Review draft 4/4/12

A General Theory of Relative Ecology

(A new way of thinking about the nutrient pollution thats killing our oceans)

If I were a Farmer.
The fundamental ecological principals that drive and sustain life on earth are pretty easy to understand and are actually rather simple. Life as most of us know it is driven by photosynthesis, wherein sunlight & nutrients provide energy to plants, which use biochemical processes to convert that energy and nutrient mass into their own biomass. Herbivores feed on the plants and carnivores eat the herbivores. In undisturbed systems, much recycling of plant and animal biomass takes place to keep things balanced. All of this takes place in an ecosystem--whether man made or natural-- where the interactions of plants and animals among themselves can be rather complex and web-like. All ecosystems have boundaries, although some boundaries are nebulous. A rain forest has fairly well defined boundaries, and a farm has very well defined boundaries. On the other hand, while a coastal seagrass ecosystem has well defined physical bounds, the baitfish they support can feed sailfish and other pelagic species that live far away. A key limiting nutrient in this process is nitrogen - the other key nutrients, phosphorous and potassium (in addition to many trace elements) revolve around it. So if I were a farmer and you gave me all of the nutrient pollution primarily nitrogen thats over-feeding algae and killing our coastal waters, well, maybe I wouldnt need any farm subsidies. Heres what I would do. Id fertilize my corn fields with approximately 150 pounds of this nitrogen per acre. To keep things simple, just the nitrogen part of my fertilizer cost today is around $0.50 per pound - $75 per acre per year (keep in mind that theres also nitrogen left over in my fields from last year, plus soil microbes fix atmospheric nitrogen). ILL GET AROUND 1.5.With this nitrogen, Ill produce around 150 bushels of corn per acre per year. 1.5 POUNDS N = 1 BUSHEL So I get a bushel of corn (56 pounds) for every 1.5 pounds of fertilizer I use, and the nitrogen-to-corn conversion ratio is 1:56 (important to note, only 20% of the corn plant is corn cob biomass, so the nitrogen-to-plant biomass conversion ratio is actually 1:280). My combined field-costs to produce this fresh corn (not dried) -equipment, seed, fertilizer, planting, harvesting -- are around $2.00 per bushel -- $300 per acre. So my nitrogen cost is a whopping 25% of my production costs - $0.50 per bushel! So for me, this fertilizer is a valuable commodity. And if I could somehow get this fertilizer out of our bays and coastal waters for 50 cents a pound or so, maybe I could help kill two birds with one stone. I and my fellow farmers would need to collect more than the amount thats causing the problem, and in doing so would eliminate the water pollution thats the single largest threat to our oceans! Unfortunately, no technology exists to do it, or is on the horizon, that could even come close to being economically viable.

Mike Calinski 2012

2 Now lets take this scenario a couple steps further, and the look at some basic ecological principals that drive and sustain my farms productivity. I also grow pigs and feed them the corn from my fields (plus other nutrients). For every four pounds of corn I feed the pigs, they put on one pound of body mass the conversion ratio is 4:1. For every bushel of corn, I get around 14 pounds of pig biomass. Tying this in with what I gave above, for every pound of newly added nitrogen I end up with 14 pounds of pig and the nitrogenmass-to-herbivore-biomass conversion ratio is 1:14. Next step: Lets pretend that that Ive found a niche market with an exotic restaurant chain that specializes in bear steaks. I figure Ill help stop the slaughter of wild bears for this market by growing my own bears for it. Although bears are omnivorous, lets just look at their meat consumption. They put on biomass during their fattening up growth phase in rough proportion to the amount of herbivore they consume, just like pigs eating corn. For every 6 pounds of (humanly euthanized) pig I feed them, they put on a pound of biomass. Putting it all together now, for every pound of nitrogen I fertilize my fields with I grow 56 pounds of corn, 14 pounds of pig, and 2.3 pounds of bear. Balancing My Ecological Budget Perhaps more important that balancing my farms business books, is balancing my ecological budget if Im not careful balancing this budget, I could loose my farm. An easy way to think about this balancing act is to think about Newtons Third Law of Motion -- "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction." In other words, to balance a system in our case an ecosystem the amount of energy coming in needs to be balanced with energy going out. Without getting into the ecological energy import dynamics of sunlight and photosynthesis and irrigation and plant and animal respiration and stuff like that which makes my corn grow, my net energy import is the mass of nitrogen I put on my fields each year, and my net energy export is biomass of bear that I export a well defined portion of that bear biomass being the mass of nitrogen that I brought into the system in the beginning. On one hand, if I put too much fertilizer on my fields, Im going to burn everything up and kill it. On the other hand, if I cant handle converting pig biomass into bear biomass, or ship out bear meat fast enough, then Im going to end up with a big bunch of dead animals and create even a bigger mess. You get the point. Energy in has to equal energy out. My ecological books must be balanced. Our Oceans and a New Paradigm So what if we started thinking about the nutrient pollution thats killing our oceans in a new way? In relationship to what Ive just given, with the nutrients being viewed as being a valuable commodity?? Would the problem then go away as good old fashioned capitalism competes for it capitalism in the form of out-of-work commercial fishermen that have could be re-employed to use it to grow fish and shellfish to meet the demand for seafood that cant be meet otherwise? Would the problem go away in thousands of miles of sea walled canal systems if homeowners could use it to grow stone or blue crabs,

