​Gaia could be humming a tune called “We’ve been here before, folks!”  She could be crying tears of frustration, but probably not.  After all, this planet has been around for some time, during which climatic shifts have happened.  One event, which we humans refer to as the Great Permian extinction event, saw 94% of species die out.  That one occurred over the course of 300,000 years, though.  Plenty of time for the species in question to have prepped for their demise.  Not so right now.

​During the Great Permian Extinction Event, the planet’s temperature increased by 10 degrees centigrade.  Even that doesn’t sound like an unbearable number, until you add it up.  Take a not-untypical summer day, where the thermostat reads 39C / 102F.  Simple addition puts you at 49C /120F. Even prodigious zucchini won’t come through that heat.  

Coral doesn’t either.  It dies off at around 101F.  Only the most resilient species passes such a temperature swing off as “just another heat wave.”  We humans are versatile and resilient.  We live on every continent.  We might as well be the ubiquitous cockroach, for our adaptability.  A government trapper I met once predicted that at the end of this current extinction event there would be three critters interfacing on some bald knob…cockroaches, coyotes, and human beings.  If there’s a fourth, I vote for zucchini!

Humans try to control bio-slime.  Hammering it with toxic chemicals is a preferred approach.  And sure, the poison kills it.  But then it settles onto the bottom of the waterway, providing feedstock for methanogens, that generate methane.  This is perfect, for the cyanobacteria.  It cycles into more climate warming, as methane is 81 times more effective than regular carbon dioxide.  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Here’s an interesting tidbit.  If the waterway being treated doesn’t have quite enough copper in its diet, instead of producing methane, such systems instead generate nitrous oxide.  Laughing gas, which dwarfs methane’s impact in terms of climate change.  Think 300 times more impactful than carbon dioxide.

So here’s the good news…we know how to steward water gracefully.  We actually have lots of examples of such stewardship.  And no, it doesn’t include toxic chemical treatment.  

​Fresh water will be the first habitat to succumb to poor stewardship.  It is essentially the transition habitat between terrestrial and marine life.  The bad news is that it is extremely vulnerable to degradation.  The good news is that it responds to graceful stewardship quickly.

Even though fresh water only covers 6% of Gaia’s surface, it is a marker for how we humans are doing.  If it is healthy, so are we.  If instead it’s been allowed to degrade into nothing other than a methane factory, it will presage our demise.

The incidence of reported HABs in 2016 (left) and in 2021 (right) - ​(CyanoMap).

​Today methane accounts for 13% of greenhouse gas impact.  As the algae maps indicate, we’d best get on the stick!  

Email me or call me if you are ready to act.

​is happening now.  Earth’s atmospheric temperature has increased by 1.5C, primarily over the last 40 years.  This number is increasing, despite commitments from many nations to achieve their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to Greenhouse Gas reduction.  Today’s increase is primarily led by carbon dioxide.  Our modeling suggests that biogenic methane will replace carbon dioxide as the primary agent of climate change within several decades.

​result from the combination of slight temperature change and nutrient loading that results in nutrient impaired water.  Easily 80% of water contaminating nutrients are attributable to modern agriculture, but expanded human density contributes to nutrient impairment of water as well.  Today in the U.S. more than half of all fresh water is nutrient impaired, compared to 15% in 1972, when the first version of our Clean Water Act was passed.  The act did not address nutrient contamination of water, and today there are still no federal regulatory standards in place to limit agriculture’s massive contribution of nutrients into our watersheds.  In fact, the recent Trump administration dismantled Total Maximum Daily Load limits that had been slated to finally kick in and limit nutrient loading on a watershed basis.  

​results from the ultimate biodigestion of algae and other forms of annual aquatic vegetation.  Today nutrient impaired water generates more methane than any other source, half again more than from Oil and Gas.  It’s a little known fact that government controls most of these emissions.  In the U.S., the Army Corp. of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation are the two largest emitters of methane.  On a positive note, the current administration’s EPA has initiated partial methane monitoring of reservoirs.  

​specifically biogenic methane,  occurs in sludge residue primarily from biodigestion of dead plant and algae residue.  Other organic material, like dead fish that result from deoxygenated water, further contribute to sludge buildup.  Anaerobic (without oxygen) methanogens subsist in sludge and generate methane instead of carbon dioxide which occurs in healthy aerobic waterways.  Healthy waterways sustain a lid of aerobic (with oxygen) methanotrophs that consume methane.  They represent a methane cap, and can reduce this form of biogenic methane emission by 80%.  

​may not be inevitable but is very likely unless immediate action occurs on a planetary basis.  It is clear that greenhouse gas must be mitigated wherever possible.  At the same time it is abundantly clear that mitigation of biogenic methane associated with nutrient impaired water, which results in an 8-fold increase in methane compared to healthy water, is an extremely effective  form of climate action that is available today.  By oxygenating benthic (bottom) zones of nutrient impaired water, methanotrophs that consume methane can be sustained in the top layers of sludge.  Two such oxygenation technologies are currently in the marketplace, and two additional benthic oxygenation systems are currently at testing stage.  Combined with new methane credit allowances provided in the recent Inflation Reduction Act, this critically important form of climate action is poised to advance.

​is likely if we even approach the 10C increase that occurred during the Permian event.  But other factors, like the rise of extreme politics associated with climate change pressures could readily trigger other factors, like nuclear war.  As climate activist Al Gore noted recently, the current 1.5oC change has resulted in some three million climate refugees, and corresponding, related political extremism is linked to this.  

​1.   Recent credible science journal papers have tracked lower methane emissions from thawing tundra than modeling suggested.  As frozen tundra thaws, so do latent methanotrophs.  Their consumption of methane locked previously locked in ice reduces methane volume by a sizable fraction, approaching the 80% number that oxygenation of benthic water targets.

2.   Nutrient impaired water transitions into extremely productive water when exposed to sufficient surface area and circulation/oxygenation.  A classic long term study in Houghton Lake, Michigan, and another in Shepherd, Montana associated with Fish Fry Lake, at Floating Island International’s headquarters, demonstrate this phenomenon.  Excess nutrients can be cycled into appropriate biota, while related biogenic methane can be mitigated or digested as aerobic methanotrophs are nurtured via optimal stewardship.  We are learning how to do this, and must now apply it to the vast inventory of nutrient impaired water across our planet.

3.  The great majority of nations are supporting Ukraine as it battles the insane ambitions of Putin, a despot, at best.  This is a political manifestation of unity that signals a potential for Earth to direct similar unity around climate action.  Note that India and China have sided with Putin, at least superficially.  This suggests that while a large fraction of humans are not fully cognizant of the dire implications associated with unity around climate action, many of us are.  India and China make up a huge fraction of human population however.  China controls more nutrient impaired reservoirs and paddy fields than any other nation, and India is famous for organic nutrient loading of water.  Consider that even human bodies are fed into waterways in India.  The vast preponderance of nation states however do recognize that unified purpose and action is our only option.

4.  Recent elections in Australia, Brazil and the U.S. are optimistic signals that extreme politicians fail in relatively short order.  But note that Donald Trump’s administration was able to set back Total Maximum Daily Load nutrient standards during the four years of his presidency.  Lay people must be appraised of the relationship between their votes and climate sustenance, and despite both disinformation and misinformation, accurate knowledge and awareness around empirical science tends to prevail.

