Tonnes of iron dumped off B.C.'s coast

I was on Haida Gwaii couple years ago with 2 friends. Pretty much every local we have encountered was very friendly and offered us home canned salmon for free. There were golden eagles and huge ravens everywhere. Ancient rainforests. I got the impression that the last thing Haida people needed is technology <i>enhancing</i> their natural resources. The place just seemed perfect. Oh well, I guess there is money to be made, so never mind...

This idea has been around for a while, but I didn't realise there were field experiments going on. Basically, iron particles are dumped into the ocean which encourages a massive algal bloom. A proportion of the algae will sink to the bottom of the ocean, trapping the carbon. John Martin, an oceanographer, famously quipped: "Give me half a tanker of iron, and I’ll give you the next ice age.”<p>There's a better article here: <a href="http://planetsave.com/2012/07/22/geoengineering-news-controversial-ocean-iron-fertilization-experiment-succeeds-as-carbon-sink/" rel="nofollow">http://planetsave.com/2012/07/22/geoengineering-news-controv...</a>

From the article: <i>The Guardian...reports that George's team dumped about 100 tonnes of </i>iron sulphate <i>into the ocean from a fishing boat 370 kilometres west of Haida Gwaii in July.</i><p>From Wiki: <i>Iron(II) sulfate (Br.E. iron(II) sulphate) or ferrous sulfate is the chemical compound with the formula FeSO4. It is used medically to treat iron deficiency, and also for industrial applications.</i><p>So it's not like they dumped a bunch of scrap iron parts or old machinery into the ocean. This is a fairly common chemical compound with many biological uses.

Carbon credits for dumping iron into the ocean? The artificial plankton bloom may absorb some CO2 but how permanent is that? It would be nice to see some research on that.

Is it possible we'll see noticable global cooling from this or is it too small?<p>Legal/approved or not, it seems like this will be a great data point and it will be good to have as much information as possible on strategies like this is global warming ever becomes a pressing issue.

If the practice of ocean fertilization is illegal, how was he hoping to redeem the carbon credits?

What an incredibly slanted article.

Our first true James Bond villain

ya anyone got any links to more info on this process? possible damage? possible gain?