Confront Pollution and Climate Impacts

Plastic pollution in the ocean has captured international attention. Yet only about one percent of the roughly eight million tons of plastic that enter the ocean each year remains at the surface. The rest consists of "microplastics"-small plastic particles less than ¼ inch in diameter-and "nanoplastics," their even smaller relatives. These tiny, ubiquitous plastic particles can be ingested by marine organisms, including the fish and shellfish we eat.

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The deep ocean stores 50 times more carbon than Earth's atmosphere, and it has the capacity to store much more. Industry is already looking to harness and accelerate ocean processes as a potential solution to human-induced climate change. Marine carbon dioxide removal, or mCDR, could vastly enhance the ocean's natural ability to absorb atmospheric carbon, but the impacts of such a large-scale intervention on ocean life, processes, and ecosystems are not yet known.

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The ocean naturally takes up massive amounts of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which can cause seawater to acidify, adversely affecting ocean health. WHOI is assessing a technique known as ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) as a potential way to accelerate the ocean's ability to take up carbon dioxide while balancing ocean chemistry at the same time.

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In a few key parts of the ocean, biological activity-and therefore, the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere-is limited by a lack of iron in surface seawater. Adding iron could, therefore, help spur growth of tiny, plant-like organisms known as phytoplankton and increase both their uptake of carbon dioxide and the amount of carbon that ultimately gets sequestered in the deep ocean.

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Nowhere are the effects of climate change as evident as in Earth's polar regions. The Arctic is warming about four times faster than the rest of the planet, and Antarctic sea ice recently retreated to the lowest extent ever measured.

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