Ocean Dumping

• Main Author: John Paull
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; New Zealand; Argentina
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.547.6398; http://orgprints.org/15528/1/15528.pdf

Suppose that you set sail from Australia in a research vessel, the Eurostern, with the stated objective of dumping fertilizer across 320 square kilometers of the Mediterranean Sea. I expect that the Europeans may be outraged at such arrogance, and it is a fair guess that you will be in preventative detention before you sail past Gibraltar. Yet, as I write (February 2009), a German research vessel, the Polarstern, is on a 70 day exercise of dumping 20 tonnes of ferrous sulphate (iron sulphate, FeSO4) in the Southern Ocean at a latitude of 46 ° south. That is a latitude just south of Tasmania, in line with Dunedin, New Zealand, and a few degrees north of Santa Cruz, Argentina. During the LOHAFEX experiment, the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar & Marine Research project will increase the iron level of the treated ocean area by a factor of up to 24 times “the natural iron concentration ” (AWI, 2009, p. 7). The target area is 20 kilometres in diameter, i.e. approximately 320 square kilometres- that is an area of more than five times the size of Manhattan which is 59 square kilometres.