The biological carbon pump, diel vertical migration, and carbon dioxide removal

Santiago Hernández-León

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107835

The biological carbon pump, diel vertical migration, and carbon dioxide removal

iScience. 2023 Sep 20;26(11):107835. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107835. eCollection 2023 Nov 17.

Author

Santiago Hernández-León¹

Affiliation

¹ Instituto de Oceanografía y Cambio Global, IOCAG, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Unidad Asociada ULPGC-CSIC, Campus de Taliarte, Telde, 35214 Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain.

Abstract

Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere promoting the faster environmental change of the Earth's recent history. Several marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) technologies were proposed to slow down CO₂ in the atmosphere. Technologies now under experimentation are related to the increase in gravitational flux. Other mechanisms such as active flux, the transport performed by diel vertical migrants (DVMs) were not considered. We review the effect of DVMs in the epipelagic realm and the top-down promoted by these organisms upon zooplankton and microzooplankton, and their variability due to lunar cycles. A night source of weak light will increase epipelagic zooplankton biomass due to DVMs avoidance from the upper layers to escape predation, promoting DVMs to export this biomass by active flux once the illumination ceases. This mCDR method should be tested in the field as it will increase the efficiency of the biological carbon pump in the ocean.

Keywords: Aquatic science; Biogeochemistry; Environmental management; Oceanography.

Publication types

Review