We had instrumentation of every sort. Does Woods Hole [Oceanographic Institution] have two Slocum gliders? They may have one. The Canadian Institute for Ocean Science provided us with two gliders. We talked to [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] as the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. and said our intention is to go out to the eddies, identify an eddy and there try to understand how it could be restored and replenished. They say they didn't know what we were doing.
We started by using ships of opportunity to collect water samples last December for months. This is not willy-nilly. This is not go out, throw iron in the water and stay there for as little as possible because the costs are so high. We were gathering baseline data months ahead. We sent gliders out long before the ship set sail to survey the whole region. We have baseline data for the whole region, on natural blooms and eddies that were blooming and weren't blooming to get the full picture. That's indicative of good, careful science planning.
This is world-class science done by one of the least likely suspects: a small, native peoples village. That's the charm of the story.
That's kind of a preliminary glimpse. Now there is an incredible amount of data to plow through. The book has to be read and we're trying to get to that job.
How long before you share the data or report some results?
We have 10,000 water samples to be analyzed for 20 different characteristics. The first few hundred samples we sent to a commercial lab to give us a glimpse to make a determination of the ultimate cost. We sent them three weeks ago and no peep out of them yet. It takes a long time and a lot of money.
Why did the Old Massett Village Council invest in this?
This is not a village looking to take over the world in some evil fashion and become wealthy. They have 70 percent unemployed, a high suicide rate. Every household used to have a good income from salmon fishing and now almost none do. This is a tiny village of people trying to take care of their backyard.
The Haida have a tradition called potlatch. Those with something give away what they have to those without. The Haida tradition is to give back. If you go to our Web site, there is a section called parables. There is a story called "Salmon Boy." It's one of the earliest and most pertinent scientific publications in salmon, published via the Haida oral tradition. It says if you don't give back to the salmon, they won't give back to you.
Salmon boy is wasting the fish and later drowns. The salmon people come and take him down to salmon world where he becomes a salmon and they teach him about how the salmon are happy to be in a relationship with their Haida neighbors. He swims back to the river.
His mother catches a fish that has a necklace her drowned son wore. Instead of killing the fish, she sets it aside and out of the salmon skin the boy emerges. He becomes a wise teacher to the Haida village, teaching that you have to take care and give back to the salmons' world or they won't come home and give to you. It's a wisdom about ecology and environment.
If the true story of the Haida came out then this is a story that has a heart and a soul and hope. Not just for the Haida but for the whole world. But people politically opposed to geoengineering and feeding at the research trough rely on doom-and-gloom stories of the environment. The last thing they want to see is that [Hillary] Clinton was right and it takes a village.
What's your background?
I've lived in Canada for many years now. I'm a plant ecologist who has done countless silviculture [forestry] projects. I worked in government and do land reclamation and environmental management, like writing prescriptions for the grass and clover to put on mine waste or how to grass the side of a road. I'm a translator of science into application.
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9 Comments
Add CommentThis man has committed ecologic terrorism with huge ramifications and he should be charged and prosecuted for ocean dumping.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have time and time again found out what happened when we try and improve on nature, it goes horribly wrong!
Sometimes science progresses by taking risks. Jenner with the smallpox vaccine. The Manhattan Project (with some scientists betting the detonation would be hot enough to ignite the atmosphere and kill everything on the planet). You cannot do everything by simulation on a PC. There is no substitute for asking nature herself a question, and yes, sometimes that's a risky thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm glad he is pushing forward with experiments. A few angry people should not block research into science that we might need in the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd, I'm pretty shocked at the one-sided coverage up until now. If you read other articles in the past week, none of them had any kind of balance and obviously didn't even try to present his side of the story.
That supports his claim that the press has twisted the issue.
I am more concerned w. all the other things that people are dumping into the ocean - not some rust dust.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCompared to all the drums of toxic waste dumped into the ocean over the years , this project is a drop in the bucket. 'Disposal' companies were paid to dispose of the waste and they've been simply dumping it into the ocean for decades.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince apparently we can't stop burning carbon fuels, at least in time to prevent severe warming, it seems like Iron fertilization is the best option. Sure, plankton gets eaten and some CO2 is emitted, but until we get better data, I think more ocean life of any kind means more carbon-containing waste and corpses go to the ocean floor. Opposing this seems like supporting the human-created epocalypse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this100 tonnes of Iron (III) Sulfate turns to be one helluva tectonic laxative!! 7.7 Magnitude Earthquake registered at on Queen Charlotte Fault on October 27, 2012. Sure there was an algal bloom in August, 2012 after the Iron Sulfate dumping from a fishing boat in July, 2012, but it turns out this Iron Sulfate stuff goes right to the fault cracks in the plates and is slippery like graphite in a rusty car door lock!! I think we've got Earth Grease!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPatent it!!
We as humans have arrogance to think we know how to make nature better and fix everything we have broken! Scientists paid by capitalists spend so much trying to see if the can, and no time thinking about whether they should!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRuss George is an enviromental hero and everyone should be kissing his butt. If PLANKTOS had been allowed to roll out large scale ocean fert 7 years ago when they were trying rather than being villanised as they were, we wouldn't be in quite as deep schtuck as we are today!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNOW we are within 2 years of complete loss of artic summer sea ice, this lost reflectivity doubling global warming from what greenhouse gases alone are doing.
NOW we have to furiously "geoengineer" with sulphate aerosols in the Arctic stratosphere and other SERIOUS geoengineering techniques WITHIN THE NEXT 5 YEARS if we wish to avoid the rapidly escalating release of several thousand gigatons of methane locked in and under the siberian continental shelf submarine permafrost which is melting furiously NOW. THAT scenario has global average temperatures up by some 10 deg c and the planet sterile of all higher life forms by 2050.
Doubt any of this?
-Check out the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG), and the Arctic News blogsite.
We need ocean fert. ocean biomass, animal or vegetable, dead on the sea floor or swimming...
-is carbon not in the atmosphere or acidifying the oceans!