happyfeet krill

The Krill Is Gone…ya done me wrong and you’ll be sorry someday

OK really the krill are only ‘nearly gone’

Though it might sound like a BB King Song, these real ocean blues are the worst ever

Who would have thought a black blues singer from Mississippi would write a prescient song about our CO2 crisis facing the ocean pastures their vital seemingly doomed Krill.

(Want to experience the magic of music+science while you read? click here)
happyfeet krill

Un Happy Feet Krill life-size

Krill are tiny zoo-plankton are one of the most vital and abundant organisms in the rich pastures of all the cold oceans of the world. They are fast disappearing and dying off due to our high and rising CO2. New scientific reports with historical krill data going back 70 years and more reveal that 80% of the krill have disappeared in the past 30 years! We’ll be very sorry sooner than later unless we help (which we will do as described below.)


The problem krill (and all ocean life) face from our fossil CO2 is two-fold.

The most commonly reported CO2 effect is ocean acidification, this simple chemical effect comes from CO2 mixing with ocean water making that water more acidic. The simple chemical formulae that every high school student understands is H2O + CO2 = H2CO3 that is carbonic acid. As the nearly trillion tonnes of CO2 already emitted in all of our yesterday’s CO2 from fossil fuel burning is slowly taken up by the oceans over the next 100-200 years it will surely and dramatically reduce the ocean pH making for ocean acidification. Unless an antidote is provided… there is an antidote by the way, read on.

Global Greening (click to enlarge)

Global Greening (click to read more)

However the second even more powerful way that our high and rising CO2 impacts the oceans is that it nourishes plant life on land as is seen in the Global Greening of the world. While may people imagine the Earth’s plant life is mostly trees in fact the Earth is covered mostly in grass. OK but even so you think how could more grass greening the Earth be a problem, especially how could it be a problem for the oceans.

yin and yang

Rain and Dust in the wind are the Yin and Yang for pastures on land and at sea.

There is a simple Yin and Yang of Nature that explains it. Just as the grass of pastures on land depend on the rain (originating as evaporated ocean water) that blows to them on the wind Natures Yin; the pastures of the ocean depend on dust that blows from the land to nourish and sustain their plant life.

Tragically our trillion tonne CO2 powered global greening is also easy to understand!

More grass growing means less dust blowing.

We all know and understand the terrible impact on Nature due to prolonged droughts. The drought of ocean dust has been longer and more depriving than any drought of rain on any land since ancient times when the Sahara sands were covered in lush green pastures. Ocean pastures today in all of the World’s Seven Seas are in a terrible state of drought and collapse.

icebergs turn ocean pastures green

Ocean pastures and their plant life are nourished by the dust that accumulates over thousands of years in ice that once adrift and melting as icebergs turn the seas green. click to read more

When pastures on land are lush and green they are said to have a ‘high carrying capacity’ for livestock and lose their ability to sustain/carry their herds in times of drought. Ocean pastures for many decades, at least 50 years, have been in a terrible state of drought and can no longer sustain their livestock, their krill, fish, seabirds, sealions, whales and more. Their condition worsens every year as countless reports of dead and dying ocean life reveal in the present day great ocean dying of whales, seabirds, sealions, squid, fish, and more.

Back to the story of ocean acidification as that is the more popular and politically correct school of ocean CO2 crisis in the world.

Very recently an Aussie marine scientist who has spent 25 years studying krill, Dr. So Kawaguchi and his Australian Antarctic Science Agency told the world that carbon emissions around the world are today and will in the future horribly reduce the hatch rates of krill. Before the end of this century the collapse of vital krill upon which depend fish, squid, whales, seals, seabirds, penguins and myriad other sea life, the absence of this important food source will ripple catastrophic effects throughout the oceanic food chain, the ocean pastures.

krill“Higher levels of carbon dioxide in the water mean greater levels of ocean acidification,” Dr. Kawaguchi, has said. “This interrupts the physiology of krill. It stops the eggs hatching, or the larvae developing.” Kawaguchi’s laboratory has research tanks that are the only tanks in the world that hatch and breed krill. He simulates increased acidification conditions by bubbling carbon dioxide into the seawater tanks and noted that CO2 interrupts and disrupts the early stages of the life of the krill.

Kawaguchi says that if carbon emissions are not reduced significantly, he predicts that by 2100 there will be as much as a 70 percent reduction in Antarctic krill, he area of focus, and sometime in the next century he expects there will be no krill reproduction in the Southern Ocean.

But as Dr. Kawaguchi is focused only on studying and reciting the chemical acidification effects of CO2 on the cold ocean water habitat of krill we must look elsewhere for the full story of the far more immediate crisis facing the world’s krill and thank God for the fact that the very real solution to save the Krill and their ocean pastures is at hand.

Restoring ocean pastures by replenishing the dust we deny them is proven, safe, sustainable and most importantly affordable and deployable today!

By restoring mineral dust to the oceans in remarkably tiny amounts revived ocean pasture plant life will consume and repurpose billions of tonnes of CO2 into additional ocean life. That revived ocean life will save and sustain the krill, fish, squid, seabirds, sealion, and whales and in the bargain billions of additional fish will swim into our nets and onto the plates of hungry people around the world.

The cost of deploying this proven technology following the metrics I have proven in my 2012 work that is the largest ocean restoration demonstration in history will be but a few million dollars each year!  As for evidence of what a restored ocean pasture delivers the within a year or few take a look at the news story below of the result of my 2012 work.

sitka news salmon story

My 2012 ocean pasture replenishment and restoration work in the NE Pacific returned the ocean to life as seen in the largest catch of salmon in all of history in Alaska the next year. CLICK TO READ MORE

Join me this year as my ships sail to restore ocean pastures in the World’s Seven Seas.

Ask your political leaders to take note, better yet I invite them to come along, there will be a berth aboard ship for them! I know they will like the music I will have aboard 😉

Putin_obama_snip2

CLICK TO READ MORE!

Need a break from reading this story.

Here’s my reward, listen to the late great BB King sing his immortal song! If you listen to the music while you re-read the article the knowledge and hope will be bonded to your heart and soul.

Don’t believe Mr. Putin will like my music aboard ship? Click to listen to him cover Fats Doimino, you have to love this guy!  https://youtu.be/IV4IjHz2yIo?t=1m11s  🙂