the biomass from mammals and 50 percent of plant biomass has been lost, while more species are in danger of extinction than at any time in human history. In this regard, global warming and the destruction of natural habitats not only lead to biodiversity loss, but also reduce the capacity of organisms, soils and sediments to store carbon, which in turn exacerbates the climate crisis.

Because each organism has a certain tolerance range for changes to its environmental conditions (e.g. temperature), global warming is also causing species’ habitats to shift. Mobile species follow their temperature range and migrate toward the poles, to higher elevations (on land, mountain ranges) or to greater depths (in the ocean). Sessile organisms like corals can only shift their habitats very gradually, in the course of generations: as such, they are caught in a temperature trap, which means that large coral reefs could, in the long term, disappear entirely. And mobile species, too, could run into climatic dead ends in the form of mountain summits, the coasts of landmasses and islands, at the poles and in the ocean’s depths, if they can no longer find any habitat with suitable temperatures to colonise."

Press Release:
The climate crisis and biodiversity crisis can't be approached as two separate things
New review study released in the journal Science offers new solutions for combating climate change and biodiversity loss
Date:
April 20, 2023
Source:
Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Summary:
Anthropogenic climate change has, together with the intensive use and destruction of natural ecosystems through agriculture, fishing and industry, sparked an unprecedented loss of biodiversity that continues to worsen. In this regard, the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis are often viewed as two separate catastrophes. An international team of researchers calls for adopting a new perspective.


Portner et al., Overcoming the coupled climate and biodiversity crises and their societal impacts, Science, April 21, 2023.
(Paywall) https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl4881

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

[Greg Rau]

Thanks Bruce and all for comments.  At the risk of going further off the deep end, the idea of unsequestering the phosphorus and other bio-essential goodies locked up in seabird guano seems worth considering. Guano  has been mined for thousands of years as a fertilizer for land crops. So, if we were to up this mining and land spreading, could we get C credits if we can show that C is being sequestered as a result - eg by burying the resulting biomass? biochar, etc? 

The C:P ratio (moles/moles) in biomass is someting like 106:1. So, if the 20,000 tonnes/yr of guano currently mined from one island off Peru conntains 5% P, then thats 1000 t P/yr or the potential of 1000 x(44/31)x106 = 150,500 t CDR/yr. So, we'd need to mine more than a few islands worth to change the tragectory of the Keeling curve. Plus, we'd need to change the brutal mining practices involved in guano extraction, while not disturbing the existing bird colonies.  Or we train the birds to only poop over water, thus qualifying them for CDR credits that could then fund the birds' conservation/restoration, not to mention the poop would fuel the restoration of the marine food web, the birds' food supply (and the fishing industry?). Win, win, win, win? In nature, bathroom habits matter.   ;-)  

Greg

https://www.audubon.org/news/holy-crap-trip-worlds-largest-guano-producing-islands

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/3abf9162-0cd9-7643-5cc2-5a0a681427ca%40earthlink.net.

[Michael Hayes]

A bright single light and a horn is all that's needed to call them in from out to the horizon for a nightly med checkup/poop fest/good luck snacks. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/233908842.681737.1684087368003%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Michael Hayes]

A guano fertilized, salt loving, oil producing farming operation can be described in CDR terms:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8587291/

If the resulting bio oil is used to build more such CDR farming operations, the coastal bird populations would deserve some credit.

[Michael Hayes]

Offshore biotic CDR platforms are not limited to aquatic crops. Growing most oil bearing crop out on or in the Ocean can be engineered for. Most row crops can eventually be shifted to the marine space. If the generated bio oil is used to build a larger CDR capacity, a larger marine farming capacity, the oil is well spent.

[Bru Pearce]

Seabird populations along the coast of South Devon where I live have dropped dramatically during my lifetime and the collapse has been accelerating especially over the last ten years. I could probably track this perfectly against the reduction in local fishing boats and the increase in leisure boat activity particularly hi speed outboards.

 

Years ago when we had huge colonies of gulls, cormorants, guillemots, gannets and fulmars (which have almost disappeared completely) large areas of the cliff and off lying rocks used to be white with guano at this time of year.

 

We desperately need to let the seas recover and this makes agri-tech and particular precision fermentation absolutely critical to enabling biosphere restoration. Fundamentally were going to have to feed 9 billion people using about 10% of the space that is currently used for food production. The RethinkX food report makes interesting reading in this respect.

Food and Agriculture Report — RethinkX

 

Bru Pearce

 

E-mail   b...@envisionation.org  

Web www.envisionation.org  

Skype  brupearce  

Work  +44 20 8144 0431    Mobile  +44 7740 854713

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[Tom Goreau]

You can’t use Redfield ratios for this calculation. The biogeochemical weathering of guano results in dramatic increases of phosphorus content over the source material. See the classic work in the field by the person who best knew the stuff:

 

Hutchinson, G. E. "Biogeochemistry of vertebrate excretion-Bull. Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist, 96.1 (1950): 1-554.

