Treehugger interviewed Russ George about the success of increasing fish

John Laumer (at Treehugger) contacted Russ George, our local iron man, about Zubrin’s story and asked for his [Russ’] comments about the his latest iron seeding project off British Columbia, which, it turns out, had truly amazing, positive impact – from a mere 120 tones of iron sulfide, very thinly applied over an area of the ocean a little larger than the surface of Lake Erie (25,657 km2) , – giving a result that Zubrin fairly termed “…a stunningly over-the-top success.”

About 20 months ago, Russ George conducted a massive ocean fertilisation test, fertilizing around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate off Canada’s coast, it has emerged the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme and not stopped it. Satellite images confirmed the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. Now it appears that the fish catch in the area was boosted by over 100,000 tons.

Pink salmon mature in two years. Salmon can add a pound a month if they are well fed in the ocean. 2013 had the largest pink salmon run in 50 years

Russ George wants to focus on the fish

Let’s not make this a story all about CO2 and Carbon… it’s really about whether the ocean pastures come back to the abundance of life that they and we enjoyed 100 years ago. My hypothesis is that if we can help replenish and restore the ocean pastures we will see the results in the one thing that mankind is most connected to the ocean by, it’s FISH!

Indeed my experiment, which at a size of 30,000+ sq. km. is perhaps the largest single experiment of its kind ever conducted, has demonstrated that the fish come back in incredible abundance, quickly… All species of fish have responded but the best data comes from those fish who swim back to us instead of making us go hunt them down.

© Russ George

The critics and n’er-do-wells who live to conjure up fears and speculations have made all manner of claims about what might happen in the ocean if one helps the ocean pastures bloom.

First off the ocean pastures are blooming less than ever by and so returning them to the healthy and abundant state they and we enjoyed 100 years ago seems unlikely to result in some ecological problem. Indeed this is what we observed… the ocean came back to life in all manner of ways.

© Russ George

One idea that has been pushed in opposition is the notion that “ocean dead zones” come from too much plankton… our blooms might do the same… What is not said by those gadflies is that we can only work in regions of the ocean far out to sea and where the water is miles deep… such locations are as different from the shallow near shore regions where ocean dead zones exist as are grasslands and mountain tops…

The latest device to call into question replenished and restored ocean pastures and blooms of plankton is that it might create toxic blooms, perhaps those producing “domoic acid. “ Since the ocean routinely blooms in many areas in grand natural abundance and did so in the past to a far greater extent this “domoic acid” boogey man is not one that is seen as a common feature of the naturally blooming ocean nor is there a record of it being the scourge of ocean pastures of 100 years ago. Bzzzzt!

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