Last week Britain’s and Europeans were dismayed when they were warned of the clogging Sahara dust coating everything from cars to lungs.

The Sahara had delivered a whopping great dust storm that blew to the north extending all the way to the British Isle.

Saharan dust that clogged air and dirtied cars may seem like a nuisance, but in fact contains vital nutrients – if, that is, you’re phytoplankton.

The dust from Africa as it falls mostly into the ocean provides nutrients for these microscopic ocean plants, upon which the entire marine food chain depends. The most important of the mineral micronutrients is iron. And although these ocean plants only need very small quantities, iron is essential – and only supplied by dust or by other contact with land masses.

Link to this post on the Yin and Yang of Dust and Rain

In recent decades a dramatic decline in the dust blowing in the wind has resulted in a catastrophic decline of ocean pasture productivity. But once in a while the dust still blows in the wind and the oceans become productive. Dust in the wind is part of a yin and yang relationship on this blue planet with rain.

A story about this vital ocean pasture resource appears on the media site “The Conversation” and features the work of a British oceanographer and the extensive work being done in the UK on this topic of ocean pasture ecology. You might read the full story by clicking this link to the story.

 9 April 2014, 11.45am BST  Saharan dust feeds the ocean and locks away carbon too 

The article is a good one with lots of details but we take exception to its dodgy treatment of the issue and the facts of our work when it states that “jury is still out” on whether replenishing and restoring ocean pastures with trace amounts of mineral micronutrients works.

We posted the following  comment on The Conversation Story explain the true facts

The jury is not still out!

They swam in last fall and continue to swim in to tell how ocean replenishment and restoration re-purposes million of tonnes of death-dealing CO2 into ocean life. Our 2012 largest trial of this method covering tens of thousand of sq. kilometers restored ocean productivity to historic high levels.

Last fall the nearby region of SE Alaska enjoyed the largest catch of our pasture-fed salmon in all of history, 226 million fish were caught when 50 million were expected. The same historic high salmon numbers are now swimming home up and down the Pacific coast due to the fact that instead of mostly starving when they went to sea we treated them to a feast. https://russgeorge.net/2013/10/28/fish-came-back-next-day/

By replenishing and restoring ocean pastures to the state of health and abundance they were in 100 years ago a billion tonnes of death-dealing CO2 will become a billion fish to feed the world’s hungry. https://russgeorge.net/2014/04/11/bring-back-fish-everywhere/

Concerned about unintended consequence here’s one…The US government has just purchased 60 million meals of our nutritious pasture fed Alaska salmon bounty and is providing it to hungry American children enrolled in USDA Food Aid programs…https://russgeorge.net/2014/04/09/usda-buys-pasture-fed-alaska-salmon-hungry-kids/

IT JUST WORKS.. and it is affordable and immediately effective.