The SEA scientific research efforts are focused on natural process-driven global mechanisms for the megaton to gigaton removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  This carbon sequestration approach has many dimensions and we are carefully examining the plausibility of each one as we explore the underlying science.  The principal three greenhouse gases (GHG) in all ecosystems are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O).  Since carbon dioxide is the dominant GHG it is our main and only focus. 

It should be noted we are not dealing in any way with the sources or anthropogenic production of carbon dioxide.  The SEA research effort centers on the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and not its production. It is highly unlikely any meaningful solutions will be found based on slowing man's production of carbon dioxide.  Humanity is unlikely to significantly reduce its addiction to fossil fuels in this century.  Essentially at this point in our history, all efforts in this arena are simply too little and too late.  Our research program is solely concerned with removing carbon dioxide after it has been emitted into the atmosphere.

The SEA program is built upon oceanographic research in seawater chemistry at the air-sea interface and in surface and bottom water carbon sequestration mechanisms.  Central to our research effort is the global carbon cycle and the atmospheric chemistry of the lower troposphere.  This involves an in-depth examination of the biochemical reactions triggered in surface waters of the world's oceans from high to low latitudes with photosynthetic activity treated as a long-term driver.  Seabed sequestration of carbon in continental shelf areas, especially in the Arctic, is a focal point of these efforts.  Special emphasis has been placed on air-sea interaction and boundary layer transport.

Primary production is the generation of chemical energy in organic compounds by living organisms such as phytoplankton in seawater.  It is well established that primary production occurs mainly through photosynthesis and almost all life on Earth relies directly or indirectly on primary production.  Complex organic molecules are synthesized from the basic building blocks of aqueous or atmospheric carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight as the energy source.  Photosynthesis produces the oxygen we need to breath and consumes carbon dioxide, the problematic molecule in global climate change.  Photosynthesis is the major source for atmospheric oxygen and the major sink of atmospheric CO2 worldwide.  When atmospheric carbon dioxide is 'consumed' during photosynthesis it changes from a free-floating molecule to a 'fixed' state in an organic molecule.  This is what phytoplankton does.  These basic molecules are further synthesized into more complicated molecules such as complex carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids which form the basic building blocks of our planet's food chain.  Primary producers lie at the base of every food chain.  

​The major primary producers in the marine ecosystem are phytoplankton.  These are microscopic, single-celled, free-floating plants that are omnipresent in the world's oceans in staggering numbers.  They are the basic foundation of life in the world's oceans, and therefore, on our planet.  The predominate forms of phytoplankton include silica-encased diatoms, dinoflagellates, bacteria (cyanobacteria), chalk-coated/armor-plated coccolithophores, and a vast number of marine algae and marine vegetation such as macroalgae.  Ocean cyanobacteria play a huge, but still poorly understood, role in the carbon cycle as phytoplankton in the marine ecosystem.  Data show they could account for perhaps as much as 25% of all photosynthesis on Earth.  In terms of the global carbon cycle and climate change, phytoplankton are believed to contribute more than 50% of the world's carbon fixation.  Research has also indicated that phytoplankton may produce 80% of the organic material in the world.  Because of the sheer magnitude of the phytoplankton impact on atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide, much of Sea Earth Alliance's study efforts are focused on several lines of research in this key area.     

Diatoms alone, an especially important class of phytoplankton, account for as much as 60% of primary productivity in the marine ecosystem.  Many diatoms are so tiny that 30 can fit across the width of a human hair.  Most are far too small to see without magnification.  Their size, however, belies their importance to life on Earth.  Data suggests that diatoms account for some 20% of the total photosynthesis on Earth.  In addition, current estimates indicate that these marine primary producers may account for as much as 71% of all carbon storage.  These numbers are dramatically impactful on the global carbon cycle.  Diatoms are known to be one of the key organisms removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere.  Because of the weight of the diatom shells, they typically sink to watery graves on the seafloor, effectively taking a significant fraction of carbon out of the surface waters and locking it into seabed sediments in many cases.  Accelerated, biospheric uptake of carbon dioxide by marine primary producers may offer a plausible pathway to major reductions in atmospheric carbon dioxide.    We view the acceleration of this pathway as a potential major global avenue leading to carbon dioxide mitigation and subsequent reduction of this greenhouse gas in the troposphere.  This approach is an example of one of the current avenues of research for the Sea Earth Alliance.