5.  Movement and action by academia and youth is also hopeful.  I learned that Greta Thunberg was arrested recently at a coal mine protest in Germany.  At the same time, I note slow but progressive emergence of awareness associated with biogenic methane from nutrient impaired water at climate action labs at Yale, Berkeley and Stanford.  Individual researchers at Waterloo University in Toronto, at Yale and Montana State University’s Center for Biofilm Research and dozens of other research institutions around the world are now regularly publishing around this critical form of greenhouse gas.  It’s clear that while science is ahead of policy makers relative to biogenic methane, policy makers will eventually respond.

6.  The luxury of time.  Maybe.  We should have several decades to figure things out.  

7.  Innovation.  Today we can prevent a very high fraction of biogenic methane by oxygenating benthic water.  If new, very efficient benthic oxygenation technologies can be successfully commercialized this primary source of greenhouse gas can be mitigated cost effectively, especially in concert with the realistic methane prevention credits currently in place.

​As CEO of Floating Island International, where one of the benthic oxygenation technologies I reference is being tested, I know that active initiatives around methane monitoring and mitigation are underway and developing.  Demonstration projects are being quoted as I write this.  The commercial sector and a client base of everything from municipalities with nutrient impaired lakes within their jurisdiction, or wastewater lagoons that service ski hills, all are slowly recognizing that chemical treatment is not a viable option.  Chemical-free solutions around biogenic methane mitigation are developing into a new and large emerging industry.

Scientists haven’t proven “why”, but here are my explanations that I’d like you to consider.

Earth is resilient and so vast that it truly is hard to believe that mere mortals can have any real impact.  But when our population just keeps on keeping on, and surging to some 8 billion souls now, the following sources of methane, which is some 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide, could explain why our atmosphere’s temperature has increased so quickly, at least in planetary terms.  We are now up 1.2 centigrade, over about thirty years.  In human terms that’s a slow increase.  In planetary terms it might as well be instantaneous.

​Back when the Great Extinction event occurred 252 million years ago, Earth’s atmosphere increased some 10oC, but over a 300,000-year period.  Was it 30,000 years per degree?  Not likely, but that’s the stuff of precise carbon dating.  The key takeaway is that more than two thirds of species went away, became extinct during that short period, in terms of planetary timeline.  We are getting a taste of the impact that just a one-degree shift can make, what with the dramatic weather and extinction events going on.  

Here’s an incomplete list of methane that’s generated biologically…called biogenic methane.  Note that the science around biogenic methane is incomplete.  In my opinion, war criminals like Putin are likely to cause far more death than simple “engines of war” because he, and his admirers, are distracting us from the science needed to respond with effective climate action.  

1.  As Earth’s temperature bumps up, biologically generated methane (biogenic) trapped under frozen tundra is released.  The volume is vast, but there is a mitigating factor:  as the tundra warms up methanotrophs that consume methane also wake up.  So the net effect is that about 82% of this inventoried methane is consumed, and released as simple carbon dioxide.  Thank you, lord, for methanotrophs!  In any case however, this source of methane could account for an important fraction of the current surge.

2.  Bovines and such eat and belch methane.  Hard to measure this one, but it’s a factor of some concern.  I don’t get too excited about it though.  Bovine populations haven’t expanded at the rate of the current increase, so this source probably does not account for the surge.

3.  Landfill sites generate high localized volumes of biogenic methane.  It’s not likely that this source can account for the recent surge in volume however, as it relates to population growth associated with humans and CAFOs. While populations continue to grow, they have not done so anywhere near the rate of the current surge.

4.  Watersheds cycle nutrients through them.  These nutrients grow biota.  Based on this nutrient availability, today’s incidence of bio slime, think harmful algae bloom, has increased exponentially over the last several decades.  When this organic material is consumed oxygen is used up.  Under anaerobic conditions (without oxygen), methanogens generate methane.  This is the same process that resulted in the Great Extinction event of 252 million years ago.  I believe this is the primary reason biogenic methane concentrations in our atmosphere are surging.

Fresh water only represents about six percent of the Earth’s surface.  But it’s where nutrients concentrate, along the bottom of watersheds.  Scientists refer to this phenomenon as “wetland” derived biogenic methane, but in fact, every fresh water body, ponds, lakes, and reservoirs, are in the mix.  They all can slip into anaerobic status and generate methane.  Combined with fertilizers, these waterways are methane factories.  Adding nutrients over and above fertilizers, think of the nutrients in waste water, storm water, and even fish food in the form of processed pellets, and you have a perfect storm of nutrients with which to burn through available oxygen.

Are we poised to deal with a ten-degree centigrade average increase in temperature?  After seeing what happens with a 1.2oC increase, I know that I’m not ready.  But I also know that we can respond and counteract the de-oxygenation cycle in nutrient impacted fresh water.  

I believe that it is still early stage, in terms of Earth’s ability to fix the problem.  Of course, Earth doesn’t see this as a problem…it just keeps on keeping on.  But we mere mortals should take note, and respond.  Russians should get their act together and deal with their bizarre leadership crisis.  Politicians here in the west that aren’t climate aware should be dis-rewarded.  The stakes are outrageously high. 

​The symptoms that afflicted my dog also prevented any medications from working.  He was not able to hold down food so he was “fed” intravenously.  He would regurgitate everything, meds included, and this went on for eight days.  The “barf” would contaminate and re-contaminate his lungs.  He developed pneumonia, which kept getting worse, which reduced his ability to breathe. I chose to euthanize him, rather than prolong the ongoing and apparently hopeless continuation of his suffering in the hope that, young as he was, he’d somehow pull through.  
 
The dog’s name was Reacher, after the fictional character Jack.  For a Brittany, he was big and bold.  
 
I remember thinking when he was a pup: this dog won’t survive a year!  He was simply too full of life and verve.  He would be sitting next to me in the four-wheeler one second, then plummeting out to investigate something, maybe a smell.  But the four-wheeler was tooling along at 20 mph.  So the dog would tumble and bounce for forty feet.  From then on he rode on the floor which helped, but I still wondered how my willful dog would survive?  
 
Like most dogs, Reacher wasn’t hung up on dignity.  My wife Anne is a beautiful singer, and when she’d do a rendition of that classic folk song, Shenandoah, Reacher would cut loose almost immediately with his own rendition.   And lo and behold, when yours truly would attempt the same, Reacher also joined in enthusiastically!  My voice is particularly “flat”, but I make up for it in volume.  Didn’t matter to Reacher!  He’d wake up the neighboring expansive cattle ranch as he joined in!

Speaking of dignity, Reacher had this perfect body, muscled to smooth perfection, and like a cat, his balance was striking.  He’d come fishing with me in the canoe, and literally hop from the bottom of the canoe to the top of the prow, the gunwale, and sit there perfectly balanced like the prow of the good ship Pinafore.  He posed a striking figure doing that until he fell off!
 
Reacher was a lover.  He’d effortlessly bounce up onto our sofa and nestle into my lap, or Anne’s.  Especially so if he was wet from a recent swim!
 
The disease Reacher contracted is sometimes associated with dirt. Why would this be? Are we talking about farm ground contaminated with past chemical insults?  Think of the chemicals that farmers commonly employ as they struggle to grow disease-free sugar beets, for example.  When I purchased our property twenty years ago (a former sugar beet farm), there were signs along both sides of the road that read, “Danger, do not enter this treated field”.  Well, willful Reacher would chew a retrieval dummy in the unplanted dirt alongside our back porch.  Not much doubt he ingested some of that dirt in the process.
 
