Maker

TO THE ORES: Russ George (in Hawaiian shirt) looks over the mixing barrel as his team deploys iron oxide in the North Pacific, in 2002.

Plankton Evangelist

The eccentric saga of Russ George. By Charles Platt

Back in 2002, eco-maverick Russ George grow, they absorb about 100,000 atoms of carbon buttonholed veteran rock star Neil Young for every atom of iron they consume. Do the math, and asked an unusual favor. George was and you find that just 1 ton of iron could fix 367,000 living part-time on a sailboat on a dock in the San tons of CO . Here, then, was a bargain-basement 2 Francisco Bay Area, and had learned that Young’s plan for carbon sequestration. George’s ultimate 90-year-old Baltic schooner was moored just four goal was nothing less than to reverse the green-slips away. With the in-your-face enthusiasm that house effect. is his trademark, George brazenly asked to hitch Young didn’t say yes but he didn’t say no. The next a ride on Young’s boat so that he could perform an day, however, George received a visit from the captain experiment to revitalize the ocean. of Young’s vessel, who told him that he could simply The idea was simple enough: scatter some finely borrow the boat and crew for a month and a half. powdered hematite, or red iron oxide, which phyto- Initially George had a bit of trouble rounding up plankton require as a kind of catalyst when they some affordable hematite dust. He needed particles grow. Phytoplankton are the tiniest sea plants, at the about 0.5 micron in diameter, to minimize their sink bottom of the oceanic food chain. Krill eat them, and rate and keep them suspended in the upper layer fish eat krill, and penguins and polar bears eat fish. of the ocean where phytoplankton live. A mineral

George liked the idea of sustaining ocean wildlife, processing company offered to custom-mill some but this wasn’t his only motive. When phytoplankton iron ore for $10,000 a ton, but when he pleaded

Photograph by Tim Smith

32 Make: Volume 18