vadka dosing the ocean!

[ctenophors rule]

could vodka docing be used on the lakes, and rivers, and other waterways that have nutrient problems? i know that the low xygenlevels are liable to start a eutophication event, but could ther be away around that?

i know this is probably not the place, but it just made me wonder..i thoughtthat maybe if used in a tame release, or seeded into the area where nutrients are leaching from, this could be effectively used to keep the reefs in the oligotropic water ways, coral dominated, and not algae dominated.....

and could vadka dosing be used in freswater run off, while in the holding areas? like in the indian river lagoon, every year they discharge thousands of gallons of freswater from the ocechobee lake, and it causes all sorts of harm because of its nutrient richnes....

thanks for all the replies....tommy!

[maharsreef]

maybe prodibio would be better then vadka??

[ctenophors rule]

it may...but that does seem awfuly expensive...

[iamwhatiam52]

Great idea, but we'll need a BIG skimmer!

Can we dump the skimmate in your back yard?

[lombard0]

Yup, gigantic skimmers is a "must". And you may need several of them.

But then again, what if you (or that someone who will doze it) overdoze it? What will happen to those fishes, and such in that river/lake?

[maharsreef]

Lmao,lols

[greenbean36191]

There are lots of reefs where we have unintentionally increased DOC. The results are not pretty. See Forrest Rohwer's work.

[R_Hudson]

I accidentaly dropped my bottle of vodka in the lake once during a fishing trip. I don't remember if there were any long term side effects. I did have a headache the next morning. But I don't think that was due to the vodka in the lake and it subsided by around 2 pm!!!

[NeveroddoreveN]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15448434#post15448434 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by iamwhatiam52
Great idea, but we'll need a BIG skimmer!

Can we dump the skimmate in your back yard?

We'll need lots of potatoes for the "vadka."

[OwenInAZ]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15451156#post15451156 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
There are lots of reefs where we have unintentionally increased DOC. The results are not pretty. See Forrest Rohwer's work.

Holy crap, this is the last place I'd have expected to see Forrest mentioned. I was involved in a collaboration with him on a hot springs project in Oregon. Small world :)

On a serious note, though, besides the massive massive amounts of ethanol required to make a difference in nutrient levels, the ecological effects of such a plan would likely be devastating. Look at a lot of coral reefs close to effluent point sources -- huge algae outbreaks and subsequent coral dieoffs, all caused by increases in DOC (with ethanol qualifies as).

Now, if we can have some skimmer barges or something floating around, then maybe we'd be in business ;)

[ctenophors rule]

i was hoping their may be a way around the skimmer....but i guess not. though if used in source water before it is flooded into the IRL, those fish will most likely die anyway( few osmoregulate, and none over that short a time...one second 1.000, next second 1.023) even if an OD were to occur, the fish would have died anyways...and the gunk build up could be taken out before dumping...or is this wrong?

btw, looking into Forrest Rohwer's work now!

[ctenophors rule]

wow, realy good article, very technical. i am cross referencing the citations now, but i think that the risks outway any possible results now... but something needs to be done. does anyone know of anything that people are doing currently? any experaments?

also, why is it that i can't read gardner, hughes, victoria, pandolfi, or pantos articles? all i get are the abstracts. does anyone know what i am doing wrong?

[ludnix]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15468242#post15468242 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ctenophors rule
wow, realy good article, very technical. i am cross referencing the citations now, but i think that the risks outway any possible results now... but something needs to be done. does anyone know of anything that people are doing currently? any experaments?

also, why is it that i can't read gardner, hughes, victoria, pandolfi, or pantos articles? all i get are the abstracts. does anyone know what i am doing wrong?

What needs to be done about what? I'm not sure what exactly the long term goal of this would be?

[lombard0]

I think the threadstarter's goal is to reduce excessive nutrients in rivers, lakes, etc. by carbon dosing approach CMIIW.

[greenbean36191]

The take away message from Forrest's work though is that polluted reefs are not carbon limited (which is what vodka dosing is intended to help) and that the levels of DOC already present are detrimental to the reefs. Adding more carbon only increases the problem.

[ctenophors rule]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15470389#post15470389 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
The take away message from Forrest's work though is that polluted reefs are not carbon limited (which is what vodka dosing is intended to help) and that the levels of DOC already present are detrimental to the reefs. Adding more carbon only increases the problem.

yes, but are their other methods, that you know of, being tested?

i read that 90% of certain sponges diet consists of DOC....

