Jūros dumbliai dideliu mastu; Akvakultūra

    „Plaukiojantys atviroje jūroje esantys ūkiai turėtų padidinti naudingų augalų derlių ir netgi padėti palengvinti klimato kaitą.

    Daugelyje vietų, kur anksčiau klestėjo jūros dumbliai, dažnai augantys didžiuliuose „miškuose“, jie nyksta. Priežastis yra visuotinis atšilimas, kuris, kaitindamas viršutinį vandenyno sluoksnį, sumažina jo tankį dėl šiluminio išsiplėtimo-taip jis tampa plūdesnis. Šis papildomas plūdrumas reiškia, kad mažiau tikėtina, kad jis susimaišys su vėsesniais, tankesniais ir maistingesniais vandenimis žemiau. Tai kenkia jūros aplinkai apskritai. Tai yra blogai ir komerciniam jūros dumblių auginimui, verslui, kurio pajamos (priklausomai nuo to, ko klausiate) yra nuo 6 iki 40 mlrd. dolerių per metus.

    Dumbliai, ypač rudadumbliai, yra populiarūs Azijos virtuvėje. Jie taip pat naudojami, kaip trąšos ir perdirbami į karageniną, natūralų rišiklį ir emulsiklį, naudojamą maisto produktuose, kosmetikoje ir vaistuose. Dauguma jų auginami jūros dugne arba ant jo pritvirtintų virvių. Tačiau kai kurie auginami mažose plaukiojančiose platformose.

    Siekdami atremti paviršiaus šildymo poveikį, kuris ypač ryškus tropikuose, tyrėjai bando patobulinti plaukiojančios platformos metodą, padėdami pakelti vėsesnius vandenis, kad paskatintų dumblių augimą tokiose platformose. Tai taip pat padidintų jūros dumblių ūkių plotą, nes jie galėtų būti toli nuo pakrantės. Eksperimentinis plaukiojantis ūkis, įrengtas rugpjūtį, prie Filipinų krantų, vadovaujamas Amerikos labdaros organizacijos „Climate Foundation“ vadovaujamos grupės, yra vienas didžiausių kol kas bandymų tai padaryti.


    Dirbtinis pakilimo stimuliavimas nėra nauja idėja. Jis daugelį metų buvo reklamuojamas kaip būdas regeneruoti rudadumblių miškus. Ir dėl geros priežasties. Esant pakankamai maistinių medžiagų, milžiniškų rudadumblių lapai, užaugantys vidutiniškai apie 30 metrų, gali pailgėti daugiau nei 50 cm per dieną. Tačiau tik dabar rimtai bandoma skatinti vandens pakilimą.

    Fondo bandomosios platformos plotas yra 100 kvadratinių metrų. Joje saulės energija varomos turbinos siurbia vandenį iš kelių šimtų metrų gylio per lanksčius cilindrinius vamzdžius. Fondas taip pat planuoja eksperimentuoti su vėjo ir bangų varomomis turbinomis.

    Jei tai veikia, o tai rodo ankstyvieji rezultatai ir gali būti padidinta, tokia technologija ne tik galėtų padidinti jūros dumblių gamybą, bet ir padėti ekosistemoms, priklausančioms nuo jūros dumblių miškų. Ir, bent jau teoriškai, jei dalis derliaus būtų paaukota, nuskandinant jį giliai vandenyne, tai galėtų veikti kaip nauja anglies surinkimo ir saugojimo forma, galinti padėti sulėtinti atšilimą, sukėlusį šią problemą .

    Pasak fondui vadovaujančio Briano von Herzeno, 2020 m. organizacija, naudodama panašią technologiją, atliko mažesnio masto eksperimentus. 

Jie parodė, kad jūros dumbliai ant platformų, drėkinamų vandeniu, auga keturis kartus greičiau nei lygiavertėse, nelaistomose platformose. Be to, jis ir toliau auga šilčiausiais metų mėnesiais, kai ne taip drėkinami jūros dumbliai iš tikrųjų susitraukia.

 

    Von Herzenas ir jo kolegos tikisi pasinaudoti patirtimi, surinkta iš naujausio įrenginio, kuriant platformą, kuri apimtų visą hektarą vandenyno paviršiaus-100 kartų didesnį už ką tik paleistą. Tuo tikslu jie bendradarbiauja su Australijos viešojo ir privataus sektoriaus partnerystės Marine Bioproducts Cooperative Research Center. Partnerių vertinimu, tokiu mastu jūros dumblių ūkis galėtų atsipirkti per penkerius metus.

 

    Be to, jūros dumblių ūkiai duoda daugiau naudos, nei tiesioginė jų pasėlių vertė. Jūros dumbliai yra daugelio jūrų būtybių, įskaitant žuvis, buveinė. Kai kuriuos iš jų galima naudoti maistui. Iš tiesų, norint, kad dirbtinis vandens pakėlimas sukeltų norimą efektą, gali būti net nebūtina auginti jūros dumblius. 

 

Projektas „Ocean artUp“, kuriam vadovavo Helmholtz vandenyno tyrimų centras, Kylis, Vokietija, eksperimentuoja su vandens pakėlimu, kad paskatintų mažų planktoninių būtybių, kurias ėda sardinės, augimą.

    Tai galėtų padėti atkurti šių žuvų išteklius, kurie sparčiai mažėja tiek Atlanto vandenyne, tiek Viduržemio jūroje. „Ocean artUp“, prasidėjusi 2017 m. ir planuojanti veikti iki šių metų pabaigos, sutelkė dėmesį į tai, kaip tiksliai imituoti ir išmatuoti, kaip dirbtinis pakilimas veikia tarp vandenynų sluoksnių perduodamų maistinių medžiagų kiekius. 

 

Vienas dalykas, kurį atrado projekto tyrėjai, yra tas, kad jei siurbiate per stipriai, dalis pakilusio vandens tiesiog nukrenta atgal į gelmę, tinkamai nemaišant. Tokiu būdu maišant vandenyną gali prireikti ir plaukiojančių vandens maišytuvų, kad maistinės medžiagos išliktų paviršiuje.

    Tuo tarpu San Franciske „Otherlab“, nepriklausoma tyrimų laboratorija, dirba su povandeniniu robotu, skirtu tvirtai įsukti didelius raiščius į jūros dugną, kad užtikrintų plaukiojančių jūros dumblių ūkiai lieka vietoje ir gali geriau išgyventi audringus orus. „Otherlab“ yra konsorciumo, kurį moka JAV vyriausybinė agentūra „ARPA-e“, tirianti idėją naudoti jūros dumblius, kaip biokuro šaltinį, dalis.

    Tie, kurie nerimauja dėl visko, kas kvepia geoinžinerija-kitaip tariant, technologija, skirta pakeisti pasaulio klimatą taip, kad priešintųsi visuotiniam atšilimui, į dirbtinį pakilimą žiūri skeptiškai. Jie teigia, kad tai gali pakenkti kitoms vandenynų ekosistemų dalims ir netgi sukelti nepageidaujamą šalutinį poveikį, kuris galiausiai paspartins klimato kaitą, o ne ją sulėtins. Rėmėjai, atvirkščiai, mato šias ankstyvas pastangas bent jau kaip tiesiog atstatyti klimato kaitos nuslopintą pakilimą.

    Sluoksniuotas, nemaišomas

    Praėjusiais metais žurnale „Nature Climate Change“ paskelbtas tyrimas, kurį atliko Amerikos ir Kinijos mokslininkų komanda, parodė, kad bendras pasaulio vandenynų sluoksniavimasis nuo 1960 m. padidėjo 5%, o tropikuose - iki 20% daugiau. Taip yra nepaisant bet kokio kompensacinio ekstremalių orų, kuriuos atneša visuotinis atšilimas, poveikio, dėl kurio vandenynai labiau maišosi. Bet koks toks plakimas yra nuslopintas papildomo šiltesnių paviršiaus sluoksnių plūdrumo.

    Kaip pabrėžia daktaras von Herzenas, nepritariantis geoinžinerijai, bet kokie tokie planai susidurtų ne tik su ekonominėmis kliūtimis. Londono protokolas, tarptautinė teisinė sistema, reglamentuojanti jūrų taršą, nustato griežtas tyčinės vandenynų geoinžinerijos ribas. Tačiau protokolas toleruoja pagrįstą komercinį naudojimą ir tam tikrą anglies dioksido surinkimą.

    Vis dėlto, jei būtų atsižvelgiama į plataus masto jūros dumblių auginimą geoinžinerijos srityje, tai būtų tam tikra ironija. Tai padaryti reikštų vandenyno dugne užaugintų dumblių išmetimą, kad juose esanti anglis nesugrįžtų į atmosferą. Tai greičiausiai veiktų per trumpą laiką. Tačiau tai buvo kaip tik toks organinių medžiagų nusėdimo procesas, kuris per milijonus metų sukūrė šiuolaikinius naftos telkinius. Ir būtent jų nafta, įnirtingai pumpuojama daugiau, nei šimtmetį, sukūrė daug šiltnamio efektą sukeliančių dujų, kurių pasaulis dabar bando atsikratyti “. [1]

1. "Seaweed at scale; Aquaculture." The Economist, 2 Oct. 2021, p. 65(US).

Seaweed at scale; Aquaculture

 

“Floating offshore farms should increase production of a useful crop, and might even help alleviate climate change

IN MANY PLACES where seaweed used to thrive, often growing in vast "forests", it is disappearing. The cause is global warming, which, by heating the ocean's upper layer, reduces its density through thermal expansion--thus making it more buoyant. That extra buoyancy means it is less likely to mix with cooler, denser and more nutrient-rich waters below. This is bad for the marine environment in general. More specifically, it is bad for commercial seaweed farming, a business with revenues of (depending on whom you ask) between $6bn and $40bn a year.

The algae involved, particularly kelp, are popular in Asian cuisine. They are also used as fertiliser, and are processed into carrageenan, a natural binder and emulsifier employed in foods, cosmetics and drugs. Most are grown either on the seabed or on ropes attached to it (see picture above). But some are cultivated on small floating platforms.

To counter the effects of surface heating, which are particularly pronounced in the tropics, researchers are trying to improve the floating-platform approach by assisting the upwelling of cooler waters to stimulate algal growth on such platforms. This would also increase the area available for seaweed farms, by allowing them to be located well away from coastlines. An experimental floating farm installed in August, off the coast of the Philippines, by a group led by the Climate Foundation, an American charity, is one of the largest attempts so far to do this.

Pictures of a floating world

Artificial stimulation of upwelling is not a new idea. It has been touted for years as a way to regenerate kelp forests, in particular. And for good reason. With enough nutrients, fronds of giant kelp, which grow to an average length of about 30 metres, can elongate by more than 50cm a day. Only now, however, is upwelling-stimulation being attempted seriously.

The foundation's test platform has an area of 100 square metres. It employs solar-powered turbines to suck water up from a depth of several hundred metres through flexible, cylindrical pipes. The foundation plans to experiment with wind-powered and wave-powered turbines, too.

If this works, which early results suggest it does, and can be scaled up, not only could such technology boost seaweed production, it might also help ecosystems that depend on seaweed forests. And--at least in theory--if part of the harvest were sacrificed by sinking it into the deep ocean, that might act as a novel form of carbon capture and storage which could help slow the warming that caused the problem in the first place.

According to Brian von Herzen, who runs the foundation, the organisation carried out smaller-scale experiments, using similar technology, in 2020. These showed that seaweed grows four times faster on platforms irrigated with upwelled water than on equivalent, unirrigated platforms. Moreover, it continues to grow during the warmest months of the year, when seaweed not so irrigated actually shrinks.

Dr von Herzen and his colleagues hope to use experience gathered from their latest rig to develop a platform that would cover an entire hectare of the ocean's surface--100 times the area of the one just launched. To that end, they are collaborating with the Marine Bioproducts Cooperative Research Centre, a public-private partnership in Australia. At this scale, the partners estimate, a seaweed farm could pay for itself within five years.

