Here is a
detailed story on the iron dump conducted off Haida Gwai last year. It is difficult to deter mine just how well
it actually went and how valid the testing will end up if no meaningful
baseline is in place. However plenty of
proxies should be available.
One thing did
get accomplished and that is the fact that it was done at all and there are no obvious
negative effects. These were unexpected
anyway but that has never stopped opponents.
It will make it harder to stop when a fully prepared expedition takes
place.
I would like to
see a major fertilizing effort that distributed fertilizer up current from the
main areas of biological density. This
might be successfully combined with wind mills
and even fish farms in place allowing continuous feeding without
operating a vessel. If this produced an
enriched fishery, it would quickly become obvious.
B.C. company at
centre of iron dumping scandal stands by its convictions
Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. remains committed to
ocean fertilization as government investigation continues (Part 1 of a 2-part
special report)
BY ZOE MCKNIGHT, VANCOUVER SUN SEPTEMBER 4,
2013
A year ago on Sept. 12, an unassuming fishing boat
reached port after causing an international uproar by dumping tonnes of iron
dust in the North Pacific, off the coast of Haida Gwaii. Today, the company
behind the dumping, the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp., remains committed to
ocean fertilization even as it fights the federal government in court over the
ensuing investigation.
The Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. says the iron
dumping causes a surge in plankton growth, boosting the food source of smaller
fish upon which salmon feed, and in turn replenishes dwindling salmon stocks.
Growing plankton pulls in and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, thus
making the process financially viable through the sale of carbon credits, the
company argues.
Haida Salmon is scheduled to be back in court in
December, arguing that a search warrant used by Environment Canada to seize
digital and paper documents in March should be quashed.
Despite the harsh criticism levied against the
company, those involved with the project are determined to keep going as the
corporation tries to reinvent itself.
Former director and the most controversial figure —
enigmatic American businessman Russ George — has been fired.
And some respected scientists are now working with
the small team.
Since 2010, Jason McNamee has been a director of the
company, which spread 100 tonnes of iron sulphate and 20 tonnes of iron oxide
in international waters 370 kilometres west of Haida Gwaii in the summer 2012.
A 35,000-square-kilometre plankton bloom was visible from space, and some
observers called it the world’s largest geoengineering experiment.
McNamee believes large-scale action to save Fraser
River salmon and address climate change is required. An idealist, he’s
motivated by fatherhood and the desire to leave his two sons, aged 7 and 9, a
better world.
“If there’s an opportunity whereby we can restore
fisheries and we can sequester carbon, we pretty much have an obligation to see
if it works,” McNamee said. “It certainly feels like that to me.”
The first attempts to fertilize the North Pacific
were met with international derision as the stories played out in newspapers
and magazines across the globe. The project was funded by the Old Massett
Village Council. In a vote in which less than 200 of the 700 residents took
part, about 140 people voted to spend $2.5 million of the band’s money.
As for how the millions were spent — and it’s all
been spent — McNamee says a long-awaited audit has been completed but not yet
made available. Another public meeting is planned for Sept. 12 in Old Massett.
McNamee might be at the helm now, but under the
direction of Russ George, formerly known as “chief scientist” but having
dubious credentials, the project was doomed. George has led other, failed
carbon credit schemes such as a Vatican-supported forest in Hungary and an
ocean fertilization project in the Galapagos. Neither materialized. The latter
ultimately resulted in a moratorium on iron fertilization for purposes other
than legitimate research by the International Maritime Organization’s London
Convention in 2008.
In the summer of 2012, George — who has no formal
education as a scientist — would not be thwarted. He launched the Ocean Pearl,
a fishing boat sailing under the Old Massett flag, on its maiden voyage to begin
the iron filing experiment.
Trouble began after mere days at sea.
Tensions had been mounting between George and Craig
Mewis, a young chemist hired as part of a crew of researchers. Mewis wanted to
do testing before iron was dumped in the sea, to gather baseline information on
nutrient content in the water. George wanted things done his way, which was
dump first and test later.
McNamee had obligations at home and was not on the
first trip out. He was in contact via phone and advised his chemist to record his
interactions with George to ward off accusations later. Eventually, a
disagreement led to a shouting match, and by some accounts, a shoving match.
