In 2012, an American entrepreneur, who has at times been described as eccentric, named Russ George,

dumped 120 metric tons of iron sulfate dust into the ocean off the western coast of Canada.

This wasn't intended to be an act of destruction, nor was it an instance of dumping junk into

the ocean to avoid paying to have it recycled or relegated to a scrap heap somewhere.

George had earlier approached the indigenous residence of an archipelago, the Haida, the archipelago called the Haida Gwai,

about a problem they were having with their local salmon populations.

He told them that he could help them out with that if they could fund his effort to do so.

And a company called the Haida Salmon Restoration Corporation was set up to funnel a few million

dollars into the proposed project.

The project itself involved mixing the aforementioned iron dust with seawater,

and then releasing that seawater mixture into the ocean, about 200 nautical miles west of the

Haida Gwai, which itself is about 45 to 60 kilometers, which is about 30 to 40 miles, off the northern Pacific coast of Canada.

So if you're looking at a map, it's a decent-sized chunk of land, a ways up the coast from

Vancouver Island.

The goal was to artificially stimulate the creation of what's called a phytoplankton bloom

via a technique called ocean fertilization. A phytoplankton bloom via a technique called ocean fertilization.

A phytoplankton bloom is sometimes considered to be desirable because it's thought that the

plankton can gobble up CO2 from the atmosphere at the surface and then pull that CO2 down to the bottom of the ocean when they

die, locking it into place for potentially a very long time. This, it was posited, would also

help the Haida with their salmon problem, as the fish populations would have more plankton

to eat, and thus would increase in number.

For his part, George expected to be able to sell carbon drawdown credits on the carbon credit

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