[KafudaFish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15468242#post15468242 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ctenophors rule
wow, realy good article, very technical. i am cross referencing the citations now, but i think that the risks outway any possible results now... but something needs to be done. does anyone know of anything that people are doing currently? any experaments?

also, why is it that i can't read gardner, hughes, victoria, pandolfi, or pantos articles? all i get are the abstracts. does anyone know what i am doing wrong?

Because the publisher has them protected. You can read the abstract and maybe the literature cited but the main body is protected. If you were a member of an organization such as AFS then you could read certain journal articles from your computer.

Or you could pay a fee to have access to a journal for a few days or longer.

Or go to a university and use a public access computer if you are not a student there and search their database section for the articles. You could then print them off or save them.

[KarlBob]

Actually, there have been geoengineering experiments that looked at the result of adding chemicals to ocean water. The difference is that they used iron (http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=34167&sectionid=1000), not vodka. They were also interested in absorbing atmospheric CO2 by adding nutrients, rather than removing excess nutrients.

The biggest problem is the law of unintended consequences. Would large-scale changes to one portion of the water chemistry, such as nutrient content, affect other aspects, like pH? Until we know, it might be easier to work on the problem by reducing the sources (of CO2 or nutrients), rather than adding something else to counter the effects of something we added in the first place.

[ctenophors rule]

nice read karl, we learnt about this breifly in a lecture at school.

how would this effect the ph? does it have to do with regional photosynthesis vs. less nutrients available on a whole, or rather from a normal source?

[KarlBob]

As I understand things, the project with the most direct potential to affect pH is not the iron seeding, but the idea of storing CO2 in liquid form at the bottom of the ocean. Supposedly, deep ocean pressures and temperatures are in the right range for CO2 to remain a liquid. There's some question, however, whether some of the liquid CO2 at the boundary layer might dissolve into the water.

If some of the liquid CO2 intended for storage dissolved into the ocean, instead, it could draw down the pH of the ocean. It wouldn't take a very large pH change to really mess with coral growth, shell formation of molluscs, crustaceans, etc.

[addicted2reefin]

as long as we can reduce what we are doing, the ocean will level itself out. if we stop [profanity] with mother nature and give herself some time to recover everything. we created the problems, and we need to stop aggressive solutions, as we as a human race oversee consequences of our actions. the ocean has its own natural filtration methods, as long as we stop our import of nutrients to the ocean, everything will balance out.

[KarlBob]

Yup. Unfortunately, we get so locked in our ways of doing things, that we start thinking "Oops, X caused unintended consequences, but if I start Y to mitigate X, then I can continue X," rather than "Oops, X caused unintended consequences. I'll stop doing X, and let the system recover."

Sometimes the thought process is also "X has pushed the system so far out of whack that I can't wait for it to recover naturally. Y will give it a push back toward the original conditions."

Not to mention the effects of money and influence...

[ctenophors rule]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15486059#post15486059 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by addicted2reefin
as long as we can reduce what we are doing, the ocean will level itself out. if we stop <font size="1" color="#0000FF">profanity removed</font> with mother nature and give herself some time to recover everything. we created the problems, and we need to stop aggressive solutions, as we as a human race oversee consequences of our actions. the ocean has its own natural filtration methods, as long as we stop our import of nutrients to the ocean, everything will balance out.

how can we stop "profanity removed" with mother nature? lol, i couldn't help myself.

i like where u are going with this, but how do we stop importing nutrients into the ocean?

[ctenophors rule]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15485258#post15485258 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by KarlBob
As I understand things, the project with the most direct potential to affect pH is not the iron seeding, but the idea of storing CO2 in liquid form at the bottom of the ocean. Supposedly, deep ocean pressures and temperatures are in the right range for CO2 to remain a liquid. There's some question, however, whether some of the liquid CO2 at the boundary layer might dissolve into the water.

If some of the liquid CO2 intended for storage dissolved into the ocean, instead, it could draw down the pH of the ocean. It wouldn't take a very large pH change to really mess with coral growth, shell formation of molluscs, crustaceans, etc.

i thought that the co2 was brought down by heterotrophs that ate the autotrophs that used the co2 in photosynthesis...are u saying that the co2 becomes liquid and floats out of the dead bodies of these orgaisms?