In a rare opportunity, Herndl’s team repeated these experiments around the world, taking samples from a global conveyor belt of nutrient-rich water that connects the world’s ocean basins and takes more than a thousand years to wrap its way around.
Altogether, that might look good for efforts to deliberately sink carbon in the deep. Essentially, if the lunch gets broken down by microbes that respire, like people do, then the carbon is more likely to escape back into the atmosphere as a gas. But if they snub the sandwiches, that’s good, right? The biomass stays where it is. Herndl once believed that his research was making that case. But now he’s skeptical of deliberate sinking.
Climate change
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more: