#05 Melania Guerra — How is marine science informing policy decisions and technological developments and vice versa?

Hi and welcome back to the Ocean Embassy for another exciting Ocean CDR episode!

In the first episode of this multi-part CDR series, we laid out how the ocean carbon cycle works, what the blue carbon hype is about and which policy frameworks are supporting these blue carbon efforts. Today, we will actually look at one of the ways in which we can artificially enhance carbon uptake. If you listened to the previous episode of this series, you will have noticed that one particular thing is mentioned a lot: the lack of science behind various ocean-based carbon capturing methodologies and therefore the need to treat them very carefully. Today, we are hearing from someone who has a bit of a different perspective on this: Dr. Mar Fernandez-Mendez is a marine biologist with degrees in Marine Microbiology and Biological Oceanography and a distinguished research career at the GEOMAR and Alfred-Wegener-Institutes in Germany, the two most renowned marine research institutions in this country. Her research has evolved from studying marine nutrients in upwelling systems to the potential of seaweeds, in particular a macro-algae called Sargassum. She has been a part of a super cool research project called The Ocean Artificial Upwelling project.

Artificial upwelling refers to an engineering method where essentially, nutrient-rich waters that have low CO2 concentration from the deep sea are exchanged with CO2-rich waters from the upper oceans, enhancing on one hand more carbon uptake at the surface while also storing more CO2 at depths. There are a few hiccups and uncertainties with this technology, though, from how one can actually do this to what effect this can have on all sorts of things such as involuntarily also bringing carbon from the deep sea to the surface or seriously messing with marine organisms that depend on the right nutrients at certain depths.

However, Mar also recently co-founded a company called Seafield Solutions, which is trying to solve exactly that problem: by using another big player in the carbon capture world: Sargassum. Sargassum is a form of macro algae, taking up large amounts of CO2 in order to grow, very well recognizable thanks to its sort of balloons between its leaves. But this algae is actually causing a lot of problems on beaches especially in the Caribbean and on the West Coast of Africa because there is too much of it floating in the sea due to misbalanced ecosystems.

Mar and I talked about her research, how technology assists in the first pilot experiments of artificial upwelling and how Sargassum is helping with that. We also discuss what is needed to achieve a careful balance between trying to do good by capturing carbon versus assessing the risk of altering marine ecosystems.

Cover art: Simon + Anna Madlener. Based on the Spilhaus world projection.

Music and Sound Effects: Lukas Bindel

Mixing: Anna Madlener

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