Hungry Oceans Dummies' Guide

Professors Dave Karl and Ricardo Letelier, along with Brian von Herzen, want to encourage ocean upwelling using wave-powered ocean pumps to create plankton blooms and thus sequester carbon dioxide on the seabed.

The Plan

The aim of this experiment is to encourage plankton growth by bringing cold water from the lower reaches of the ocean, to nearer the top. Cold, deep water contains important nutrients, and when this reaches the surface, it will then encourage the growth of phytoplankton. The team wants to find an efficient way to imitate natural plankton blooms — without dumping any chemicals into the water. 

Oceans, which cover about 70 percent of the planet, are the most important carbon sink on earth; they have the potential to lock away fifty times more carbon than the atmosphere. Every day, tiny microbes called phytoplankton convert millions of tons of carbon dioxide into living matter.

Phytoplankton makes up less than 1 percent of the world's biomass, but they draw down as much atmospheric CO2 as trees, grass and all the land plants combined. When the plankton dies, some of it sinks to the ocean floor and the carbon is trapped there for thousands of years.

But global warming is affecting the growth of phytoplankton. Between 1999 and 2004, it killed off 30% of the phytoplankton in some parts of the world. One of the effects of the oceans warming up, is that they are mixing less and nutrients aren't always getting to the surface. Some of the most common types of phytoplankton can't grow.

The team will deploy three 1,000-foot-long wave-powered pumps 80 miles off  the coast of Oahu. The pipes will be suspended 50 feet below the surface. If the pipes work, plankton blooms will enhance a process that has been impacted by global warming.