Mark E. Capron

Hypothesis: Electrification of metal strips and mesh will (1) increase the density of oyster spat settlement and (2) increase the rate of oyster growth, compared to non-electrified. Experimental Arrangement: Three OysterCatcher (OC) tables were initially placed, on May 23, 2024, interlocking, in an intertidal area, such that the bottoms were dry a...

OceanForesters presented this poster on September 18, 2024 to the CIE Ocean Innovation Conference, organized by the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, North Carolina. The poster provides an overview of OceanForesters work in Marine Permaculture Ecosystem Services, including pictures of North Carolina oysters having grown ~50% larger and f...

SanctuaryReef Electrobiology will improve shellfish production and free-range mariculture while restoring ocean health and biodiversity with carbon dioxide and acidification removal.

Improved shellfish production with carbon dioxide and acidification removal using SanctuaryReef, marine electrobiology, marine CDR, shellfish and free-range mariculture. Gentle electrolysis can assist marine ecosystems (fisheries and protected areas) in surviving warming and acidification. Without this support, species may die or migrate. With ele...

This poster presented at the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program Conference in La Jolla, California on January 5, 2023, provides an overview of the OceanForesters approach using low voltage electrolysis to profitably increase shellfish (and other marine animals) production, while producing "SanctuaryReefs" for coastal and ecosystem protection. It also...

OceanForesters propose an update of in-ocean electrolysis, like that operated as “Biorock” for decades. The update produces two primary products: (1) CDR in the form of mostly Mg(OH)2 and (2) improved marine ecosystem health even with climate change impacts. The Mg(OH)2 sequesters CO2 by raising ocean pH to accept more dissolved CO2 and/or converti...

OceanForesters propose an update of in-ocean electrolysis, like that operated as “Biorock”1 for decades. The update produces two primary products: (1) CDR in the form of mostly Mg(OH)2 and (2) improved marine ecosystem health even with climate change impacts. The Mg(OH)2 sequesters CO2 by raising ocean pH to accept more dissolved CO2 and/or convert...

Coastal communities need integrated adaptations and mitigations to deal with declining fish catches and ocean health (represented by loss of biodiversity and biomass), sea level rise and increasing storm intensity, ocean acidification and pollution, marine heat waves accompanied by lower levels of dissolved oxygen and faster sea life metabolism, co...

Aquatic Foods Ecosystems maximize production of seafoods while capturing and sequestering carbon at no cost – since food revenue more than pays for installation and operation. Our main capture and sequestration method is removing CO2 from the ocean and storing it as calcium carbonate in seashells. When we’re producing 500 million tonnes of seafood...

SEAFoods is a proposal to the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030). It will work with communities around the world to integrate ocean science with sustainable development and healthy oceans by constructing artificial reef ecosystems utilizing digital twin computer models to increase profitable production of aquatic foo...

Our team found interconnected opportunities with two approaches addressing human and climate issues. The two approaches update our 2012 proposal to grow more seaweed to simultaneously solve the problems of feeding the world, fueling the world, and reversing climate change. We discovered these approaches during our work on the U.S. Department of Ene...

How to sustainably and equitably reverse global warming by 2150 Energies journal publishes a comprehensive analysis of how to restore the world's climate to pre-industrial levels while supporting UN Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing the multiple crises of rising atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide rise, increasing global temperatures, an...

Unless humanity achieves United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and restores the relatively stable climate of pre-industrial CO 2 levels (as early as 2140), species extinctions, starvation, drought/floods, and violence will exacerbate mass migrations. This paper presents conceptual designs and techno-economic analyses to calcul...

This document provides additional supporting Information for the main publication, "Restoring pre-industrial CO2 levels while achieving Sustainable Development Goals" (https://doi.org/10.3390/en13184972). It lists abbreviations used in this supplementary document and in the main publication. It also contains 24 figures and 1 table in addition to th...

The AdjustaDepth TechnoEconomic Analysis was prepared by Mark E. Capron PE, Co-PI, under the direction of Kelly Lucas, PhD, PI and submitted April 3, 2019 to U.S. Department of Energy ARPA-E under Phase 1 Contract DE-AR0000916. Its 33 tabs present the cost and yield projections for growing Gracilaria tikvahiae in the Gulf of Mexico. It can be adapt...