 

Even before overfishing wiped out their food resources, most global guano resources worldwide were essentially destroyed in a few decades by enslaved Pacific islanders.

 

Guano will remain a highly desired fertilizer locally because of its quality, but the entire collapsed marine food chain would have to be restored if it were to become sustainable, and then only at low levels insufficient for current food demands.

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

 

 

From: <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sunday, May 14, 2023 at 2:02 PM
To: "carbondiox...@googlegroups.com" <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "bbe...@gmail.com" <bbe...@gmail.com>, "Hans-O. Pörtner" <hans.p...@awi.de>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate

 

Thanks Bruce and all for comments.  At the risk of going further off the deep end, the idea of unsequestering the phosphorus and other bio-essential goodies locked up in seabird guano seems worth considering. Guano  has been mined for thousands of years as a fertilizer for land crops. So, if we were to up this mining and land spreading, could we get C credits if we can show that C is being sequestered as a result - eg by burying the resulting biomass? biochar, etc? 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/233908842.681737.1684087368003%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Tom Goreau]

The many Salicornia species around the world grow in saline water and produce oils that are highly suitable for biodiesel. If they are stimulated by the Biorock process similarly to sea grass and salt marsh plants, then they could be grown on floating platforms in the intertidal, as we proposed in the UN Floating Sustainable Cities Initiative.

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

 

 

From: <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>

Date: Sunday, May 14, 2023 at 2:54 PM
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [CDR] Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate

 

Offshore biotic CDR platforms are not limited to aquatic crops. Growing most oil bearing crop out on or in the Ocean can be engineered for. Most row crops can eventually be shifted to the marine space. If the generated bio oil is used to build a larger CDR capacity, a larger marine farming capacity, the oil is well spent.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CABjtO1cUggBvE0_n1dxkgpUQZpz5FwFHdk7wKzRkD7tVFXMZmg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Michael Hayes]

Technology to convert CH4 into fish food is available. Maybe we should be converting the CH4 into bird feed as a form of CH4/CO2 management, yet who will pay to feed wild seabirds???

https://earth.stanford.edu/news/economics-making-fish-feed-stranded-methane

The C storage numbers would always be soft, yet one could draw a straight line from captured/produced CH4 to general marine environmental improvements.

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

We’re designing floating Biorock reefs to protect large floating solar panel arrays on atoll islands from waves, for sustainable mariculture, and as seabird toilets.

(How fun is that ~ ~ ~ If they are floating, and they grow, how do you increase the floatation for the increased mass? I have never designed a floating and growing wave break before! Imagine a plume of bioactivity and carbon sequestration downstream from a coral atoll solar installation with floating live reef wave breaks ^..^)

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B86CB297-E5F4-431E-A99B-D5016F237B03%40globalcoral.org.

[Bhaskar M V]

Dr Goreau

"... but the entire collapsed marine food chain would have to be restored ..."

This is the key issue - Restoration of the Marine Food Chain.

After it is restored to historical peak levels, we need to go beyond and test the maximum possible.

Nutrient availability is NOT a problem.

Sewage and Fertilizer runoff inputs huge amounts of N and P into Oceans.

The nutrients in Sewage and Fertilizer runoff should be used to grow fish.

At present they are causing undesirable Algal Blooms and decline in fish production.

The marine food chain can be restored by growing desirable Algae and thus restore fish production.

Regards

Bhaskar

[Michael Hayes]

Bhaskar, et al.,

The UN FAO agrees with your position:

https://www.fao.org/3/ad002e/AD002E02.htm

However, converting city sewage outfalls into healthy vibrant marine zones will need slightly better outfall infrastructure than is available today. Today, a single large and long HDPE pipe is the best practice for outfalls. That stream needs to be feed into a much large collection of HDPE pipes/tanks/reactors to allow for further processing.

City outfalls can be re-engineered to be renewable energy hubs and Biochar/fertilizer hubs and more. And, any future offshore community would need such a resource reclamation process to operate cleanly. Any future space colony will likely reclaim such resources.

I've been promoting the USDA and it's many programs lately, and they do have a funding program for research in this outfall improvement area:

https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/water-environmental-programs/water-waste-disposal-loan-grant-program

Building a team, getting a university or government lab onboard, and deploying the initial equipment may seem overwhelming, yet it likely can be done by the right team. 

Coupling CDR with resources reclamation can likely attract a number of potential funding partners.

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[Bhaskar M V]

Michael

Actually there is NO need to change the infrastructure.

