More bang for the buck (CO2 sequestered) with plankton. Plus, if the plankton is eaten by a whale and transformed into whale doo, much of it will sink into the abyss, effectively sequestered for eons.
From Maritime Executive, February 16:
Internet giant Amazon is providing $1.6 million in funding for the development of the world’s first commercial-scale seaweed farm, which will be located between the turbines in an offshore wind farm in the Netherlands. Part of a larger effort by Dutch authorities to make better use of the sea space within the wind farm lease areas, this project is designed to test and improve methods of seaweed farming, while researching the potential of seaweed to sequester carbon.
Know as North Sea Farm 1, the project is managed by a consortium of scientific researchers and partners from the seaweed industry, led by the non-profit organization North Sea Farmers. Amazon’s grant will provide the investment required to construct a 10-hectare seaweed farm, which is expected to produce at least 6,000kg of fresh seaweed in its first year. They expect it will become operational by the end of 2023....
....MUCH MORE
If the shallower water is otherwise a carbon desert (a rarity) it is probably a good use of the space under and between the turbines. However, as with so much of this stuff the temptation will be to claim the gross mass of the vegetation as carbon credits with no concern for any bits of the carbon cycle that is displaced, which bits would bring the net sequestration down considerably.
On the other hand....from 2021's "Searching for the Dust That Cooled the Planet":This is why you want to be careful with the geoengineering proposals. Some links after the jump....
Plankton Week: “Give me a half tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age.”
The headline quote is from oceanographer John Martin during a 1988 lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Here's NASA's Earth Observatory archive page on the statement.
It is a bit of an exaggeration, you may need ten of those Valemax bulk carriers, currently the second largest ships in the world at 400,000 dwt (Euronav's two TI oil tankers at 441,000 dwt are bigger), to make an environmental change but what a change it would be. The orders of magnitude of carbon the iron-fed plankton would sequester are almost mind-boggling:
...Martin gathered the results of the incubation experiments and laid out the evidence in support of the Iron Hypothesis together with some back‐of‐the‐envelope calculations and presented his findings at a Journal Club lecture at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in July of 1988. He estimated that using a conservative Fe : C ratio that 300,000 tons of iron in the Southern Ocean induce the growth of phytoplankton that could draw down an estimated two billion tons of carbon dioxide. Then, putting on his best Dr. Strangelove accent, he suggested that “with half a ship load of iron….I could give you an ice age.” The symposium broke up with laughter and everyone retired to the lawn outside the Redfield Building for beers (from Chisholm and Morel, Editors, preface to: What controls phytoplankton production in nutrient‐rich areas of the open sea? Limnology and Oceanography, 36, 8 December 1991).
As repeated in "John Holland Martin: From Picograms to Petagrams and Copepods to Climate"
—Bulletin of Limnology and Oceanography, Wiley. 25 March 2016
....Coming up tomorrow, the Pope, and a Vancouver stock promoter.
Our series thus far:
October 27
Plankton Week: "Metal deposits from Chinese coal plants end up in the Pacific Ocean, research shows"
October 26
"Plankton Bloom Heralded Earth’s Greatest Extinction"
And many, many more. If interested use the 'search blog' box, keyword plankton and Planktos for the saga of the Pope and the stock promoter.
Also whales. Huge benefits.