Mewis refused to continue working. After departing Victoria on July 14, 2012,
the Ocean Pearl returned to dock in Masset on Aug. 3. Mewis returned to shore
and a second trip started days later.
The company had chartered the 35-metre fishing boat
and a commercial fishing crew to run the vessel while the small group of
scientists worked.
Some of the fish holds and a below-deck smoking room
had been converted with a coat of white paint into an on-board laboratory.
Even the deckhands were given brief training on how
to operate sophisticated plankton nets. Once the Ocean Pearl left Canadian
waters, they were trained how to release 100 tonnes of iron sulphate and 20
tonnes of iron oxide into the sea.
That proved easiest: Open a paper bag of the stuff
and dump it off the stern.
Most of the iron was dispersed on the first of two
trips. On the second, between Aug. 4 and 14, 10 more tonnes of iron oxide were
spread on the west side of the Haida eddy, a natural plankton-rich phenomena,
and 20 tonnes of iron sulphate to its south.
The crew finally disembarked in Steveston on Sept.
11, 2012.
Other signs the experiment was lacking in
traditional scientific rigour showed through. Dozens of foam pool noodles were
dropped off the side of the boat, supposedly to track the currents. But only
one person on the scientific team — the sonar operator, Peter Gross — had a
graduate degree, in physics. The chief biologist, Tegan Sime, was hired
straight out of university. The mechanical engineer had more work experience as
a soft drink ambassador, according to the LinkedIn page of David Gourlay.
Most important, the “chief scientist” did not have a
university degree, although he is sometimes referred to as Dr. George, a
reference to the initials for Darcy Russ George. His own LinkedIn page lists
his education as “the school of hard knocks.”
Once Mewis was back on land, there was no one
trained to operate the fluorometer, a key piece of sensitive equipment designed
to measure chlorophyll presence in plant organisms. It also measures the
photosynthetic rate — an important number for measuring the rate of carbon
uptake and sequestration.
McNamee, who was on the second trip, contacted Doug
Campbell, a Mount Allison University professor and Canada Research Chair in
phytoplankton ecophysiology, to talk the crew through its use. The conversation
took place via satellite phone from four time zones away in New Brunswick.
He thought nothing of the call at first, Campbell
told The Vancouver Sun last fall when the news broke. The fluorometer, known as
a Satlantic FIRe, is highly specialized. Campbell is considered one of Canada’s
few experts.
“They were in a bind,” Campbell said, adding he had
a “quiet respect” for the initiative and for George: “He had amateur,
unqualified staff, but he’s out there. I’m ambivalent.”
Campbell later applied for a grant from the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council to fund a collaboration with the
Haida Salmon Restoration Corp.
It was declined, and Campbell said he received some
negative feedback from “incredulous” colleagues that he would consider
collaborating with the company in the first place.
But, like McNamee, he sees a bigger picture.
“In a world of problems, some iron dust off the
coast of B.C. is not at the top of my environmental policy concerns,” he said
recently.
A joint grant was later approved through Mitacs, a
non-profit organization funded by provincial and federal governments, academic
institutions and industry. The grant fell through when Haida Salmon Restoration
could not provide matching funds.
The serious lack of scientific controls led many in
the scientific community to criticize the original experiment. Many assumed the
Haida community of Old Massett, which bankrolled the project, was duped by an
international rainmaker, something McNamee and Haida Salmon Restoration CEO
John Disney have vehemently denied.
McNamee has known George for years, and counted him
as a close friend. He said George, who did not respond to a request for
comment, originally came to Canada from California to avoid the Vietnam draft,
married and settled in the Lower Mainland for years. George would stay at McNamee’s
Victoria home from time to time, and McNamee described him as “grandfatherly”
at times and “a bit of a bully” at others.
The friendship and business relationship came to an
end in May, when George was fired.
“Russ has wonderful ideas. He’s inspirational that
way. He truly means well. He’s always trying to do the right thing. But he’s
always trying to do the right thing in his way,” McNamee said, calling his
former friend a “visionary” who is perhaps less competent when it comes to
teamwork and project management.
“The other thing I do like about Russ is action. We
could sit around and argue about ‘is this the right thing to do or the wrong
thing?’ That’s what’s going on in academia, but there’s no action ... we’re
breaking new ground.”
