Shrimp Eat Iron Experiment

The controversial Indian-German Lohafex expedition fertilised  300 square kilometres of the Southern Atlantic with six tonnes of dissolved iron.  This  created a phytoplankton bloom which doubled in biomass in two weeks by absorbing co2 from the seawater.  Dead phytoplankton were then supposed to sink to the ocean floor taking the co2 with them.  Unfortunately a bloom of hungry copepods ate the bloom of phytoplankton keeping the co2 in the food chain.  The copepods were in turn eaten by larger crustaceans called amphipods (a shrimp-like crustacean), which serve as food for squid and fin whales. Wonder where the co2 ended up because the shrimp ate the iron experiment. It is reported that this is the first time this has happened.

Research on iron in pacific northwest rivers has shown how phytoplankton is generated in large numbers along the continental shelf.  O.S.U students found that in the winter the rivers churn out iron and it is deposited on the continental shelf in the summer and spring.  Then the winds pick up and churn the iron up into huge phytoplankton blooms.  The width of the shelf is not so great in the southern pacific. The further north you go, the greater the width of the shelf, the more life is present, making the blooms essential to life in the pacific.

Hopefully experiments will not take too long to see positive results and we can start a kind of iron therapy for the oceans of the world.  The fish are already suffocating from a lack of iron in the water and the advantages vastly out-way the disadvantages, if there are any.