Neptune Aquatics

Sperm Whale Poo Is Good For The Environment!

GDawson

GDawson

Guest
BARcard
Article Here

SPERM whale poo helps remove carbon from the atmosphere, a study shows.

Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon emissions by defecating - or pooing - iron on phytoplankton, Flinders University research has found. The study by PhD student Trish Lavery shows that rather than increasing atmospheric carbon levels through respiration, Southern Ocean sperm whales offset their carbon emissions by pooing on the phytoplankton. "Sperm whale poo is rich in iron, which stimulates phytoplankton to grow and trap carbon," Ms Lavery said in a statement. "When the phytoplankton die, the trapped carbon sinks to the deep ocean. "By this process, sperm whales in the Southern Ocean remove approximately 400,000 tonnes of carbon from our atmosphere each year - more than double the amount of carbon they add by breathing out carbon dioxide," she said.

Her statement says that whaling may have resulted in an extra two million tonnes of carbon remaining in the atmosphere annually. Ms Lavery says that by fertilising phytoplankton, sperm whales were also increasing primary productivity in the ocean which may help to enhance fish stocks.

"It makes a compelling case for an immediate ban on whaling," she said.
 
Yeah but that also makes a case go W's call for seeding the ocean with iron and such.
 
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14800/

Sequestering carbon by any means necessary

Following the lead of President George W. Bush, whose $10 billion, 10-year 2002 Clear Skies and Global Climate Change initiative placed carbon removal at the top of the agenda, senior administrators at the Department of Energy (DOE) currently direct a majority of its global warming budget toward carbon-sequestration technology with far less going to alternative energy sources.

The DOE's 2005 budget, for example, includes $287 million for the Clean Coal Power Initiative, which is focused on sequestering carbon dioxide from coal furnaces, whereas funding for hydrogen energy research amounted to only $29 million. The largest projects currently focus on geological sequestration, in which excess carbon dioxide gets pumped into empty oil wells from whence it came. But, biologists factor in as well.

Grant Heffelfinger never considered himself a biologist. The Sandia National Laboratory software engineer spent most of his career helping to design and ensure safety measures for nuclear weapons. Now, among many other tasks, he oversees a $20 million DOE grant with the purpose of determining the carbon-fixation pathway for Synechococcus.

This ocean cyanobacterium is no carbon-fixing powerhouse, but it has a completely sequenced genome. "The main aim of this project is to fully understand how this organism does it, and create the computational tools that can be used for other bacteria," says Heffelfinger. When marine biologists isolate a microbe that has a better-than-normal carbon-fixation mechanism, its sequence might be plugged into the software being developed by Heffelfinger's team and its pathway quickly determined. With discovery of different pathways, proteins, and genes comes the hope that an industrial microbe can be genetically engineered to sit inside a coal furnace and suck up all the carbon dioxide in the exhaust gases.

To realize this vision, though, researchers must find the microbes. That's why genome-sequencing maven, J. Craig Venter, is sailing the world aboard Sorcerer II, a custom-built yacht. Armed with a multimillion dollar DOE grant, Venter and his team hope to obtain water samples from the world's oceans and sequence every living organism they contain. "This is a basic science project," says Venter. "But it's driven by an attempt to fix a fundamental problem: We're pumping way too much carbon into our atmosphere."

Back on dry land, Rick Meilan, a forestry scientist at Purdue University, is trying to determine which genes in the recently sequenced Populus (poplar) tree species are responsible for the allocation of carbon. He envisions poplar plantations filled with genetically engineered trees whose roots sequester carbon deep within the soil and decompose slowly. "We'd love to see a rapid return on this research," says Meilan. "Unfortunately it takes several years to determine the phenotype of just one gene knockout. We're not talking yeast here."

- Sam Jaffe

Read more: Iron Seeding Just Doesn't Pay - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/14800/#ixzz0r26HvAoh
Click to expand...
 
Yeah, there were some experiments less than a decade ago where Fe was introduced into the deep South Pacific waters intentionally inducing an algae bloom, IIRC it worked.
 
It may have worked but it's a very bad idea IMO. Playing god with the ocean is very bad and will inevitably lead to some real nasty things.
 
All you have to do is calculate how much iron to dose...

deepwater_estimates.png


...or not.
 
If we engineer fluorescent oil eating microbes we can track where all the carbon is sequestered and come back to harvest it after it turns back into oil...
 
nudibranch said:
This study reminds me of the study that showed cow farts deplete the ozone layer.
Click to expand...

Whales play a huge roll in the ocean as does zooplankton and phytoplankton. I think this study has a lot more relevance and merit then the cow farting one ;)
 
nudibranch said:
This study reminds me of the study that showed cow farts deplete the ozone layer.
Click to expand...
If that the case,we're should have a warning sticker on all the Pork and bean cans,i know i did a fair share of damage to the ozone layer :)


Lapsan
 
orientalexpress said:
nudibranch said:
This study reminds me of the study that showed cow farts deplete the ozone layer.
Click to expand...
If that the case,we're should have a warning sticker on all the Pork and bean cans,i know i did a fair share of damage to the ozone layer :)


Lapsan
Click to expand...

What about whale farts?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top