Monday, November 01, 2010

Re: Salmon

Nature has a story about a theory that a large patch of iron fertilized ocean caused by a volcanic eruption may have resulted in this year's big Canadian salmon run:
Parsons' suggestion relies on a study in Geophysical Research Letters by Roberta Hamme of the University of Victoria, British Columbia1. The paper links the 7-8 August 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in the Aleutian Islands to a huge phyotoplankton bloom later that month. The eruption wasn't particularly large, but a storm spread its ash over a wide area. The resulting bloom was the biggest in 12 years of records, covering 1.5-2 million square kilometres of ocean. "We'd never seen anything like that," says Hamme.
Others are very skeptical that this is a very plausible explanation. All interesting, nonetheless.

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