Preamble:
Human activities are continuously altering the Earth’s natural environment particularly since the industrialization began in the mid-nineteenth century. The most important impact has been in the form of enhanced emissions of the heat trapping (greenhouse) gases, mainly carbon dioxide (CO₂), to the atmosphere. These emissions have the potential to significantly modify atmospheric composition as well as the radiation balance of our planet leading to global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion. These anthropogenic perturbations of the natural system are expected to bring about significant shifts in the climate all over the world.

One of the major mitigation measures of the problem could be ‘Artificial Sequestration of CO₂;. That includes either capture of CO₂ from the atmosphere and its storage in geological formations or in the deep sea, or stimulating the CO₂ uptake by the biota both on land (through reforestation) and in the ocean (through “ocean fertilization”). Of the latter two options, the land option has spatial but also temporal limitations because the organic carbon (wood) will remain at the surface and will be recycled on time scales of decades. In comparison, ocean fertilization appears to hold a lot more promise. This concept is based on the fact that the bulk (over 90%) of the carbon in the atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere systems resides in the deep sea. The process, the Biological Pump, exerts one of the major controls on atmospheric CO₂ content, and it is widely accepted that the glacial-interglacial cyclic changes in the CO₂ content were caused by changes in the efficiency of the biological pump. Experiments of iron fertilization carried out in almost all high-nutrients, low-chlorophyll (HNLC) regions of the world oceans have demonstrated increases in phytoplankton production and biomass and decreases in partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO₂) in the patches fertilized with iron with reference to the region outside the zone of fertilization.

The deficit in CO₂ caused by enhanced biological production is compensated by uptake from the atmosphere. The time scale of sequestration of the CO₂ depends on the proportion of this carbon production sinking out of the surface layer in contact with the atmosphere. If it is utilized there by zooplankton and bacteria, the CO₂ will be returned within months, and if it sinks to the deep ocean and sea floor it will be sequestered for centuries or longer. The controversy regarding the iron hypothesis now centres on the proportion of iron-induced organic matter that sinks out of the surface layer and the depth it reaches before being decomposed back into CO₂. If all the unused nutrients, nitrate and phosphate in the Southern Ocean were converted into phytoplankton biomass by iron fertilization, and if most of this material sank out to great depth, the amount of CO₂ that would be sequestered is about 1 Gigatonne (Gt = billion tonnes) which is equivalent to 15 % of current human emissions. It is expected that this mitigation measure would yield by far the most effective cost-benefit return of any other scheme, both in terms of energy and cash. The necessary iron is available as a waste product of the growing titanium industry, so the major cost would be transport and release. This would be a fraction of the current energy and cash expended in global oil transportation. Techniques for adding iron have already been patented by US companies in anticipation of the carbon credit markets expected to emerge from carbon trading in the framework of the Kyoto Protocol.
All pilot scale iron fertilization experiments carried out so far were by the developed countries, and with the exception of Japan no Asian country has demonstrated the capabilities to carry out such experiments in the open ocean. One of the experiments, the European Iron Fertilization Experiment (EIFEX), succeeded in tracking the sinking algal bloom all the way down to the sea floor. The ratio carbon sunk per iron added was an order of magnitude above current assumptions highlighting the feasibility of this mitigation technique.

Technological benefit:
The purpose of the experiment is to gain first hand knowledge on how larger-scale fertilization could be carried out and what will be its impact on the marine ecosystems.

Socio-economic benefits:
The outcome of the project will facilitate India’s entry into this cutting edge science and technology with enormous socio-economic and geopolitical implications. The intact food chain of Antarctic krill, a potential sea food, would be maintained by efficient recycling of the limiting resource – iron. The krill-whale connection would attract considerable public interest particularly in the West so the experiment would be an ideal opportunity for India to gain scientific respect and sympathy with the environmentally concerned international public.

Other important benefits of the project:
Capacity building and infrastructure development with the latest technologies are the long-term benefits that can support future multi-disciplinary oceanographic research activities/instrumentation in the country. The country will gain enormously by strengthening its oceanography programme in general and marine biology in particular. Moreover, it will help foster interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research within the country and, through the international contacts that will be established, steer Indian oceanography into the forefront of international research on ongoing climate change and mitigation strategies.

The knowledge generated will help us in evaluating the techno-economic feasibility of iron fertilization as a possible technique to reduce atmospheric CO₂ levels as well as the environmental impact assessment of this method. If this technique is indeed used in future for gaining/exchanging carbon credits the knowledge gained will be of tremendous commercial potential. Without such knowledge India may remain vulnerable to international blaming game with forced acceptance the “facts and figures”, sometimes twisted, manipulated and exaggerated, provided by others.

LOHAFEX (Iron Fertilization Experiment)