How Seawater Might Soak Up More Carbon

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Alkaline rock spread on beaches or dumped into the ocean might be tainted with toxic metals such as nickel. Traces of iron and silicate could spark algae blooms which can cause oxygen levels in the water to fall. Altering the acidity of water could also cause subtle shifts in complex food webs, such as giving an edge to shell-creating plankton called coccolithophores over diatoms, a type of plankton that doesn’t make shells. “Is that going to cascade through the food web in a way that might change the whole way the ecosystem functions?” muses Subhas. (View Highlight)