We just need to get the chemistry and biology right, there is no need for any engineering.

The problem is Micro-nutrient availability or lack of Micro-nutrients in Sewage and Fertilizer Runoff.

If this is taken care of, Diatom Algae will grow very easily in the receiving water around the outfalls and water will be clean and fish, corals, etc., will grow well.

The FAO report is just theoretical, they have not taken any action on it.

We have the solution to actually implement this on a very large scale, in ponds, lakes and oceans.

Regards

Bhaskar

[Tom Goreau]

Floating Biorock reefs can expand potential coral habitat from less than 0.1% of the ocean to most of the ocean, with significant impacts on the global carbon cycle if done on a large scale.

 

Coral reefs normally only grow in shallow coastal areas free of excess mud and pollution where there is shallow limestone or basalt bottom exposed to sunlight, but if a hard floating surface is provided, coral reefs can be grown out in deep blue water.

 

To be sure one has to provide flotation. One solution is to trap the hydrogen the Biorock process generates by continuous bubbling, or conventional floats and rafts. HDPE might make excellent long-lasting floats if there is no micro-plastics issue.

 

Temporary floating reefs were invented thousands of years ago by Pacific islanders, using coconut leaves and bamboo to attract dense fish populations. After a year or so they become waterlogged and sink, so coral settlement is minor, even if it had the limestone surfaces coral larvae need for settlement.

 

50 years ago, coral reefs were responsible for about half of the calcium carbonate burial in the sea, now almost all coral reefs are eroding faster than they are growing, so their natural carbon burial mechanism has been mostly destroyed, along with the seagrass, mangrove, and saltmarsh habitat that used to bury half of the organic carbon in the sea.

 

Regenerating marine ecosystems is needed to regenerate their natural carbon sinks.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/35870d22-5754-ff2f-48d5-bf56a70a977c%40earthlink.net.

[Bru Pearce]

Thanks for that post Tom, you have set my mind racing!

So many Ideas to integrate.

 

Best wishes,

 

Bru Pearce

 

E-mail   b...@envisionation.org  

Web www.envisionation.org  

Skype  brupearce  

Work  +44 20 8144 0431    Mobile  +44 7740 854713

Salcombe, Devon, UK

Information contained in this email and any files attached to it is confidential to the intended recipient and may be covered by legal professional privilege.  If you receive this email in error, please advise by return email before deleting it; you should not retain the email or disclose its contents to anyone.  Envisionation Ltd has taken reasonable precautions to minimise the risk of software viruses, but we recommend that any attachments are virus checked before they are opened.  Thank you for your cooperation.

 

[Tom Goreau]

Micro nutrient balance (manganese, cobalt, zinc, cadmium, and molybdenum) provide essential enzyme cofactors for all life, and deficiencies affect which phytoplankton can grow, and the subsequent food chains to fish. As you say, diatoms are the best food for fish food chains, and very fussy about their micronutrients to keep growing. Luigi Provasoli, Bob Guillard, and Larry Brand worked this out through decades of work with pure algae cultures.

 

The most cost-effective place to absorb flood of nutrient pollution (nitrogen and phosphorus) destroying all coastal ecosystems is in estuaries, before it is diluted out in the open ocean, and recycle them back on land.

 

This can easily be done, but needs some engineering. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at sewage outfalls and documenting their disastrous ecological impacts on coastal ecosystems through understanding the nutrient ecology and zonation of the weedy algae that smother coral reefs and seagrasses. The solution is tertiary treatment (nutrient removal), which is cheap in tropical countries but very expensive in cold countries where plants can’t grow all year round because it must be done chemically. Almost no tropical sewage receives tertiary treatment because the funding agencies and their technical experts come from cold countries where it can’t be done, and condescendingly tell warm countries it is too expensive and complicated for tropical people. The last thing that should be done with sewage is to dilute it in the ocean or pump it underground to fester where land plants or aquatic algae can’t absorb and recycle the nutrients.

 

Swimming along any coastal tourist area I can immediately see where all the sewage outfalls are, even if they are hidden or buried, from the algae species that are zoned around them. The tourists are swimming in their own sewage (plus that of many more people) without realizing, which is why so many get ear infections (which are not documented in the medical literature, but the major problem resort doctors treat). The only places that don’t have obvious impacts are where the treated water is pumped inland and used to fertilize forests, ornamental gardens, lawns, and lily ponds. Only a handful of places in the world do this, a few high end resorts determined to be really clean, some bays I cleaned up in Jamaica by diverting sewage from the sea, and the beaches around the Old City of Panama, which was filthy when my mother was a child there a hundred years ago, but which suddenly became cleaner just a few years ago after a sewage treatment system was built.