Or, being an avid swimmer, maybe he lapped up toxins associated with harmful algae blooms (HABs). What with our on-off testing of new oxygenation technologies, the late summer months saw a bloom unlike any we’ve seen in the last fifteen years.  The symptoms of dysautonomia and toxic algae blooms have many similarities.
 
As I think about the last eight days, I’m trying to make sense of the big picture, otherwise my anger is flat-out overwhelming!  The egocentric actions of individuals like Vladimir Putin, and his public admirer, Donald Trump, are resulting in billions, maybe trillions, of dollars squandered that could be spent on advancing science, combating climate change, and finding cures for disease!  
 
The life of a dog runs parallel with the hope of humanity.  We are all in this together.  
 
 ​

​Just a few years ago, no one on the Floating Island International (FII) research and development team was focused on methane.  Instead, we were all oriented around prevention and mitigation of harmful algae blooms and associated freshwater nutrient impairment issues.  The team was unaware of the volume of methane that nutrient impaired water emits.  Since then, science rolls on, and strong science has resulted in a growing awareness.  What we have learned is critical to human effort to prevent a disastrous level of climate change.   

​We now understand and are responding to an incredible problem.  We are prepping with BioHaven technology and experience to address the fact that the single greatest climate change factor is in front of us.  The BioHaven network has a unique opportunity to play a dramatically outsized role in effective climate action.  Here’s why:

1.  Methane is the climate change leverage point.  And methane that is generated biologically, instead of over eons per oil and gas derived methane, has been growing exponentially.  This means that while Oil and Gas can certainly clean up their act, the half again greater issue is with current biologic sources of methane.  And “no”, this is not about “cow” burps.  It is about nutrient impaired water, and I don’t mean “wetlands.”  I mean more than half of all freshwater around the world.  It is nutrient loaded, and causes biogenic methane at levels half again greater than all of Oil and Gas methane emissions.

2.  When organics occur outside of natural concentrations in fresh water, oxygen is consumed at levels outside of nature’s model.  But nature doesn’t stop there.  Nature has developed life forms that operate without oxygen.  These life forms generate methane instead of carbon dioxide.  

3.  Earth is dynamic, and this phenomenon has happened before.  It inspired a mass extinction event some 252 million years ago, when it caused global temperature to increase by at least 10 degrees C over a couple hundred of thousand years.  Note, the disruptive climate issues happening right now, like Sacramento seeing 116 degrees a few days ago, in September, are based on slightly over 1 degree C increase in our temperature.  We humans and our myriad impacts, including deforestation, direct atmospheric carbon injection, and nutrient loading into fresh water, exemplify this.  At our present rate, we will hit that unlivable 10 degree C increase in a few hundred years.  Not hundreds of thousands, but mere hundreds.  

How will you survive?  Do you have children?  How will they get through this?

Bottom line, this phenomenon can be moderated.  It will take more than theatrics however.  The Elon Musk’s of the world, and the cadre of humans that control significant wealth, will have to act meaningfully.  And soon.  Private wealth must be paired with governmental funding at unprecedented levels, and the money must be spent effectively and strategically.

Here’s a hopeful note…biogenic methane can be prevented.  Nutrient impaired water stewardship is not particularly problematic to prevent.  It does require thoughtful design however, and this is remarkably absent in many an environmental service provider’s repertoire.  For now, inertia is the dire enemy.  Status quo is the standard that must be faced, and changed.  Short-sightedness, apathy, avoidance and other forms of stupidity will get all of us killed.  We must act aggressively and effectively, and we must do so “now”.

Anaerobic fresh water is on the rise.  Anaerobic water generates methane.  But it can be made aerobic.  In the process, water can be a wonderful life affirming asset.  It can grow healthy, air breathing biota that contributes to planetary beneficence.  If left unaddressed, it will grow methane.  Get used to the idea that you will be called upon to figure out how to live at 125 degrees F.  And know that it may be too late.  Even if we act now, the following decades may be unlivable for conventional human existence.  Imagine living in holes in the ground, just to escape surface temperatures?

Here’s what the United States, Canada and Mexico can do immediately to take an initial bite out of the single largest source of methane:

1.  Quantify current methane emissions from all lakes and reservoirs that contain over 50 acre feet of water.  Environmental Service Providers are currently being armed with the protocol to do this.  The effort must be expanded exponentially, and quickly.

2.  The largest sources of this form of methane are controlled by government, mainly the US Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation.  Essentially, government environmental stewardship is currently in failure mode, and must shift into effective treatment mode quickly.  

3.  Politicians that impede this process are both, dangerously ignorant and impediments to human survival.  Every tax payer must hold every politician to this standard…”are you working to sustain human life, or not.”  The democratic processes we currently practice will not survive when temperature’s hit unlivable levels.  

There are companies currently oxygenating nutrient impaired water.  They are happening, but need to expand exponentially.  Support them.    Contact me directly if you are in position to support advancement in this arena.  

Time is short.  Act now.  I am reachable.

bruce.kania@floatingislandinternational.com        1-406-373-5200

In April of 2021 a key study emerged out of Yale, titled Half of Global Methane Emissions Come from Highly Variable Aquatic Ecosystem Sources.  Note that this is a “compendium” study, that pulls lots of previous science together.  One of the authors, Dr. Judith Rosentreter, expanded on this with an easy to read article titled Half of Global Methane Emissions Come from Aquatic Ecosystems – Much of This Is Human-Made.  Both publications package up the latest information on biogenic methane, the single largest source of methane on this planet.  Do you recall Biden’s comment in advance of the  COP 26 gathering in Scotland last fall?  He said something like “methane is the low hanging greenhouse gas.  We need to focus on it if we are in fact going to succeed in our efforts to mitigate climate change.”

Methane is the leading edge of climate action.  And it does not hinge on oil and gas.  Instead, we are in a “fix or fail” mode based on agriculture and fresh water stewardship.  Agriculture is the key.  Let me say this differently:  methane has a minimum of twenty-five times more impact per unit than carbon dioxide, and the largest single emitter of methane in North America is the U.S. government as it manages agricultural nutrient loading, think “fertilizer”, which accumulates in government controlled freshwater reservoirs.  Ironically, this positions the Biden administration to actually succeed with highly effective climate action.  Just the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) alone controls 338 reservoirs here in the western U.S., most of which are nutrient impaired and currently generating massive volumes of biogenic methane.  The U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers controls 40% of reservoir water here in the west…even more than the BOR.  Between the two, and their already written in stone, bipartisan mission statements, one controlled by the U.S. Army, the other by the Dept. of the Interior, the U.S. is able to act immediately.  The U.S. government doesn’t have to wait for the mid terms.  It doesn’t have to wait for the legislative arm of government, because the rules of engagement are already in place.  The “mission statements", and corresponding budgets for these government agencies are already in place, and funded.  Just what is holding U.S. climate action back?  

The following is a brief outline that answers this question.