Excel spreadsheet with calculations behind the tables of "Restoring pre-industrial CO2 levels while achieving Sustainable Development Goals." It also allows anyone to do "what if" calculations by entering their own values in place of the red values to develop their own scenarios about deploying mixtures of terrestrial and ocean-based biofuels to re...

A framework is presented with examples of technologies capable of achieving carbon neutrality while sequestering sufficient CO2 to ensure global temperature rise less than 1.5°C (after a small overshoot), then continuing to reduce CO2 levels to 300 ppm within a century. Two paths bracket the continuum of opportunities including dry, sustainable, te...

This supplement to to the preprint, "Restoring pre-industrial CO2 levels while achieving Sustainable Development Goals" by Capron et al. (doi/10.1002/essoar.10503397.1, June 2020) provides supporting details for the analyses presented in the preprint. The main supplement is a spreadsheet available at https://osf.io/ag53p (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/AG53P)...

This supplement provides additional background information for a paper entitled Restoring pre-industrial CO2 levels while achieving Sustainable Development Goals, which is currently undergoing peer review.

Open ocean flexible floating fishing reefs provide sustainable seafood of many varieties including finfish, shellfish, crusteacans, seaweed, and more.

AdjustaDepth Project was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy to design an artificial reef system for growing and harvesting seaweed for advanced sustainable biofuels. The team discovered that the system grows more seaweed per hectare when it is part of a complete ecosystem with shellfish, finfish, and...

The U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) funded our team to grow seaweed-for-biofuel inexpensively and sustainably. We also found a way to feed the world with shellfish and finfish grown on huge floating flexible reefs without using fishmeal and while simultaneously growing seaweed. I'm Kelly Lucas, Direct...

To meet carbon emissions targets, more than 30 countries have committed to boosting production of renewable resources from biological materials and convert them into products such as food, animal feed and bioenergy. In a post-fossil-fuel world, an increasing proportion of chemicals, plastics, textiles, fuels and electricity will have to come from b...

Secure Seafloor Container Storage (SSCS) is an alternative that could safely store trillions of tons of CO2. The paper presents a computational geophysical, chemical, and economic model of SSCS. Our research shows that appropriate undisturbed geosynthetics will prevent contact with seawater for millennia (<0.06% osmosis loss per millennium). CO2 hy...

Oceans, islands, and coastal areas are at least as threatened by humanity's rapidly increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations as the remaining 30% of Earth's surface. Yet most of the discussion for sequestering the dominant greenhouse gas, CO2, involves deep sub-earth geologic structures limited to relatively small areas in continental p...

Ocean Afforestation, more precisely Ocean Macroalgal Afforestation (OMA), has the potential to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations through expanding natural populations of macroalgae, which absorb carbon dioxide, then are harvested to produce biomethane and biocarbon dioxide via anaerobic digestion. The plant nutrients remaining after...

Climate Change is like the prisoner's dilemma, a zero-sum game, or cheating in sports. Everyone and every country is tempted to selfishly maintain or advance their standard of living. The tremendous difference between standards of living amplifies the desire to opt out of Climate Change solutions adverse to economic competitiveness. Climate Change...

Liquid carbon dioxide has been found as shallow as 1,500 meters in seafloor ooze. Did the liquid carbon dioxide originate from volcanic activity? Or did bacteria convert organic matter, which started as atmospheric carbon dioxide, into methane and liquid carbon dioxide? At typical ocean temperatures carbon dioxide coming out of solution below 600 m...

A system that takes advantage of the natural bacterial decomposition of biomass in the world's oceans and seas could not only produce biomethane to replace dwindling supplies of fossil fuels but also, by harnessing the absorptive powers of algae, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

In cooperation with the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the Ventura Regional Sanitation District (VRSD) designed a study to evaluate the effectiveness of the emerging Onsite Sanitary System (OSS) technology as a potential solution to septic tank inefficiencies. The study sought to evaluate the degree of contaminant removal from ty...