3 snapper or grouper in their back yards? I would certainly think so. And in doing so, this overwhelming problem of nutrient pollution could very well just go away. Some Food for Thought: In SW Florida alone, scientists have calculated that there are close to 9 million pounds of N coming down the Caloosahatchee River year nitrogen that both overfeeds dense microscopic algae called phytoplankton (green water that shades and kills seagrasses, among other things), and at times causes multi-million dollar negative impacts on the tourism economy with out of control algae blooms washing up on shorelines). Most of it is from stormwater runoff both urban and agricultural ground water, five sewage treatment plants and air pollution (nitrous oxides from auto emissions). Thats $4.5 million dollars worth of fertilizer going to waste and polluting out bays each year!! Theoretically, if the above 9 million pounds of nitrogen could be converted to fishery biomass, using self-contained and self-sustaining ecologically engineered marine nursery habitats1 as a soil, and if the conversion ratio turned out to be along the lines of that discussed above around 2.3 pounds of fish and shellfish produced per pound of nitrogen then thats close to 21,000,000 pounds of fish a year that could be produced a year that would not otherwise be produced! Think about it. To balance the ecological budget, these marine resources would have to be harvested removed from the system, therein removing the nitrogen. And this would be in an area that today supports only a fraction of the commercial fisheries it used to. Of course, my farm practices are very efficient in converting nitrogen mass to bear mass, but in coastal waters, under normal circumstances in the wild, the efficiency is much lower. A generally accepted food pyramid of protoplasm, which includes the Second Law of Thermodynamics that says 90% of the food energy animals eat is lost from the system as it goes up the pyramid. So in the case of the above, lets take a different look at what could theoretically happen, if there were a system the habitats1 - to do the conversion. Phytoplankton, our primary energy source (like corn for the pigs), is 14.7% nitrogen, dry weight dry weight being 10% of its biomass. This means that each pound of nitrogen going into coastal waters can produce around 68 pounds of these algae. The turnkey with the habitats are filter-feeders like oysters, mussels and sea squirts. They almost instantly convert the dust of phytoplankton into nutrient rich detritus fecal pellets - which is the food source for detrivores like amphipods (shrimp like crustaceans) and marine worms, which the habitats support in the 10s of thousands. Young and fast growing stone crabs, blue crabs and many other crab species, in addition to snappers, sheepshead and the like (that naturally settle in the habitats), feed directly on the detrivores. Its a simple 4-step process. Nitrogen algae detrivores crabs and fish. With each habitat naturally filtering 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of water a day to make the whole

4 system work. Again, the ecological by-product of the system is clear water. It really is that simple. Putting this new consideration all together now, 1 pound of nitrogen = 68 pounds of algae = 6.8 pounds of amphipods, etc, = 0.68 pounds of fish and crabs. Keep in mind that this is with a 90% loss of actual biomass conversion energy. Nonetheless, it is impressive, and theoretically, the above 9 million pounds of nutrient pollution could be converted into over 6 million pounds of seafood that would not otherwise be produced again, in an area where commercial fishing has been devastated primarily because of nutrient pollution and nursery habitat loss. We need to put this economy back into working order. This theory may be wrong or not entirely right. But if it is right, or even close, it is well worth funding the scientific research to prove or disprove it, as it could revolutionize the way we think about the nutrient pollution thats going to waste. If this theory holds up in scale-up practice and upcoming field trials2, we could very well be on our way to not only erasing human nutrient footprints, but literally erasing coastal development footprints on our marine environment. This is the first time Ive uploaded anything onto the internet, and Im doing it because I want to downloaded from Scribe Thomas, J.a. - Anti Gravity - The Dream Made Reality , and in order to download it I have to upload something. So here it it, my very first publication on the Internet. Let me know if you find this of interest, as I have done much field proofing on my theory, and will soon be launching my nonprofit to actualize this dream, called the Ocean Restoration Initiative, Inc., in Key West, Florida. . . You will see us soon on the Interner and in the news. If you would like to contact me, email to the address below. Thanks, and comments are certainly welcome. Mike Calinski Marine Biologist President and Founder Ocean Restoration Initiative, Inc. (ORI) 9 Jade Drive Big Coppit Key, FL 33040 ph. 239-472-9800 e-mail oceanrestore@gmail.com