Here’s the bare bones science behind biogenic methane:  

1.  Ever since the Haber/Bosch process was developed to generate commercial volume of nitrogen fertilizer in the early 20th century, (pre world war two) which then led to phosphorus exploitation as the new world of synthetic fertilizer drove agricultural hyper production, resulting nutrient concentrations have built up in watersheds, especially across the developed world.  The fertilizer is grossly over employed by soil scientists who are not conversant with nature’s methods, as defined by the Redfield ratio.   Instead of the ratio’s 16 to 1 rule, soil scientists combined with commercial motivation “recommend” ratios that are bizarre…like what you see in your farm supply store on a bag of fertilizer.  The 30-20 or even 30-30 ratios between nitrogen and phosphorus, are dramatically outside of nature’s model.  The excess nutrients, especially phosphorus, are now concentrated at the bottom of our watersheds.  Think reservoirs and other large bodies of water, like lake Erie or the Chesapeake or the Gulf of Mexico.  This  results in what water managers see today…harmful algae blooms, massive monocultures of explosive volume of aquatic vegetation, fish kills and sick water, and biogenic methane.  We can’t see methane because its a gas. But we can measure it.

2.  This methane breaks down into Carbon 12.  Oil and gas based methane breaks down into Carbon 13.  The rate of increase of C12 has expanded and now dominates over C13 per the last fifteen years.  In short, agriculture is the leading generator of methane and the ratio between it’s methane generation and that of oil and gas is changing, expanding.   (Further reading: Colorado NOAA paper).

Be forewarned, the current scientific literature blends methane from nutrient impaired water into a single category…wetland based methane.  In fact, at least in North America, wetlands are almost a non-factor.  Here it’s fully about large water…reservoirs, large lakes and bays.  This is where the nutrients accumulate and biogenic methane ebbulates from the ubiquitous benthic sludge.  The methane is concentrated into “hotspots” in deep water settings.  When the water turns over, at least twice a year, huge surges of methane communicate into our atmosphere.

Floating Island International (FII) is advancing off-grid ability to target methane “hotspots”.  It’s exciting work.  Treatment is made achievable with the latest forms of oxygenation.  Biogenic methane can be treated off-grid with a blend of oxygenation and biological stewardship.  This massive source of methane is preventable, right now.

Think about it this way…a single, mid-size reservoir in Montana, a headwater reservoir near the very beginning of the concentrated nutrient surges associated with prime agricultural land in the U.S., generates more methane than entire natural gas fields, with associated “flare-offs”.  And the U.S. government is responsible for these reservoirs.  They control the reservoirs, and accordingly, they control the methane these reservoirs emit.  However, today, they are sitting on their hands. 

It’s ironic that the current democratic administration is responsible for the greatest emissions of methane.  One would think it will be hard to wave a stick at Oil and Gas, while being responsible for the bulk of the problem, and maintain a straight face? 

THE FIX

Because most biogenic methane is concentrated into “hotspots” in large, deep reservoirs and lakes, we have a focussed window of opportunity.  The carbon credit market, guided by the carbon registry, is in place.  I suspect that this combination of factors will result in incredible wealth for those with financial initiative.  This climate action play doesn’t require off-shore, emerging nation collaboration either.  The greatest volumes of methane occurs right here, because of those concentrated nutrients associated with conventional agriculture.  Developed nations, and their large water managers, are the tip of the spear.  They will set the pace around effective climate action.  I will say this again…developed nations are where effective and highly leveraged climate action will happen, or not.

Think Sole Source provider contracts…think independent third party efficacy verification, think all of this happening within existing budgets.  It really is this simple.  The largest single source of methane, biogenic or otherwise, is treatable today.  The carbon credit value of this treatment will pay for the treatment.  Yes, governments can earn carbon credits too.  So the fix will not mess with USACE or BOR’s budget.  In fact, fixing/preventing biogenic methane will be a revenue generator for both, at least if they are smart about their Sole Source provider contracts.

UNINTENDED CONSQUENCES

With today’s state of the art neutral buoyant oxygenation systems bottom zones (benthic) in deep water settings can be made aerobic…with breathable oxygen.  While this supports the microbes that eat methane, preventing it, it also means that the dead, unbreathable water is resurrected, restored, into oxygenated and productive food webs.  The volume of air breathing biota, think fish and everything else associated with healthy water, can happen.  

Here is an example to consider:  a reservoir on the border between Wyoming and Montana is deep, some 430 feet deep just in front of the dam.  Most of that depth is currently unlivable for fish.  Instead, today,  it ebulates methane.  Tomorrow that same water could sustain trout, walleye, and the full range of both, cold and warm water fish.  Move over to Chesapeake Bay, and consider that the oyster beds that used to be there in huge profusion are today prevented by lack of oxygen.  The oysters have to breathe in order to carry out their life model, and in the process filter pollution out of the bay.  

Now, with biogenic methane mitigation, they can.  The air breathing oysters can be sustained.  Even in the face of nutrient pollution.  This means clearer water, more air breathing biota, as in more fish, and a resurrected food web once again.

We could be talking about the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, or tens of thousands of reservoirs and lakes up watershed.  

I doubt the U.S. is prepared to fix the dysfunctional fertilizer issue by getting the nitrogen to phosphorus ratio back into nature’s model.  But with the economic driver that carbon credits represent, and just a bit of political leadership, we can fix/prevent biogenic methane.  This is not a complex dot connection exercise either.  A remarkable form of highly leveraged climate action is right here, right now.

WHO ARE THE LEADERS TO WATCH?

The viewscape is hazy, but my sense is that top tier bureaucrats, mid level or higher, in the federal government will be serious players is this development.  Admittedly, they are not renowned for “action.”  Therein lies the conundrum.  There will have to be a top down directive to motivate these leaders?  Could a Deb Holland make this happen?  I’m watching with great interest as this vital form of climate action occurs.

We will know that this form of climate action has gained serious “legs” when some of the big, international engineering firms associated with large infrastructure projects become involved.  In the meantime, smaller innovators are at work on the industry side.  This category includes Floating Island International.  Wish us luck!

 It happens that nutrient impaired freshwater is the single largest source of methane emissions occurring today…about 2.5 times more methane comes off eutrophic water than all of the methane released by the Oil and Gas industry, according to researchers at Yale University.  Yet methane emissions from nutrient-impaired water is not talked about within 99% of the environmental community today.  This lack of awareness is strangely mirrored in the storyline in “Don’t Look Up,” a recent Netflix movie.  Yet, I guess I’m hopeful.  Perhaps “Don’t Look Up” will change our behavior.  Perhaps we will look up, and we will look down, below the surface of water.  

I don’t for a moment suggest that this silence around nutrient impaired freshwater and its contribution to total methane emissions is a government conspiracy.  No, it’s because the scientific data are new.  The first research papers came out around 2015.  It will take time but there will be “ink” on the subject in today’s social media formats, eventually.

Last year saw a massive spill of nutrients from Florida’s phosphate mining region into the ocean off Florida’s west coast known as the Piney Point spill. The nutrients fed an algae bloom that resulted in high TSS (total suspended solids) and corresponding cloudy, turbid water, which in turn prevented sunlight from a huge expanse of eel grass, upon which the Florida manatee population feeds.  About 30% of the Florida manatee population is now dead.  They starved.  Across the United States in 2021 there were thousands of freshwater lakes and ponds that experienced algae blooms.  Beyond visual/aesthetic impairment, the blooms eventually died and sank to the bottom, becoming fodder for microbes that eat organics.  Then, as the blooms decompose, dissolved oxygen in the water is consumed.  When it’s gone, typically for about three months at a time, twice a year, in spring and fall, the resulting oxygen consumption engenders anaerobes, which include microbes that emit methane instead of carbon dioxide.  Bear in mind methane is 21 times more impactful relative to climate change than carbon dioxide.

