On February 26-27, Climos presented at the Carbon Forum America conference in San Francisco. This was the largest carbon market conference ever held in North America, with over 1,500 participants. On February 26th, Climos CEO Dan Whaley presented at a panel on high-tech innovation to combat climate change. On February 27th, Climos presented a Side Session on the science of ocean fertilization, with talks by Dr. Margaret Leinen and two independent scientists specializing in ocean fertilization, Dr. Kenneth Coale of Moss Landing Marine Labs, and Dr. Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Dr. Kenneth Coale is the Director of the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, the graduate program and research facilities serving seven California State University Campuses. He is a global marine biogeochemist with expertise in trace metals, carbon and nutrient cycling and radionuclides in the marine and lacustrine systems.  Dr. Coale was the Chief Scientist or Principal Investigator on all the US led Ocean Iron Fertilization expeditions.  

Ken worked extensively with John Martin, the California oceanographer who originally proposed the iron hypothesis which led to the iron fertilization experiments and who was the Director of Moss Landing before Ken.  John Martin passed away in 1993, several months before the first cruise was performed that proved his hypothesis.  

Dr. Francisco Chavez is a biological oceanographer with interests in how climate change and variability regulate ocean ecosystems on local and basic scales. He was born and raised in Peru where he attended Markham College in Lima.   He was one of the first members of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) twenty  years ago, and is a senior scientist there.   At MBARI he pioneered time series research and the development of new instruments and systems to make this type of research sustainable. Chavez has authored or co-authored over 100 peer reviewed papers with 10 in Nature and Science, and is past member of the NSF Geosciences Advisory Committee. He has been heavily involved in the development of the US Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and been on the Governing Boards of the Central and Northern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS), the Pacific Coastal Ocean Observing System (PaCOOS) and the Center for Integrated Marine Technologies (CIMT). Chavez is a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of the Sciences; honored for distinguished research on the impact of climate variability on oceanic ecosystems and global carbon cycling. He was recently honored as Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universidad Pedro Ruiz Gallo in Peru in recognition of his distinguished scientific career and for contributing to elevate academic and cultural levels of university communities in particular and society in general.

Categories: Ocean Fertilization