August 20, 2024 — New England waters may soon be the location for a first-of-its-kind field trial to test a technique called ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) that could someday become a pivotal tool in the fight against climate change. However, fishermen are concerned that the experiment could further disrupt an ecosystem, and the fishing industry is already contending with the effects of offshore wind energy development and climate change.
“I first heard about it at the June [New England Fishery Management] Council meeting,” said Jerry Leeman, a former Maine fisherman who now heads the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association. “Everybody in that room, all forty of us, our jaws dropped. It caught a lot of people off guard. My phone started blowing up with every fisherman you could imagine, from Cutler, Maine, all the way down the mid-Atlantic, asking questions.”
The planned LOC-NESS project (short for “Locking Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope”) is led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Its purpose is to monitor dispersal patterns and environmental impacts of a controlled release of sodium hydroxide (a strong base) into surface waters. As one of seventeen projects supported by a $23.4-million investment by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program, LOC-NESS is part of a new wave of research designed to help identify ocean-based carbon removal or “negative emissions” techniques that are safe, effective, and affordable.
An illustration of the planned LOC-NESS field research project, illustrating the plume of 50% sodium hydroxide mixed with tracer dye that the team will release in a vessel’s wake, the predicted uptake of carbon dioxide resulting from the increase in local ocean alkalinity resulting from this release, and several methods (aerial drone imagery and satellite data, autonomous underwater gliders, water column sediment traps, and drifting buoys with GPS trackers and strobes) by which the research team will monitor effects of the release. Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, https://locness.whoi.edu
In addition to OAE, other proposed ocean-based carbon removal techniques include cultivating and sinking kelp biomass and fertilizing nutrient-poor areas of the ocean to boost phytoplankton growth. In theory, all of these techniques could enhance the ocean’s natural ability to draw carbon dioxide molecules out of the atmosphere and store them in the ocean for decades or centuries. If implemented at scale, they could hypothetically slow the rise of global temperatures.
However, these techniques are beset by significant data gaps related to the measurability of carbon removal, the durability of carbon storage, and possible side effects on local ecosystems and communities. Laboratory studies and modeling have only been able to provide partial answers to these questions so far, prompting leaders in the field to call for the initiation of in-situ pilot projects like the LOC-NESS project.