Think of it this way, for perspective:  harmful algae blooms, as well as blooms of other annual forms of aquatic vegetation, ultimately die off.  When they do, ubiquitous microbes use up oxygen in the water.  Note that warm water cannot contain much oxygen…far less than cool or cold water.  The result…anaerobic (without oxygen) conditions that result in methane emissions instead of basic carbon dioxide.

For example, a reservoir in Montana, a headwater state where water quality should, theoretically, be impeccable, generates well over 10,000 tons of methane annually.  

This phenomenon is repeated thousands of times across North America, from Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba to Clear Lake, in California, to several hundred lakes in Minnesota, to Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, and numerous drinking water reservoirs along our continent’s east coast.  

This cycle is growing.  It’s expanding with climate change.  And it’s contributing to the climate change cycle at a ferocious rate.  Yet, it is a low hanging fruit in terms of climate action.  It is almost entirely preventable.

The hyper-irony here is that with basic stewardship, the nutrients that result in harmful algae blooms can be cycled into forage fish and other appropriate biota, which when combined with harvest can trigger incredible water productivity.  Eutrophic water can become Transition Water, a truly sustainable and worthy goal!

Here at Shepherd we have a research lake.  It’s only 55 acre feet of water - imagine 55 football fields one-foot deep - yet it is the most productive fishery in Montana, by far.  In one instance, ten kids, some of whom never fished before, caught 634 fish in four hours.  Fish of various age classes and weight, colorful, and healthy.

Fish Fry Lake is the research lake in question, and it lives up to its name.  It’s where we have learned how to grow fish instead of algae, or any other monoculture of plant life.  We simply steward the lake per nature’s model.  We employ biomimicry to fix the nutrient loading that otherwise results in methane.  Nature as model is the solution.  It’s not about chemicals.  It’s not about massive expense and overwhelming budgets.  It is about noticing how nature’s wetland effect can be leveraged, about how we can support and sometimes even enhance nature’s methods.  We design for the limiting variables required by nature to cycle nutrients and literally every other pollution parameter of concern into and through natural food webs.

Today we can purposively oxygenate the bottom of lakes.  This is where the methane will otherwise occur.  We can prevent the methane.  We can energize every lake’s food web, and cycle the nutrients that otherwise become harmful algae into beneficial life.  

What needs to happen to bring this about at scale?

1.  A revision of human perspective around harvest.  The conservation ethic we’ve assumed over the last generation needs to be refined.  When eutrophic (nutrient rich) water is involved, about half the time across lakes in North America, harvest of nutrients is required.  It’s fundamental.  Fish are the single best way to cycle nutrients out of water.  We must propagate and harvest fish, just like the kids who caught 634 fish over the space of four hours, we must purposively harvest biota from nutrient impaired water.   Catch and release is dysfunctional in eutrophic water, and will result in methane.

2.  Oxygenation of lakes.  Today a breakthrough technology referred to as “nanobubbles and micro bubbles” provides an ability to prevent anaerobic (without oxygen) status on the bottom of lakes.  We can now prevent methane.  Bear in mind that nutrient impaired water is the single largest source of methane occurring on the planet currently.  Think of the melting tundra.  Nutrient impaired water is essentially the same biologic phenomenon that generated the biogas inventoried under the frozen tundra, except the biogas from nutrient impaired water occurs over a far greater expanse than the arctic, and it’s occurring NOW!

3.  Agriculture must recreate itself.  Fertilizer is deadly.  Nature has modeled the appropriate nutrient ratio…106 carbon, 16 nitrogen, and 1 phosphorus molecule per living cell.  This is nature’s model…we call it the Redfield ratio.  And agriculture, particularly soil scientist and the people, the farmers, they advise,  must be reminded of this.  Hyper productivity is the lure that has caused agriculture to operate well outside of this ratio.  Our perspective must be revised.

4.  There’s just one more action item.  It will be the driver that actually impacts effective climate action.  We must attach a value to every ton of methane that is prevented.  If a ton of carbon dioxide prevention is worth a credit of $100, then a methane credit for prevention of a ton of methane should be valued at 21 times this $100/ton valuation. See EPA's methane pageelimnology.com/.  There must be independent third party verification, proof, and the data must be empiric.  ISO standards must be developed for methane prevention, and quickly.  With a serious financial motive, capitalism will respond.  And “YES”, the technology to do this in real time is at hand. 

It’s Do-Or-Die folks.  We don’t have time for silly theatrics.  Climate change is here, but we can mitigate it.  We truly can.  

There’s a Climate Change Policy development group in the White House. Let them know that time is wasting.  They must act now, on a truly bipartisan basis, with an actual methane credit.  Some 40% of Americans were directly impacted by climate disasters in 2021.  Think massive fires, tornados, harmful algae blooms.  Some 80% of us experienced abnormal heat waves last summer.  The reality is that today, many of us are “looking up” and methane is the low hanging fruit.  

What can you do right now? 

There are several things.  For example, copy this short post and share it on your social media.  

If you manage “water”, you can start tracking methane emissions.  Get in touch, and we will prep you with an actual monitoring system that tracks and verifies your waterway’s current emission status.  This sets the stage for your water to earn methane credits.  While we can’t predict exactly “when” methane credits will happen, we can state that they “MUST” happen, if the world truly is willing to keep climate change at bay.

Contact the White House’s Climate Policy office and tell them how important you believe it is, for the health of water and our atmosphere, to implement methane credits ASAP. https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

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Anyone experiencing sick water…think algae blooms, stench, dead fish, public warnings to keep pets away from water, no swimming signs, all of the above and more, these are the current methane emission waterways.  Thousands of lakes and ponds in the United States fall within this category.  And all of these settings now have a clear ability to prevent methane…and make serious dollars in the process.  It’s no longer a question of “how” to pay for a project.  Bottom line…connect with Floating Island International.  We will model your waterway and verify your current methane emissions status.  We will carry you through the confusion of data and help you verify your methane reduction.  We will help you justify methane credits and corresponding payment for fixing water.  For preventing methane.  For real climate action.  
 
The water quality projects you’ve deferred because they were too expensive can now be justified.  Let’s talk, now, and make this happen!
 
Read the attached article, and know that time is short.  Act now.  Floating Island International is ready.  We are prepped to help you do three things…model your water and confirm its current emission levels, fix your water, and get paid appropriately for doing so.  
 
These are truly interesting times!    Contact details…info@floatingislandinternational.com.
 
https://theconversation.com/half-of-global-methane-emissions-come-from-aquatic-ecosystems-much-of-this-is-human-made-156960#comment_2490966

Check out this paper by Dr. Judith Rosentreter (et al), a Yale researcher, where the authors argue that ~50% of methane emissions are coming from fresh water sources.  Compare it to an earlier study by Dr. Tonya DelSontro (et al.).   Note that nutrient-impaired fresh water is currently still “under” the radar of international and national policy managers.

