Marine Permaculture to Regenerate Ocean Productivity
Abstract
Today's warmer surface waters limit natural overturning circulation and vertical mixing by increasing density stratification in the upper ocean, particularly in the subtropics, reducing available nutrients for algae, fish habitat, fish feed and forage fish upon which other fish depend. Warmer, more stratified oceans require new approaches to managing marine ecosystems.
In order to increase food security, bolster marine ecosystems and export blue carbon, infrastructure associated with Marine Permaculture restores mixed-layer overturning circulation locally, thereby regenerating key ecosystem services supporting seaweed forests and building resilience into fisheries that provide food for burgeoning human populations. Cooler, nutrient-rich water from the deep provides favorable conditions for seaweed growth and thereby regenerates habitat and food at sea for forage fish. Marine Permaculture enables larger offshore open-ocean seaweed cultivation that use the vertical shear of mesoscale eddies for maneuvering. Renewable energy sources such as wave-driven pumps, solar arrays and even ocean thermal energy provide the power needed for seaweed irrigation and guidance, enabling cultivation across subtropical oceans, eliminating the limitations of nearshore cultivation. Seaweed mariculture provides a range of benefits beyond providing habitat, including primary resources for marine economic sustainability such as fish and other high-value products resulting from seaweed. Feeding growing global populations is straining diminished marine ecosystems. These resources need to be protected from overexploitation and climate disruption to meet future food security challenges and human health needs. Marine PermacultureTM has the potential to grow enough fish to meet the daily protein needs of most of the global population over the next few decades while increasing the protein availability per capita. Each 1000-meter-long array can grow >3000 tons of seaweed per year, fixing a similar amount of carbon dioxide and providing local adaptive strategies for ocean warming, acidification, coral reefs bleaching protection and counteracting climate change at scale.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMGC23G1278V
- Keywords:
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- 1615 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1635 Oceans;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 4805 Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICALDE: 4806 Carbon cycling;
- OCEANOGRAPHY: BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL