‘That kind of changes our thinking’

Photo Credit: Sara Zeidan / University of Ottawa

Scientists have made a game-changing discovery suggesting that marine bacteria in ocean waters may be able to store carbon, potentially giving the world another promising solution as we aim to bring Earth’s climate back into balance.   

According to a media release by UC Irvine News, a team from the University of California, Irvine, studied concentrations of carboxyl-rich alicyclic molecules, or CRAM, in Baffin Bay, situated between Canada and Greenland. 

The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, have upended what researchers thought they knew, with some molecules stored in deep ocean waters while others quickly rise.

“In the deep ocean, what we find is about one-quarter to half of the CRAM goes away, and the only way you can have that removal is biologically, by heterotrophic bacteria eating this material as an energy source,” senior author Brett Walker, an associate professor in UC Irvine’s Earth system science department, said in the release. “… But if you look at the concentration data we produced for Baffin Bay, a completely different picture emerges.” 

Walker explained that “tons” of CRAM are being produced on the sunlit parts of the ocean surface before later being removed in the depths. Unreactive molecules deep in ocean waters may ultimately be able to store carbon from the surface over a long period of time. 

“That kind of changes our thinking about what we previously thought about how CRAM cycles,” he said in the release. “If more CRAM can be stored in the deep ocean, presumably it would have the potential to mitigate atmospheric climate on centennial timescales.” 

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According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the ocean traditionally functions as a “carbon sink” that keeps our planet’s temperatures in check, soaking up approximately 31% of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activities. 

However, other research suggests the waters are becoming less able to absorb carbon, with one study indicating that microplastic pollution is impacting their ability to sequester the planet-warming gas. 

While excess carbon can change ocean chemistry for the worse — a process known as acidification — having an organic, environmentally undisruptive way to enhance carbon storage could theoretically be a low-cost complement to other carbon capture techniques as the world continues to transition away from the most significant source of harmful pollution: dirty fuels.   

Ultimately, the UC Irvine researchers still have a long way to go before this carbon storage method could conceivably have any significant applications. For starters, they need to determine whether they can manipulate bacteria into sequestering more CRAM in the depths.

“If you just enhance the rate of deep ocean storage a little bit, you could change the carbon storage dramatically over the course of a millennia,” Walker explained in the release. 

They also need to figure out whether ocean waters in other parts of the world operate similarly to those in Baffin Bay and will likely need to investigate whether altering the bacteria could have unintended consequences for marine ecosystems. 

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