Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Friday, March 27, 2009 6:41:14 PM
This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead, the experiment turned into an example o f how the food chain works, as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods.
The huge swarm of copepods were in turn eaten by larger crustaceans called amphipods, which are often eaten by squid and whales. “I think we are seeing the last gasps of ocean iron fertilization as a carbon storage strategy,” says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University.
Nothing like spending money on what should have been the obvious.