Modelling by Manon Berger and colleagues at the University of Bern finds that huge seaweed farms — the kind firms like Running Tide and Kelp Blue want to rope across the Atlantic — would strip the ocean of the nitrogen, phosphorus and iron that phytoplankton need. Phytoplankton being the microscopic drifting plants already pulling carbon out of the sky for free, unpaid, since before anyone was around to thank them.
So the seaweed eats the lunch of the thing already doing the job. Net carbon removed: roughly what you started with. Net press releases: many.
I'll give the kelp this — it's genuinely impressive at hoovering up CO2. It's also impressive at hoovering up everything next to it. My grandfather had the same quality. Didn't save him.
The paper is in Nature Communications. The phytoplankton could not be reached for comment, on account of being eaten.
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Based on the original article "A promising natural technique to remove CO2 could backfire".
