Rising to the top

If innovation is the key to correcting environmental wrongs, then maybe some scientists featured on Discovery's Project Earth have found the answers.
I only got to see one of the series that profiled eight different engineering and scientific experiments to address the planet's ailments, but the hour-long episode left an impression.
It was entitled "Hungry Ocean" and featured a 1,000-foot, wave-powered pump meant to encourage phytoplankton blooms, as the Discovery Channel's website explains.
This would help fight climate change, according to the scientists, including Brian von Herzen of the Climate Foundation, and oceanographers David Karl of the University of Hawaii and Ricardo Letelier of Oregon State University.
Blooms of the tiny living organism would absorb carbon as part of its life cycle, the show explained. When plankton died and sank, it would effectively trap the carbon at the bottom of the ocean.
The role of the pump was to bring up water near the ocean floor already chockfull of necessary nutrients to support plankton, to feed the living stuff and encourage its growth.
These methods were in contrast to other experiments that added iron to the oceans to spark those blooms.
The genius of the ocean pumps is that — as long as they remained intact — they would not require chemicals to go into the water that weren't there already.
They got their energy to pump from natural tides of the ocean, so there weren't any moving engine parts or necessary fuel consumption.
A buoy would float near the ocean surface and the tube would act like a drinking straw to pull up nutrient-rich waters from the depths.
Set up near Oahu, the pumps would take advantage of the abundant oceans to take carbon dioxide out of the global warming equation.
Oceans make up just about three-quarters of the earth’s surface, and Discovery called them “the most important carbon sink" around:
"They have the potential to lock away 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere. Every day, tiny microbes called phytoplankton convert millions of tons of carbon dioxide into living matter."
Though plankton makes up only about 1 percent of the planet's biomass, the living organisms take in "as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as trees, grass and all the land plants combined."
Carbon molecules absorbed by plankton could remain trapped for thousands of years after it falls to the ocean bottom, the experiment notes say.
But the experiment seems even more important with the consideration that plankton appears to be dying off. Researchers attributed that die-off to changes due to climate change, as well.
"Between 1999 and 2004, it killed off 30 percent of the phytoplankton in some parts of the world," according to Discovery. "One of the effects of the oceans warming up, is that they are mixing less and nutrients aren't always getting to the surface."
The pipes could not only increase plankton population, but many kinds of sea life could flourish from higher concentrations of the organism because it is one of the most important links in the food chain.
At the end of the show, scientists found that many kinds of life for which plankton was the main source of nourishment had returned to the area where sea pumps were installed.
While the tubes ultimately stopped functioning due to failed welds, scientists and the show proved the concept worked — that circulating the ocean water better encouraged plankton growth.
The possibilities in restoring life to dead waters alone seems to me enough benefit to continue the experiment, and it appears to open up a new front in the battle against climate change.
This is important because the scientific community has set off alarm bells, in that innovation will be an integral part of the solution, going hand in hand with a reduction in use of fossil fuels.
Maybe the invention that solves the climate crisis isn't ocean pumps, but it does make me wonder what will rise to the top, what will make the cut and become the must-have tool to fight pollution.
And, perhaps more important for us couch jockeys, will there be a television show to chronicle its development?
But it won't just take scientists to end the massive waste and bad practices that's caused pollution.
Even landlubbers can participate and become part of the solution through everyday activities. 
Government officials and researchers promote wetland farming as having multiple benefits in improving water quality, protecting habitat and removing carbon from the atmosphere.
For more information, see next week's column.