I'm not a biologist, so I'm curious to understand the implication of less oxygen in water. I can intuitively think that less life will survive, but what else happens? Is there a way to "inject" oxygen into the ocean?
One of my ponds has issues with low oxygen in the summer, the pond is too shallow and it can overheat when it's 95F and sunny out.
We lost quite a few fish last year (our first summer here). The pond also ends up with duckweed covering most of the surface - from what I've found duckweed does well in a low oxygen environment and does actually help to cool down and reoxygenate back into the water. When the duckweed overgrows, though, it blocks out too much light and can lead to an algae bloom that is really bad for the whole system.
I built a solar powered pond fountsin a month ago, it only runs for a few hours a day but seems to be helping quite a bit so far.
I raise this only to show how much can happen when a half acre pond is low on oxygen. On the scale of an ocean, I have to expect that it would take much more to get to that level of a problem, but if it did get there the cascading issues would have to be exponentially worse too.
I used a submersible pump rated for 6,900 GPH[1], no clue how accurste that rating is but it moves plenty of water.
I haven't had it long enough to say for sure that it's enough water flow for this size pond. Time will tell, but so far it does seem to have helped with duckweed we had a hot and dry couple of weeks.
I don't have a any links to the project or anything unfortunately. We don't use social media and haven't made the time to setup a website for our hobby farm.
Understood, and I appreciate. I've been ruminating on solutions to a very similar-sounding problem for a few summers, so your practical experience is helpful, thank you!
I started with Renogy's 400W kit, 1,000W inverter, and a deep cycle marine battery. That's actually the main reason I only run it for a few hours a day right now, I knew I was pushing the wattage limits of the panels.
I'll probably end up adding a couple more 100W panels, August will really let me know whether this can do enough work to keep the pond cooler and more oxygenated.
Hot water holds less oxygen then cold water. Oxygen, by itself, happily will go into solution with H2O if conditions are favorable. We can "inject" oxygen by slowing and reversing global warming.
