How to grow more whales that go poop in the night and save the world from climate change.

Whale poop seems to be all the rage in the news in the world of climate change with scientific reports of the power of whales and their nutrient rich poop that helps grow ocean plankton that converts CO2 into that plankton.

The headlines proclaim.

Just give news.google.com a tickle with the keywords being “whale poop” and you will be rewarded with a pile of stories from around the world proclaiming the positives of whale poop.

Whales seem to have become the world’s favorite geoengineers.

If whale poop is good for the ocean how about fish poop

OK if things that poop in the ocean are good for the planet the one thing that outnumbers whales in the ocean by an unimaginable number is fish. Imagine the power of fish poop in performing the very same task of fertilizing the ocean pastures helping plankton to convert our CO2 into even more whale and fish food and more poop, and so on, and so on, and so on…

What comes after that plentiful feast. I restored and healthy blue planet.

But this is a chicken vs. egg tale. How do we grow more whales and fish unless there are rich ocean pastures where they can eat and thrive and raise more of themselves.

How do we grow more whales and fish so that they will consume and recycle ocean nutrients tending to the 72% of this blue planet as a garden that will grow new life for itself and us.

The answer is simple. Someone has to just begin. We know how and we have begun. Following in the footsteps of 25 years and a quarter of a billion dollars of International public research and adding to that some few millions I have raised we are underway at sea restoring and replenishing ocean pastures. Our revived pastures produce an abundance cornucopia of plankton, whales, fish, and poop and the cycle of life is joining in to keep up the good work. We’ve doing it, and IT JUST WORKS!

The help the ocean pastures need is just the tiniest amount of dirt. Dirt or dust that is rich in the most vital ocean pasture mineral micro-nutrient — Iron. Ocean pastures used to receive this vital iron in the form of dust in the wind until our copious emissions of CO2 from burning our fossil fuels dramatically slowed down the process of dust blowing in the wind. What happened and is happening is that CO2 feed plants on land so well that they grew and grew and became increasingly wonderful ground cover. Good news for the earth bad news for the blue planet.

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

Here’s a link to my story of the Yin and Yang of Pastures. It’s the ecology of how oceans give up water that falls as rain to help pastures on land flourish and in return the land give back dust to the oceans to help its pastures flourish.

So the best news of all is that we have successfully restored and revived a giant ocean pasture and both fish and whales have come back.

In 2012 I went to sea with a small crew, a dozen of us in all. We took with us about 100 tonnes of iron rich dust, much of it simple rock dust that came from iron ore. We carefully studied the ocean pasture and surrounding ocean before, during, and after the work and amassed the largest collection of scientific data ever on a large ocean pasture that started out at 100 x 100 kilometers in size. Over some months it grew to many times that size.

A Fin Whale typical of the scores we counted in my restored ocean pasture of 2012

The ocean phyto-plankton, the plants of the ocean pasture flourished in as intense a bloom as nature ever sees. As the pasture became alive, healthy, and filled with an abundance of plankton life all manner of other sea life arrived at the feast. Great whales seen only rarely at a rate of one or two every few days suddenly appeared in great pods in which we counted them by the score. Hundreds of great whales, fin whales, sei whales, sperm whale, orca whales, and more cavorted with joy in the ocean bloom.

You can just barely see the Storm Petrel in my shirt pocket recovering after she collided with one of the wires on my ocean research ship while we were helping restore her ocean pasture. After an hour of so she flew away to rejoin her flock of thousands feeding in the plankton bloom.

Sea birds that we counted in similar ones and twos before the bloom suddenly were there in great flocks numbering in the thousands. Fish were jumping and splashing in the sea of green abundance.

My restored and revived ocean pasture remained visible from ocean observing satellites for months as it slowly traced a circular path around the great NE Pacific Gyre.

My intention was to do our ocean pasture restoration at precisely the location where the salmon from the West Coast of North America enter as babies into the great open Pacific. They need the cold water of the northern gyre so salmon from the Columbia River north to Alaska all have for millenia targeted their migration out to the open ocean pastures at the point where the northern gyre begins. This is west of the coast of Northern British Columbia and SE Alaska.

If I had done my homework correctly hundreds of millions of baby salmon would be swimming in the summer of 2012 into my restored and revived ocean pasture filled with baby salmon food, plankton. The best thing about doing this with salmon is that we knew in a year or two they would be swimming back to us and we’d see by their numbers if our restoration efforts had saved those baby salmon from starving.

IT JUST WORKED!

The Fish Came Back From Our Restored Ocean Pasture Producing The Largest Catch Of Salmon In Alaskan History

Last fall in SE Alaska the expectation was that there would be a very good catch of about 50 million Pink salmon. Instead the catch was 226 million of the silver beauties. The largest catch in all of history. Here’s a link to the story of how the fish came back.

But what about further south.

The salmon to the south especially the sockeye of the Fraser River and the Columbia were out next hope. They would return in the summer of 2014. And they have. Last week the Columbia Sockeye return broke the all time record for returning sockeye, more fish than even before the great Columbia dams were built. As the US Army Corps of Engineers who manage the Columbia River say   BOORAH!!!!!

Here’s a link to a story of the fish coming back in historic numbers to the Columbia and Fraser Rivers.

Sockeye Salmon Of The Fraser River

Now we are waiting for the sockeye of the Fraser River. The official forecast is for up to 72 million of the bright red beauties to return. Last year as has been typical for many years only 2 million swam home to Fraser. The highest number ever predicted by the fisheries experts has never been more than 40 million… but this year they expect 72 million at the high-end and in the middle range forecast a measly 25 million.  BOORAH!!!

What’s Next?

Do it again and again and again and bring back a billion fish to feed hungry people around the world by restoring and reviving their ocean pastures in all of the worlds Seven Seas. And oh yeah bring the whales back as well so that in partnership with ocean life we can become stewards of the ocean pastures and keep them healthy and abundant forever.

In the bargain this ocean restoration and revival that delivers a billion additional fish each year into the nets of fishers and onto the plates of hungry people billions of tonnes our CO2 will be repurposed and become ocean life instead of what it is doing today which is destroying ocean life and producing global climate change. All of the efforts of whales, the fish, the plankton, and our selves won’t be enough to be the one solution to global CO2 but ocean life and I can put at least of quarter of the world’s CO2 to good use restoring ocean pastures.

Here’s a link to how this is just the beginning of an incredible story of hope for the whales, the fish, the oceans, and ourselves.

Lend a hand… tell your friends… and your elected officials. It is time to bring back the whales and fish.