ArtUp: Artificial upwelling

Artificial upwelling (ArtUp) is adopting a natural process: The transport of nutrient-rich deep waters to the ocean’s sunlit surafce layer. Regions with strong natural upwelling are highly productive, such as the Humbold Upwelling System off Peru and Chile, inhabiting the biggest single species fishery in the world.

ArtUp is taking this mechanism into less productive regions of the ocean, to pump and mix nutrient rich deep water into the surface layer. In theory, this may lead to a shift from a prior complex, multilevel pelagic food web to a simpler one, leading to increased and more efficient energy transfer towards higher trophic levels and thus potentially higher fisheries yield. On the other hand it may lead to an enhanced storage of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the ocean: with increasing primary production, more particulate organic material may sink and be sequestered for centuries once it reaches the deep ocean.

The concept of artificial upwelling is not tested yet in the field, but model simulations, natural analogues such as the Humboldt Current System as well as KOSMOS mesocosm studies have already targeted this approach in the last years.