The research work is progressing, despite the odds:
the court dates, the drama with George, the lack of public support, the
lukewarm support from the mainstream science community.
Sonar technician Gross co-wrote a paper with Simon
Fraser University engineering professor John Bird to be presented at the Oceans
2013 conference this fall in San Diego.
The paper was reviewed by Timothy Parsons, oceanographer,
marine biologist and professor emeritus at the University of B.C. Parsons even
has an annual award named for him by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Parsons believes there is a strong connection
between ocean nutrients and young salmon, something he began studying in the
1960s. He was first contacted by George in June 2012, before the ocean seeding
took place.
Parsons told The Sun that he had been “very
hesitant” to get involved. He said that he reminded George, during a tense
meeting, dumping at sea was prohibited.
But Parsons also believes the 2008 eruption of
Alaska’s Mount Kasatoshi, which led to a massive Gulf of Alaska plankton bloom
triggered by iron-rich volcanic ash, was linked to 2010s unprecedented sockeye
salmon run in the Fraser River. He published a paper to that effect in the
journal Fisheries Oceanography in 2012.
He said the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. project
should be done again “under more controlled conditions.”
“I quite strongly support the experiment, and I
think there are many others in the world who do, too,” he said in a recent
phone interview, adding, “Unfortunately, we won’t know the results (of the 2012
dumping) until this time next year, because the salmon come back then.”
Parsons said George was difficult to work with and
wanted no formal association with the project last year.
But he remains “vitally interested” in the data. And
a lot of data was collected during the 2012 iron dumping voyages.
Two underwater, remote-controlled ocean gliders were
used to collect hundreds of thousands of sensor readings on ocean temperatures,
turbidity, oxygen levels and other parameters inside and outside the fertilized
zones. Zooplankton were collected, along with 1,000 sea water samples, 50 hours
of sonar readings, 700 fluorometer readings and notes on marine animal
sightings.
McNamee estimates analysis of that data is a year
behind schedule. But that year will give the company time to recalibrate before
another experiment takes place, he said.
Reversing a former tendency toward secrecy, McNamee
wants to start a Haida Ocean Centre to make all collected data publicly
available.
“I would like industry, government and NGOs (to work
together),” McNamee said.
“Basically, what I want is to build a huge data
repository, a centre of excellence.”
He’s also trying to develop an inexpensive and open
source shoreline monitoring system using automated cameras to capture data from
intertidal zones.
McNamee sees the Haida Ocean Centre at the forefront
of his future plans. He sees a time when vessels of opportunity transmit
information and images of the sea to a central, open database and when so-called
“citizen science” has more respect. (“You don’t need a PhD to be a scientist,”
he said.)
The company’s new direction will depend in some ways
on how Old Massett, a majority shareholder, wants to proceed.
“September could change everything for us,” if the
issue is settled with Environment Canada, he said. They also start presenting
some data from their borrowed ocean gliders in San Diego that month.
And he still sees iron fertilization as a solution
to the declining salmon stocks in this province, and to climate change.
“Do we do something or do we do nothing? Right now
we’re doing nothing,” McNamee said. “If action is clearly required and yet no
action is being taken, who has the right and responsibility to act?”
When the Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. spread 100
tonnes of iron sulphate and 20 tonnes of iron oxide in the northwest Pacific in
the summer of 2012, government officials scrambled to distance themselves from
the project.
Yet there is plenty of evidence officials knew what
the Haida Gwaii company was considering long before the dumping took place.
In October, 2012, Peter Kent, then the environment
minister, told the House of Commons that his department never received an
application for the project and did not approve “this demonstration of rogue
science.”
The government line has since been that Environment
Canada staff met with the company in Victoria on May 7, 2012, when the company
was warned of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act’s disposal at sea
legislation.
On Aug. 29, 2012, officials learned the iron dumping
had happened in international waters west of Haida Gwaii. They began an investigation
the next day. Kent said he personally was informed in late August as well.
But according to documents released under an Access
to Information request, “Environment Canada first became aware the proponent
was considering ocean fertilization in 2011” and contacted the corporation’s
representatives on several occasions to advise them of the national and
international provisions surrounding disposal at sea.