Here’s the nuts and bolts of the issue:  any water currently experiencing harmful algae blooms (as in approximately half of freshwater lakes in the U.S.) and which is deep enough to seasonally stratify, as in lakes that are over ten feet deep, generates methane during late spring and summer months instead of carbon dioxide.  This is a situation where carbon dioxide, which is less than one twentieth as impactful as methane after correction for “time” in atmosphere, is actually a favorable goal!   Nutrient impaired fresh water is today’s leading source of methane.  This source of methane accounts for over half of total methane emissions.

Is it addressable?  Actually, yes, it is – very much so, and we have the technology to do it.  The key is oxygenation.  Breakthrough oxygenation technology that generates nanobubbles, and micro bubbles to some extent, can transition water from hypoxic to aerobic year-round, even as water becomes warmer (and therefore less able to hold oxygen) with climate change.  Oxygenated water supports the microbes that keep a lake healthy and it starves the microbes that generate methane. It is a straightforward process. 

For perspective, consider that Minnesota has some 10,000 named lakes, and about half are currently nutrient impaired.  Then there’s Wisconsin, with 15,000 lakes, and the same ratio of nutrient impairment.  National policy to motivate states and private stakeholders needs to be developed.  Now.  Not tomorrow, but “now”, if there’s any real hope to achieve that 50% reduction target.  

I’m seriously hopeful that this will be done.  My company is currently being supported by the U.S. Dept. of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office to develop and test an off-grid oxygenation technology.  We are blending BioHaven floating treatment wetlands with nanobubble production and solar power.  We are halfway through an empirical test tracking our ability to combine these three technologies.  It’s exciting.  And it’s hopeful.

There’s one other promising related development.  FPV (floating photovoltaic) systems are taking hold in Asia and Europe.  I note that Asia, particularly China, is the leader around FPV.  The U.S. on the other hand, is enmeshed in political squabbling, and is substantially behind most of the rest of the planet.  But the U.S. leads in the FTW (floating treatment wetland) category.  And blending FPV with FTW represents a scalable means by which to fix the monster methane factories…the Lake Eries, the Chesapeake Bays, the Lake Okeechobees of the world.  My vision is that the U.S. advances this blended technology onto the world stage.  And that we do so now.  

There are many ways private citizens and water quality experts alike can further this effort, from lobbying politicians to sharing on Facebook! Please reach out to me if you share my sense of urgency and want to change the status quo before it’s too late!

I will follow up.  

bruce.kania@floatingislandinternational.com   

There is a cadre of natural solution focused organizations that are working this issue.  The cadre includes private companies, NPOs, and governments, testing various strategies around this issue, essentially, attempting to prevent a water pandemic that could overwhelm our economic ecosphere.  Healthy fresh water is somewhat beyond a core requirement when it comes to civil society.  You don’t get by without it.  Do or die?  Well, yes, we have to get this one figured out.  Water health and climate action are irreversibly co-joined.  (Cite the Yale Study)
 
Imagine taking 55 acre feet of water, that’s roughly 55 football fields one foot deep, and dropping all that water into a 6.5 acre footprint that averages about 8 feet deep.  This describes our research lake.  Then add the now normal but variable surge of nutrients, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen, and watch this soup heat up and explode with blue/green and cyano bacteria blooms.  The blooms are short lived, and noxious.  Not pretty to look at, or smell.  But the worst is harder to discern.  When the blooms die, they chew up the oxygen in the water, and all this slurry mess of dead phytoplankton cycles into greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and stinky, black muck on the lake bottom.  Think methane.  Think 21 times more potent in terms of climate impact, after correction for time in atmosphere, then plain old carbon dioxide.  More than half of all methane emissions that are taking us into climate change emit from nutrient impaired fresh water.  Folks, this is about two things…livable water, and climate action.  This source of methane however is a low hanging fruit.  We can alter it.  With today’s science and engineering, we can oxygenate water from top to bottom, and disallow the methanogens that synthesize methane.  But we must act, and we must do so quickly, to mitigate climate impact.  That do or die thing again!
 
My company is teaming with the U.S. Department of Energy to quantify an ability to interrupt the cycle of Harmful Algae Blooms/greenhouse gas emissions.  We are measuring an ability to oxygenate deep water, and to even penetrate and reduce the sludge layer created by several decades of harmful algae blooms.  We are testing a breakthrough technology, nanobubbles, to permeate and oxygenate water from top to bottom.  Our goal is to prevent anaerobic water, where oxygen is absent.  If we can do this, we can prevent methane.  We prevent HABs along the way, and correspondingly, we prevent methane.  And that’s just the first half of the story.  When water transitions back to year round aerobic status, the nutrients that used to cycle into cyano bacteria instead cycle into nature’s natural food web.  We can grow fish instead of algae.

NUTRIENTS TRAPPED IN BOTTOM SLUDGE ARE FUTURE FISH!
 
I dove our research lake a week before turning on a nano bubble system.  After descending just five or six feet, the next fifteen feet of water turned inky black.  The claustrophobic lack of visibility was scary.  But I was connected with a surface supplied air system and could breathe.  So I persevered, and made my way to the bottom.  At this point the only certainty was that the airline was my path back to the surface.  It’s like being in space, but with no stars!
 
The black water was devoid of oxygen.  Nothing discernible could live in it, other than anaerobic microbes, methanogens that synthesize methane.  The air breathers that we associate with quality water were limited to the top five foot layer of the lake.  
 
A few days later we started the test.  Could we transition this deadly water back to health?  Could we oxygenate it?  Could we do so using solar power mounted on a BioHaven floating island?  Could we integrate two technology options, solar and nature’s wetland effect which is what BioHavens provide,  onto a viable, commercial platform?  Could we transition the black water into health?  Could we make the lake clear and productive from top to bottom?  Essentially, could we grow fish instead of algae?
 
To answer these questions required day to day measurement.  We needed scientists, and empirical data.  Not the “normal” anecdotal feedback that is so common anymore.  Disinformation and misinformation are best  left to ethically impaired, politically motivated quasi journalists.  It’s not what we bank on.  Empirical, science based data is our mission.  It can’t be otherwise, if in fact we are to generate actual effective water treatment.
 
I  personally studied the fish.  How did they respond to the “mixing” when we disrupted that benthic, black bottom water?  Their response is part of our Dept. of Energy report.  Now we have a data set to begin with. We have a sense of what can happen.  It’s not conclusive data, but it’s one data set that we will build on.  We are generating ongoing data.  More and more information.  More testing, more questions, more science.  Create a hypothesis, then test it.  Then test again.  Science.

Roughly half of water in the U.S. is eutrophic.  Some of it is hyper eutrophic.  The nutrients that cause this are an actual resource.  They are valuable.  Today in about half the water across the United States these nutrients grow methane.  Tomorrow, they can grow appropriate biota, that results in water quality and resulting economic benefit.  Think land value associated with lake frontage property.  Think about the vision that we humans vector with water.  Most of us live within a few miles of water’s edge.  My point is simple…we can fix water.  Heaven on earth?  No, but we can get a hell of a lot closer than we are today.  We can fix water, and in the process, defer some climate change.

By the way, there are other climate-related problems that affect fish.  Check out how mercury is an issue in this post from Anglers.

