Carbon sequestration is a process for storing carbon in a carbon pool. Forests did a great job with this, until we began chopping them down in large numbers and burning their wood. That, plus burning fossilized plants for coal-based electricity generation and transport, is causing steady warming. Perhaps seaweed farming far out to sea could contain this by sequestrating atmospheric carbon on a large scale.
Free-Floating Sargassum Seaweed Farming Captures Carbon
Free-floating sargassum seaweed generally inhabits shallow water, and coral reefs. However, stormy weather can drive out to sea, where it may gather in large quantities in deep oceans. This was a navigation hazard in past days of sailing ships
Sargassum is exposed to the air, and therefore removes carbon from the atmosphere. This carbon sinks to the ocean floor when the plant dies. This process stores it out of harm’s way when left undisturbed. So what we have in effect is a floating forest in our mind.
A disruptive thinker believes large scale seaweed farming could contain climate change if there were enough of it. This British businessperson plans to start ‘sucking billion tons of carbon’ from the atmosphere by 2026.
Could a Floating Forest on the Ocean Really Work?
Jack Austin for that’s his name, imagines a sargassum field as large as Croatia in the South Atlantic. He says he has backers for his idea, who will earn carbon credits by supporting him. I want to exploit the ‘wondrous properties of floating seaweed’ he explained to BBC.
He plans to harvest sargassum every ten days, bale it, and consign it to the bottom of the ocean where there is insufficient oxygen to rot it. These vast ocean spaces largely escape international regulation. We’re not sure if authorities have thought this through properly.
Dr. Nem Vaughan is an associate professor in climate change at University of East Anglia. She questions whether natural forces gathering floating plastic in deep oceans, are sufficiently robust, to contain a floating forest during an extreme weather event.
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