An information flyer was provided to the company,
“due to the contact already made on the issue.”
Then the 120 tonnes of iron were released into the
Pacific between July 14 and Aug. 3 last year, causing international uproar.
The Vancouver Sun has learned that another federal
department was earlier willing to spend government money on the project.
According to documents filed in Federal Court in
Vancouver, Industry Canada approved two funding proposals submitted by the
Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. under the Industrial Research Assistance Program
and the National Research Council.
Approvals were given in March and July 2012, before
the dump, but were revoked in November 2012, after the project incited a media
storm.
Haida Salmon company representatives applied for a
judicial review of the decision to terminate the funding, arguing they were
“undertaking research that was fostered by the existing government of Canada
program, and in particular the IRAP funding process for ocean science.”
The application asks for the reinstatement of an
undisclosed amount of money as well as a statement of reasons for revoking the
government funds. None were given, according to the court documents, which were
filed in December, 2012.
According to Haida Salmon director and operations
manager, Jason McNamee, the funding was in the $75,000 range and was to be
applied to a summer student and the development of low-cost marine instruments
that could be used in future projects.
Haida elder and vocal opponent Gloria Tauber was
horrified by the iron dumping proposal from the beginning, calling local
politicians, writing letters to the editor of the Queen Charlotte Observer and
phoning representatives from various government agencies. Tauber, who has lived
on the island all her life and only rarely uses Internet, faxed pleas and
background information to government representatives at the Department of
Fisheries and Oceans as well as Environment Canada as late as May 2012, three
months before the dump.
Nobody was listening, she said.
“I felt like what I was doing wasn’t making a
difference,” she said.
Once the news broke, she became one of the most
outspoken critics of ocean fertilization, which has been banned since the 2008
London Convention of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations
body.
The plans for iron dumping were made very clear on
the islands of Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlottes.
The Council of the Haida Nation distanced itself
from the project, but a series of public meetings were held in the community of
Old Massett back in March 2011. That spring, less than 200 people cast a ballot
in a public vote on spending the band’s money on the $2.5 million project, with
57 voting against it. About 700 people live in Old Massett.
An update appeared in the Old Massett Village
Council newsletter in late February 2012, saying “we are on track to head
offshore in about three months.”
“(The Haida Salmon Restoration Corp.) is always
telling the world the ‘Haida people’ support them,” Tauber said. “It’s the Old
Massett Village Council that goes along with it ... it isn’t the ‘Haida people’
they’re representing.”
Officials with the provincial Crown corporation
Pacific Carbon Trust also met with Haida Salmon Restoration Corp.
representatives before the iron dump, even visiting their chartered fishing
boat when it was still docked in Victoria on July 12.
While the primary Haida Salmon Restoration Corp.
goal was to cause a surge in plankton, and indirectly boost salmon stocks, the
company has argued the process leads to plankton pulling carbon dioxide from
the air. The company argued the process should be eligible for those seeking to
buy carbon credits.
“We advised them on July 30 that we didn’t think the
project was eligible,” said Hope Hickli, Pacific Carbon Trust’s spokeswoman.
She was unable to divulge the details of the application but said it was rejected
for carbon credits because the iron bloom would be in international water.
“Pacific Carbon Trust conducted a review of the
project, and with government, determined the project would not meet the
requirements of the B.C. emission offsets regulation,” she said. The technical
description of the project was received by the Trust, and said it would
“replenish ocean mineral micronutrients ... using natural, iron ore mineral
compounds.”
The Canadian Centre for Ocean Gliders in Sidney,
which lent two robotic underwater measuring devices to the project, has a
collaboration agreement with the federal government and access to equipment at
the Institute of Ocean Sciences, a Department of Fisheries and Oceans marine
science facility, also in Sidney.
Staff at the institute were aware of the company, if
informally, said Paul Lacroix, director of the ocean glider centre. Well-known
scientific maverick Russ George and other Haida Salmon Restoration Corp.
representatives visited the institute on several occasions, sometimes after
hours, to learn how to calibrate the gliders.
“There’s no conspiracy. The Haida (company)
approached me, they wanted to use a glider for a scientific project. It’s in
our mandate,” Lacroix said.