 

The best examples I have seen of nutrient removal comes from large land fish tuna fish hatcheries in Panama and Indonesia. Fish farms generate high nutrient loads from fish feces and rotting uneaten food (as seen under floating salmon farms). But in these two places the nutrient-rich effluent flows through zig-zag shallow raceways in full sunlight before entering the sea. Where the effluent first enters the raceway huge masses of green algae that take up excess phosphorus grow, a little further downstream these are replaced by red algae that take up nitrogen very efficiently, further down one finds a lower canopy of brown algae, and then, when almost all the nutrients have been taken up, the raceways are dominated by sea anemones (coral relatives without limestone skeletons) and coralline algae because nutrients have been reduced to safe levels for coral reef ecosystems before ocean discharge. The algae are easily rinsed of salt, dried, and turned into nutrient rich fertilizer. This should be done in all tropical sewage outfalls.

 

Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance

Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.

Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK

37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

gor...@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)

 

Books:

Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392

 

Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734

 

No one can change the past, everybody can change the future

 

It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think

 

Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away

 

Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change

 

 

 

From: <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Bhaskar M V <bhaska...@gmail.com>

Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 2:17 AM
To: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [CDR] Restoring Seabird Populations Can Help Repair the Climate

 

Michael

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CALBeeSpgyCMa407bb7%2B1bnEq5hPPBPTLsYHWbNeQGb6Q6cZuSQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Bhaskar M V]

"The most cost-effective place to absorb flood of nutrient pollution (nitrogen and phosphorus) destroying all coastal ecosystems is in estuaries, before it is diluted out in the open ocean, and recycle them back on land.

This can easily be done, but needs some engineering."

I disagree.

The best solution is to use our Nano Silica based Micro-nutrient product, Nualgi, to grow Diatom Algae near the outfalls and in all other locations, wherever nutrients are available. Nualgi can be used to grow Diatom in the tanks in WWTPs, in ponds, lakes, estuaries, etc.

Diatoms will be consumed by Zooplankton and fish, so there is no need to harvest them.

So no engineering is required either to grow or to harvest.

Diatoms grow better in cooler water, but when Nualgi is used, Diatoms grow even in Indian summers even when Air temperature is upto 45 deg C or so. 

Growing Diatoms is cheaper than growing plants or trees.

Regards

Bhaskar

Director

Kadambari Consultants Pvt Ltd

Hyderabad. India

Ph. & WhatsApp : +91 92465 08213

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarmv/

[Tom Goreau]

Much less efficient to absorb nutrients after they have been vastly diluted in the sea, and killed precious coastal ecosystems, than to grow them in estuaries, ponds, and raceways. Different species of diatoms also grow in fresh and brackish water.

[Bhaskar M V]

Micro-nutrients dilute ALONG with the Macro-nutrients. Diatoms grow wherever the inputs are available. 

When Nualgi is dosed near the Ocean Outfall, Diatoms start growing in the water around the outfall, so less Macro-nutrients will disperse into the ocean.

Once Diatoms grow there would be no harm to the coastal ecosystems.

Yes, growing Diatoms in estuaries, natural ponds, lakes, streams, rivers, etc, is beneficial.  

Raceways, Tanks, etc, will only add to cost.

Nualgi works in Raw Sewage, Brackish water, fresh water, seawater, etc.

All species of Diatoms consume it.

Regards 

Bhaskar 

[Tom Goreau]

It’s important to grow diatoms to replenish fisheries, even more for things that eat them directly, like oysters and mussels. But most diatom carbon production does not reach fish, which are several trophic chains up the food chain, and gets repeatedly recycled before finally hitting a one-way ticket to the bottom in a big fecal pellet like an appendicularian’s.

 

On the other hand macrolgae cultivation captures nutrients nearest the source, where hydrothermal carbonation can convert the macroalgal carbon biomass into nitrogen-rich and phosphorus-rich biochar, the very best for plants when matured with basalt dust, compost of various forms, and beneficial microbes.

[Bhaskar M V]

The best way forward is to conduct experiments growing Diatoms. 

There is a lot of information about plants and trees, but very little about Diatoms. 

Food production on land is about 8,500 million tons per year, Agriculture and meat put together. 

Wild fish catch is ONLY 100 million tons per year. Fish stocks in oceans are declining at this low level of catch. So we need to grow fish in the open oceans to restore fish stocks. 

If people eat more fish, less meat needs to be grown on land. Land freed up can used to grow forests. 

Oceans hold more organic carbon than land. Unfortunately no one wishes to discuss this. 

Regards 

Bhaskar 

[Tom Goreau]

Agreed except for the last sentence:

 

there is more organic matter in soil than there is in the ocean.

[Bhaskar M V]

What is the total organic carbon and how much of this is on land and how much in oceans?

Bhaskar