 They don’t need light, but instead are limited by surface area, circulation, and temperature (think climate change and how it will impact our water!)  Of course, there are other factors that influence both engines.  In other words, there are design opportunities.
Here we are in drought-stricken Montana.  No rain for four months.  Then a rain event happens, and the cold, forty-something-degree rainwater hits the sixty or seventy-degree surface water of my fish pond.  The rain sinks, since it is more dense than the surface water.  This results in aggressive mixing of the water.  The lake’s bottom water, which is nearly devoid of oxygen, is mixed with the entire inventory of water.  And there’s a lot more of this low dissolved oxygen water than a couple three inches of rainfall.  Low dissolved oxygen conditions result.  If they are too low, fish die.  It’s that simple.  And water clarity is also impacted big time…as the suspended particles that were concentrated in your bottom layer of water are now dispersed across the entire lake.  This turbidity reduces sunlight driven aeration.  One of the engines of life, of oxygenation, is shut down for a period.
 
Basic stewardship of fish…for bass, keep your levels above 4 parts per million.  For fathead minnows, keep your levels above 2 parts per million.  For trout, stay above 6 parts per million…and “good luck” with that, under eutrophic conditions!  These conditions are exacerbated by the hottest July ever!  Climate change is real enough to kill your fish, unless you design around it.
 
Our late summer rain event spells death for our lake unless we have prepared.  Imagine five and six pound bass belly up!  And thousands of panfish!  My six-pound bass here in Montana equate to your double-digit bass in Texas.  Way too valuable to lose!
 
Vertical aerators are a partial answer.  But unless they mix the entire waterway, they aren’t enough.  Natural aeration helps, when and where it’s ample.  But in the meantime, a simple rain event can decimate your fishery.  So what to do?
 
You may have protected zones within your waterway…places where particularly beneficial aquatic vegetation occurs.  Think Lintella in acidic water, or Chara in higher pH settings.  Beneficials like these may save your lake.  There are others too…perennial aquatic vegetation that produces a net positive of oxygen in your water.
 
We are experimenting with nanobubbles.  They may represent a means by which to aerate across an entire waterway, and even into the sludge that inexorably accumulates under anoxic conditions.  You may have heard our tag line …”grow fish instead of algae!”  Well, nanobubbles may be the breakthrough that truly provides for this!  
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​Late summer conditions can be particularly stressful for your fish.  Just remember…you can design to optimize both engines of life.  Track what limits them – what they need more of to survive.  Then design to prevent dire shortages.  Sustain your fish.  Don’t allow them to suffocate.  Take ubiquitous excess nutrients and cycle them into your fish by maintaining ample dissolved oxygen.
 
 

​*  Begin with this fact…freshwater is under serious pressure.  Climate change combined with nutrient overload results in massive potential blooms of harmful algae and/or monocultures of invasive aquatic vegetation.  This is the common parameter across the developed world, from Australia to Singapore to Boston Harbor, water is a fundamental, critical resource that needs serious focus.
​
*  Chemical treatment of Harmful Algae Blooms is the pattern of the past.  It’s what some humans have gravitated to over the last five decades, and it is an abject failure.  Chemicals don’t fix water.  Don’t go the chemical route, or you are likely to run out of funds well before your water issue is resolved.  It’s that simple.

*  Employ natural systems and modern abilities and tools to steer your water towards health.  These include:  biomimicry of natural systems, prevention of inflow nutrients, measurement, and the broad category of “natural stewardship.”.  Become an objective observer of your water, and be prepared to think both vertically and laterally.  Remember that nature is not exclusively linear, but always is strongly biased towards inclusion of  circles of life.  In practical terms this means that as you boost aeration, circulation and surface area in your water, you will expand biodiversity and corresponding water health.

*  Seek to understand what limits your water.  Note that as you steward towards biodiversity you are also engaging in a particularly critical form of climate action.  The following list includes several of the most frequent limiting variables:  Aeration/circulation, nutrient inflow and inventory, and water clarity.  Water that’s in trouble will frequently have to contend with all three of these parameters of concern.  Not a problem, but instead, an opportunity.

​*  Perhaps the best feature in this short list…is that water is resilient and will support you and your efforts towards “nature as model.”  Once you get started on the path of biomimicry, nature will support your efforts with an amazing array of sometimes surprising phenomena.  Nature is above reproach…it just is.  But you can leverage natural systems that will contribute to sustainable practice.  Again, this requires right and left brain thinking.  Be prepared to step out of your comfort zone.

​Here’s what it looks like:  

1.  Start with the premise that natural systems are fully capable of fixing your water.  Expand aeration, circulation and surface area wherever possible.  Which of these three parameters is most important?  Note that aeration and circulation go hand in hand.  They result in added oxygenation of your water.  They are indeed, primary.  Surface area is a luxury, but when oxygenation and surface area are combined with surface area, the results are splendid.  You can indeed grow fish instead of algae.

​The take-home message is that nature-as-model is the system humans must transition to in order to achieve a sustainable life model.  It’s not complicated.  It’s affordable.  And it’s energizing.  When you engage in this process your water will respond!

We are collaborating with Moleaer, Inc., a nanobubbler manufacturer, in this effort, and are bringing the full resources of FII and WaterRR to bear on the project. Incidentally, FII supported a successful student project at MSU to develop the prototype of the solar power array that will be used to power the nanobubbler.
 
We are excited about this award and its implications for our success and for meaningful climate action.
Here is our official announcement:
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Floating Island International (FII) Announces Award Selection by U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office
 
FII RESEARCHERS TACKLE METHANE REDUCTION
 
 * THE NORTH AMERICAN PANDEMIC OF HARMFUL ALGAE BLOOMS RESULTS IN A MASSIVE INCREASE IN METHANE EMISSIONS
 
 * THOUSANDS OF LAKES ACROSS NORTH AMERICA NOW STARVED OF DISSOLVED OXYGEN
 
 * FISH AND WATER QUALITY AT RISK
 
June 29, 2021, Shepherd, Montana - Floating Island International (FII), an environmental research company based in Shepherd, Montana, has been selected for a Phase One SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) award to develop a floating island system that reduces methane emissions associated with nutrient impaired water. A primary goal of the grant is to a develop a solar-powered aeration transport system which will deliver oxygen to water where it is most needed. Without oxygen, lakes are poised to generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is 21 times more damaging than carbon dioxide in terms of climate change.
 
Today more than half of waterways across the U.S., including Lake Erie and Chesapeake Bay, are nutrient impaired, which manifests by the increase in algae blooms, especially Harmful Algae Blooms. The result is a precipitous decrease in dissolved oxygen (DO) and a corresponding increase in climate-changing emissions from methane instead of carbon dioxide.
 
FII’s proposed solution will transition such waterways back into aerobic status, and in the process save fish from die-offs, prevent dangerous emissions of cyano toxins, and reduce or eliminate associated methane emissions and other negative water quality parameters which include increased turbidity and odor.
 
Nanobubble oxygenation is one of the most promising and cost-efficient means we have today of effectively increasing DO in a lake without disturbing the equilibrium. BioHaven floating islands represent a biofilm-reactive surface area for enhancing biological processes to treat water naturally. FII’s integrated, off-grid platform is expected to be welcomed by professional lake managers as a realistic and affordable option for contending with HABs.
 
The Shepherd, Montana based company currently has six licensed manufacturers positioned to build BioHaven floating island platforms, three in North America, one each in the UK, New Zealand and China.
 
“When it comes to fixing water, collaboration with nature is vital,” said Bruce Kania, CEO, and head of the FII research and development division. “We are teaming with nature to steward excess nutrients into fish instead of algae.”
 