On a global scale we suspect the world's atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is capable of being significantly reduced to much lower levels.  This may be feasible through detailed examination of the oceanic component of the carbon cycle together with the biochemical pathways necessary to accelerate biologic uptake of carbon dioxide at the air-sea interface.  Our preliminary model calculations indicate there is a significant probability carbon dioxide concentrations can be lowered from the current 400 to 410 ppm range in less than ten years, and this accomplished with only a modest cut-back in anthropogenically generated carbon dioxide.  This human-generated component of greenhouse gas is the main reason we are experiencing the slow-motion catastrophe we know as Global Climate Change.  
   
We are currently in the middle of Phase Two of our Five-Phase research effort.  The focus on diatoms, as described above, is one example of our research direction in this program.  The SEA team is conducting an in-depth focus on the carbon cycle with a close examination of the sub-surface and atmospheric chemistry of carbon dioxide of several mechanisms and transport pathways.  Particular emphasis has been on air-sea CO2 exchange.  An examination is being made of long-term carbon sequestration on the ocean floor as a result of photosynthetic activity by marine primary producers such as diatoms and dinoflagellates.  Phytoplankton are responsible for most of the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean.  At present this biological carbon pump is believed to transfer about 10 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere to the ocean floor each year.  Our studies are showing that this number could easily be an order of magnitude or more higher per year.   

The SEA research program is operating in an area of scientific controversy.  If one or more of the oceanic carbon sequestration solutions were to be implemented, the impacts that might occur worldwide would be impossible to predict.  If the results from our research show there is a feasible oceanic pathway to sequester carbon at the gigaton level per year, or significantly higher, the question then looms: 'What are the consequences to ecosystems worldwide?'  At our current state of knowledge it is simply impossible to accurately predict the full impact to the planet. 

Clearly the SEA research program is a geoengineering effort to mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide.  The argument is often made that this would be a kind of giant experiment with our future.  This is true.  But the stark reality remains there really is very little choice for mankind as the Earth's atmosphere continues heating at an accelerating rate.  The argument is often put forward that humanity should not be tinkering with the climate at all.  Human-caused climate change, of course, already is a giant geochemical experiment that has a very real run-away global greenhouse dimension.  Mankind has already been tinkering with the planet in a big way since the industrial revolution began in the mid-1800s.  

Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system that maintains the conditions for life on the planet.  We see the Earth as just such a system.  We realize this self-regulating complex system has already been turned upside-down by man's unintentional massive release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the last 100+ years.  Tinkering with an aspect of Earth's interconnected web has already happened.  Our approach is to act and to accept that some unintended consequences will occur, but that they are worth facing, measuring, understanding, mitigating and managing.  The SEA climate change solutions will have a global impact but the programs can be launched with the approach of taking baby-steps and learning before we run.  A small-scale application of carbon dioxide mitigation solutions can serve as a test and learning platform.  This could be followed up by a global approach incorporating the lessons learned.

The solutions that flow from the SEA research efforts could be broken down into two distinctive pathways.  The first involves conducting selective solution applications right now to gain an understanding of planet impacts.  This is a small-scale carbon dioxide mitigation program.  This research effort would be taken before there are worldwide, climate change induced, catastrophic events that cause massive loss of life and suffering.  When these do occur and become so severe as to jeopardize human survival then a second, truly global approach, could be considered.  This second pathway would involve a radical, whole earth, application of natural-process-driven solutions that had already been tested on a small scale.  The SEA climate change solution(s) we are exploring right now, when applied at this point, would very likely alter significantly the doomsday picture of a run-away-greenhouse-heating of the Earth's atmosphere.  As these words are being written in 2018, the Sea Earth Alliance is rigorously applying science and technology to develop these global options.  With extinction a very real possibility, these carbon dioxide mitigation options could be viewed, using an old football analogy, as a kind of late-in-the-game 'Hail Mary' for mankind.     

SUMMARY:  Sea Earth Alliance is working toward the discovery and verification of atmosphere-ocean mechanisms that provide a path-forward for our planet to systematically slow and reverse the build-up of the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the troposphere within the next ten years.  We believe it is possible to slow and reverse the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the near future.  All of our efforts are centered on exploring one or more possible ways to sequester carbon in the Earth's oceans.  With the global cooperation of first world countries, through the United Nations, one or more key carbon sequestration processes in select continental shelf areas could be jump-started and accelerated to actually prevent a run-away greenhouse effect from taking further hold on our planet.  
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