Haida Gwai Iron Experiment

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

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/company+centre+iron+dumping+scandal+stands+convictions/8860731/story.html

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.