The Nova Scotia government should not permit the marketing of any fish gained from the vital and little known mesopelagic depths of our oceans.
THE ECONOMIST reports that new research by ocean scientists insists that surface feeding by the zillions of fishes that live in this ever dark layer of ocean about two hundred metres below the surface are the mechanism that ensures that carbon that enters the oceans is in time sent down to the depths of the oceans floor, leaving the carbon cycle and thus reducing the dangerous carbon abundance in the atmosphere.
Here is how it works:
Atmospheric carbon enters the surface of the ocean via wave/wind interaction .
Once there, with the help of abundant solar energy, it becomes the bodies of tasty little plankton.
Quadrillions of fish live in the mesopelagic but there is no sunlight there to power life --- so what do they live on ?
It turns out they swim to the surface, feast on plankton and then return down to the mesopelagic to poop out the resulting waste, which gently and slowly fall into the ocean floor kilometres below.
There the carbon remains, permanently removing it from the carbon cycle and our atmosphere - except where and when occasionally upwelling lifts it to the surface again.
Surface poop from surface living fish, by contrast, rapidly becomes carbon dioxide gas and thus is quickly returned to the atmosphere.
But the greedy humans have eaten most of the surface fish and are now turning to the ugly but protein rich fish of the mesopelagic to feed the fish farms.
The result will be to destroy one of the best free natural effective ways we know to sequester carbon out of the overactive atmospheric carbon cycle.
Please join with me in urging the NS government to ban the marketing of any of this fish - killing the process, at least in Nova Scotia.
A drop in the bucket, seemingly, but it will send a strong signal to other politicians, who love to say " me too" almost as much as they say "I'll get back to you"....
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