Moreover, seaweed farms bring benefits beyond the immediate value of their crop. Seaweed is a habitat for many marine creatures, including fish. Some of these can be harvested for food. Indeed, for artificial upwelling to bring about that desirable state of affairs it may not even be necessary to farm seaweed. Ocean artUp, a project led by the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, is experimenting with the use of upwelling to encourage the growth of the small, planktonic creatures eaten by sardines.

That could help restore stocks of these fish, which are shrinking rapidly in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Ocean artUp, which began in 2017 and is scheduled to run until the end of this year, has concentrated on simulating and measuring exactly how artificial upwelling affects the quantities of nutrients transferred between ocean layers. One thing the project's researchers have discovered is that if you pump too hard, some of the upwelled water simply drops back into the depths, without mixing properly. Stirring the ocean in this way may thus require the design of floating water-mixers, too, to keep the nutrients at the surface.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Otherlab, an independent research laboratory, is working on an underwater robot intended to screw large tethers firmly into the seabed, to ensure that floating seaweed farms stay put, and can better survive stormy weather. Otherlab is part of a consortium paid for by ARPA-e, an American-government agency that is exploring the idea of using seaweed as a source of biofuel.

Those squeamish about anything that smacks of geoengineering--in other words, technology intended to change the world's climate in ways that oppose global warming--view artificial upwelling with scepticism. They argue that it could damage other parts of ocean ecosystems, and might even create unwanted side-effects that end up accelerating climate change rather than slowing it. Proponents, conversely, see these early efforts, at least, as simply restoring upwelling that has been suppressed by climate change.

Stratified, not stirred

A study published last year in Nature Climate Change, by a team of researchers from America and China, suggested that the overall stratification of the world's oceans has increased by 5% since 1960, with up to 20% more stratification in the tropics. This is despite any countervailing effect of the more extreme weather that global warming brings, which leads to greater churning of the oceans. Any such churning is overwhelmed by the extra buoyancy of the warmer surface layers.

Cooling the ocean surface by encouraging upwelling might also have a direct effect on the local air temperature. Warmer surface waters keep the atmosphere above warmer, too. Cooler waters do the reverse. But the technology would have to be deployed on a vast scale--over millions of hectares of the ocean's surface--before it had a noticeable effect on the atmosphere.

As Dr von Herzen, who does not advocate geoengineering, points out, any such plans would face more than just economic barriers. The London Protocol, an international legal framework that regulates marine pollution, sets stringent limits on deliberate geoengineering of the oceans. The protocol does, however, tolerate justifiable commercial exploitation, along with some carbon capture.

If large-scale seaweed farming were, nevertheless, to be considered for geoengineering, there would be a certain irony in that fact. To do this would mean dumping the algae thus grown on the ocean floor, to stop the carbon in them returning to the atmosphere. That would probably work in the short term. But it was just such a process of sedimentation of organic matter which, over millions of years, produced modern-day petroleum fields. And it is their oil, furiously pumped up for over a century, that has generated much of the excess of greenhouse gases of which the world is now trying to rid itself.” [1]

1. "Seaweed at scale; Aquaculture." The Economist, 2 Oct. 2021, p. 65(US).

 

Let us recall the fresh discussions in the Seimas

 

“Odeta Bložienė, the head of the company Burokėlis ir krapas, which manages a chain of eight restaurants and employs almost 150 people, says that the situation of employees is becoming complicated.

"Staff shortages are inhumane and abnormal," she said at a meeting of the Seimas.

O. Bložienė announced that she had already come up with a new position - a junior waiter who would perform unskilled work - bring food to customers, take away dishes, clean tables: "We invite students from 16 years of age to work."

She stressed that due to staff shortages, some of the company’s restaurants are no longer open on weekends.

End of quote.

Cruel, people want to feed, but can’t. Even in the Seimas, we have to complain about how bad workers do not go to work for the public good, and the Employment Service does not serve them in any way.