“They weren’t hiding (their intentions). I wasn’t hiding
anything. Nobody was hiding anything,” he said, adding no government resources
went to the project.
George (who is no longer with the Haida Salmon
Restoration Corp.), along with the summer student hired on the promise of
Industry Canada funding, chemist Craig Mewis, attended a conference at the
Pacific Biological Station, a DFO research station in Nanaimo in March 2012.
They attended under the company name and were
referred to as “a First Nations ocean research group” in the conference report
which also said the workshop was “timely for the Haida Salmon Restoration
Corporation (financed by the First Nation government) to help develop plans for
their upcoming cruise to evaluate the health of Haida Gwaii marine ecosystem.”
The conference was hosted by government scientist
Andrew Edwards.
The company was upfront about its plans, McNamee
said.
“Anybody who Googles Haida Salmon Restoration Corp.
— and everyone was well aware Russ George was one of the directors — and then
Googles Russ George, and knew we were working at sea, you can’t tell me you
don’t know what we’re doing. It was well known,” he said.
The Haida Salmon Restoration Corp. has also filed an
application in B.C. Supreme Court to set aside the search warrant that was
executed on March 27 by Environmental Protection Act enforcement officers,
arguing the basis of the search warrant, the 2008 London Protocol against ocean
dumping, is not legally binding in Canada.
The next hearing in the case is expected in
December.
According to a blog post written by Haida Salmon
Restoration CEO John Disney, who is also the economic development officer of
Old Massett, the officers “stormed” the company’s Vancouver offices, seizing
lab notes, samples, hard drives, cellphones and documents during a raid that
lasted overnight and into the next morning.
Disney also claimed in the blog post the officers
were “fully armed and equipped with bulletproof vests and multiple support
gear.” (The federal department says officers do not carry arms, but may wear
body armour and carry other protective equipment such as batons.)
Other sites were searched as well, including the
Victoria offices of the charter fishing boat company that leased the vessel to
the company last summer.
Under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, disposal
at sea is prohibited without a permit, and no permit application process exists
for ocean fertilization. Those projects or proposals that “do not qualify as
legitimate scientific research would be regarded as disposal at sea, which is
prohibited under CEPA 1999,” and any projects that will yield direct financial
gain are disqualified.
“You don’t need a permit for ‘legitimate science’
but we don’t have a process in place to consider whether your science is
legitimate or not. What kind of nonsense is that?” said Haida Salmon
Restoration lawyer Jay Straith.
And the Haida goal was primarily about science, he
said, not carbon sequestration. Sequestration by a plankton bloom is not only
unproven, but too small in this case to yield any financial gain at all. “No
one’s going to get rich off 100 tonnes of iron ... at best it will subsidize
what (the company) is doing.”
But representatives also pointed out the
contradiction between the prohibition against financial gain during scientific
research and the recent public shift in focus at the National Research Council
to only fund projects with a commercial application, announced this May.
Peter Kent, federal environment minister when the
iron dumping happened, said in an interview last week that he thought the search
warrant would stand up in court, and he continues to follow the story although
he’s no longer in cabinet.
“Some research in this area may well be justified
under very controlled circumstances by approved scientific bodies. But I think
their plan had a get-rich-quick aspect to it, which was selling carbon credits.
That was a really irresponsible pitch on behalf of the promoter.”
“An awful lot of members of the band themselves
recognized it was a pipe dream and wasn’t particularly responsible in terms of
environmental precautions.”
It was possible a meeting had been held with his
department’s officials as early as 2011, but he was unaware of the project
until summer 2012, Kent said, calling it “very alarming and very concerning.”
In May 2012, it was “all hypothetical ... the
department folks didn’t think anything of it. There was nothing suspicious and
nothing to be pursued because they advised the proponents what the law was and
what the regulations were.”
“The enforcement folks at Environment Canada on the
West Coast had had a visit and basically thought they had shut down the
proposal in the spring. They never heard anything else until the reports came
out the dump had taken place.”
Environment Canada would not comment last week on
when exactly the department knew about the ocean fertilization.
“Our government takes seriously its commitment to
protect the environment. When Environment Canada became aware of an alleged
violation of federal environmental laws it began an investigation,” spokesman
Mark Johnson wrote in an email.
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