We shed a tear and go to rekvizitai.lt. The median salary of Burokėlis ir krapas, as published on this website, is EUR 933.43 before taxes. We deduct taxes and have about € 634 left in our hands. In Vilnius. The average price of a pizza offered by the company is 8-9 euros and the waiter has to deliver these dishes to hungry customers.

I'm afraid to think about how much the "younger waiters" earn.

For comparison - rental prices. 1-room apartments in Vilnius cost about 330–350 euros per month, in Kaunas - about 290 euros, in Klaipėda - about 240 euros. Add housing maintenance to this amount.

In June 2021, apartment sales prices in Vilnius and Kaunas grew at the same rate - 2.1 percent, the average price per square meter reached 1871 Eur (+39 Eur / sq. M) and 1313 Eur (+27 Eur / sq. M), respectively. In Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys, 1.6 per cent and 1.9 per cent, respectively, were recorded in June. and 1.3 percent. increase in apartment prices, the average price per square meter rose to 1290 Eur (+20 Eur / sq. m), 875 Eur (+16 Eur / sq. m) and 851 Eur (+11 Eur / sq. m), respectively.

We can talk a lot, demand a lot from everyone around us, but no Employment Service will make a person work virtually for nothing. Burokėlis ir krapas is neither a better nor a worse company than many others. There are a lot of companies that want to pay like a few years ago. Especially in a province where there are few alternatives to choose a job. This sometimes gives the impression that people do not need money, they do not go to work, and even the director, running around the town and villages with a new car for 100 thousand euros cannot recruit staff. But the truth is somewhat different. People don’t need salaries from which they can’t really make a living and build their future.

Just everyone sees that every week the store’s bill is getting bigger, even though the shopping cart doesn’t change, so you have to think about how to improve your livelihood. Even an intuitive person who has scored points and calculated that a few months of work a year in Norway will allow to bring more to the family than a few hours of work to a Lithuanian company chooses what is more convenient for him.

Let’s go back to the apartments and who buys them. Corporate accounts break down from the euros when services and goods become more expensive by the hour. To protect their money, shareholders buy anything that, from a long-term perspective, can maintain at least the same purchasing power of money. In this case, one such option is real estate in metropolitan areas, which is likely to not only become more expensive due to inflation, but renting it will be possible to obtain even a small but stable income.

There is no easy way out. Businesses are in no hurry to raise wages because of a lot of uncertainty and a bleak future. People, in turn, are in no hurry to work for money that does not ensure a normal livelihood. Inflation makes its adjustments.

The state can try to "smooth out" this chaos. There are several ways to do this. One is to increase the minimum wage, the other is to increase the wages of public sector workers so that there is pressure and wages rise everywhere, not only in big cities but also in districts. However, so far most state-aided projects do not address average wages and job creation.

The sad news is that there are more and more signs that the economic situation is abnormal and there is a "shake-up" ahead. No one can say exactly what it will be, because crisis scenarios are not repetitive, but the inflationary crisis has already begun. We will not stop the rise in prices, but the government will have to react to the fall in people's living standards, otherwise we may have a social explosion.

No, raising taxes and fees will not help here. Also not helping is a symbolic increase in the income of the poorest. A better strategy is to look for ways to increase, rather than destroy, the middle class, which ensures the stability of state in the modern world. So far, practically every day, state leaders talk about new taxes for employees, but see no effort, say, to limit state and bureaucratic expenses, to pull public administration and civil service reform from a deep drawer, to put the public procurement system in order.

It is proposed to increase the basic amount on the salaries of politicians, judges of general competence and judges of specialized courts, civil servants, employees of state and municipal budget institutions by four euros.

To put it mildly, the proposal is more like a mockery than a solution to the problem. Annual consumer prices in September compared to the corresponding period in 2020 according to the preliminary estimates of the Department of Statistics, it increased by 6.3 per cent. Simply put, a person has lost 63 euros out of every thousand euros. The wages of most workers have already depreciated far more than the government promises to increase.”