Kania added, “our award from the Solar Energy Technologies Office is pointed at addressing methane reduction from impaired fresh water. "If we succeed in this, we can buy time for other forms of climate action to occur. Today there are over 500 mayors from across the U.S. who are prepared to lead their communities towards sustainable climate policy. We hope to partner with them and support their efforts towards climate neutrality.”
 
 “We intend to leverage the unique characteristics of nanobubble technology to bring oxygen into water from top to bottom. In the process, eutrophic water devoid of breathable oxygen can be fixed, according to Kania. FII has partnered with Moleaer Inc. out of Carson, California, the leading company in nanobubble technology.
 
Moleaer’s nanobubble technology has already been proven to increase dissolved oxygen levels concentrations in lakes and ponds and produce a chemical-free oxidative effect that combats algae directly and helps reduce the availability of the nutrients they need to cause nuisance blooms while improving water quality.
 
“There is a clear synergism between our companies’ technologies, and we are excited to participate in this collaboration and see the results of these powerful tools combined” states Eli Kersh, Director of Surface Water for Moleaer.
 
According to climate researcher Tonya DelSontro of Waterloo University, Toronto, Canada, “Methane from freshwater sources accounts for nearly 20% of total hydrocarbon greenhouse gas impact.” “Addressing this major source of GHGs is critical to any effort to achieve climate neutrality,” she states.
 
Phosphorus is a primary nutrient that triggers harmful algae blooms which in turn result in oxygen depletion and turbidity in both, freshwater and marine settings. The recent spill of nutrient impaired water at Piney Point on Florida’s west coast is linked to algae blooms and increased turbidity in coastal marine settings that in turn impact seagrass, a vital food source for Florida manatees, a federally listed endangered species. According to environmentalist and Florida native, Ed Chiles, the manatee is a keystone species that tracks with environmental degradation. “The fate of manatees is up to us. We can develop and deploy technologies like BioHaven floating islands and begin the process of fixing water. Let’s hope we are not too late for the manatee." 
 
THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY’S SMALL BUSINESS INOVATIVE RESEARCH (SBIR) PROGRAM TRIGGERS KEY CLIMATE ACTION INITIATIVES
 
About the DOE SBIR/STTR Programs Office
The Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs encourage domestic small businesses to engage in federal research/research and development (R/R&D) with the potential for commercialization. Through competitive awards, SBIR/STTR enable small businesses to explore their technological potential and provide the incentive to profit from their innovations’ commercialization. Projects must have the potential for commercialization and meet mission-specific DOE R&D needs. DOE offers more than 60 technical topics and 250 subtopics, spanning research areas that support the DOE mission in energy production, energy use, fundamental energy sciences, environmental management, and defense nuclear nonproliferation. By including qualified small businesses in the nation’s R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated, and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs. Learn more at https://www.sbir.gov/ and https://www.energy.gov/science/sbir/small-business-innovation-research-and-small-business-technology-transfer.

Thanks again for helping us spread the word. This is an exciting time for FII and the future of impaired water.
 
Bruce Kania/CEO 

​1.  Organics - things like leaf litter that break down over time -  tend to stack up at the bottom of watersheds.  Basic gravity accounts for this.  But while soil under fields is typically aerobic, silt and sludge that accumulates in nutrient rich water is frequently anoxic or even anaerobic, and results in methane gas production instead of carbon dioxide generation for much of each year as lakes and waterways move through the nutrient cycling process.  Methane is 21 times more impactful, after time-in-atmosphere correction, than CO2.

2.  Rich farm ground may include as much as 7% organics, while on the other hand, silt and sludge that accumulates on the bottom of waterways is frequently ten times that amount.  Photodegradation contributes to aerobic nutrient cycling in terrestrial settings, but far less so in water.  

3.  Conventional agricultural practices contribute to this trend.  Since 1972, there has been a five fold increase in nutrient impaired water in the United States.  Today’s water is far more susceptible to massive algae blooms than ever before, at least in recorded history.  Bottom line…water is a focal point for carbon accumulation.

​Purposeful oxygenation of benthic zones represents a means by which to prevent methane generation.  But that’s only the beginning.  By maintaining aerobic status from top to bottom in eutrophic water, nature’s wetland effect can be fully leveraged.  Carbon and associated nutrients can be cycled into appropriate life forms.  The result is incredible productivity.  Today’s Harmful Algae Bloom vulnerable water can be transitioned into clear, healthy, biodiverse rich water.  This is water that exemplifies the quality water that humans have vectored with since time immemorial.  

Today with Water Resource Recovery as an emerging strategy, we can transition water to health, and provide a beneficial and cost-effective set of tools with which to improve quality of life.  Key word…Stewardship.


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​Yesterday the wind came up in the afternoon.  It was in the low- to mid-nineties at the time, when the hot, dry wind began.  But this is June, and it’s historically one of our three wettest months.  So far, less than one twentieth of average precipitation has happened, and we are three quarters of the way through the month.  And the hot, dry wind desiccated what moisture is left.  It’s now gone.  Only the dry biomass is left, waiting for one incendiary moment.

Our property is managed for research into how to steward for wildlife and fish and agriculture.  We avoid chemicals.  We target sustainable action.  But today’s conditions overwhelm our efforts.  We are extremely vulnerable to drought, and now, fire.  And this is despite perennialization of the property.  Our neighbors, who have largely stayed conventional with their practices, as they attempt to grow annual crops, are even more vulnerable.  

We have answers.  We have talked through strategies that can buy us time to respond.  But by “we”, I’m only describing a fraction, not a majority, of locals.  The others are somewhere else.  They are oblivious to change, and they are tomorrow’s victims.

While it’s true they may be uncomfortable with ongoing environmental conditions, the question of “Why?” doesn’t come up in their day-to-day interactions.  It’s prevented by their political bias.  It’s not a topic they are allowed to discuss, without violating their political comfort zones.

Heat transitions into water, and when combined with nutrients and ubiquitous carbon, the result is Harmful Algae Bloom.  This is where we are now, and unless action occurs, this is what we face for the indefinite future.  The recipient water will slip into anoxic status, and fish will die.  The water will become turbid.  It will stink and generate methane instead of carbon dioxide.  This is our future, based on the current inertia.  

How do you interrupt this pattern?  How do you go forward?  

The one takeaway I can offer is this…your fish are the canary in the coal mine.  Keep them alive and well, and there is hope.

As climate action finally begins in the United States in earnest, leaders face a maze of choices. The data keep coming in, and shifting, and sometimes changing. An example: methane is 21 times more impactful than carbon dioxide, per our EPA. Yet other credible and science-based entities state it’s 67 times more impactful, or 89 times. The fact that methane does not sustain in our atmosphere the same length of time as carbon dioxide does complicate quantifying its impact. We long for the day we can rely on data based on factual, empirical, nonpolitical science.

These are times during which we must shift from dysfunctional patterns into effective patterns. Burning gasoline or diesel is dysfunctional. We know this, and we are initiating transition. With hope that we are not too late. We have allowed thousands of natural gas wells to seep methane directly into our atmosphere, but this is also being addressed, now, after four years of political obfuscation. Agriculture is the slow child. We still let her directly pollute water with nutrients that ultimately perk into our water and kill it. Agriculture is responsible for over 80% of nutrient impaired water, and nutrient impaired water generates 20 plus percent of the greenhouse gas, particularly methane, that we must deal with if we are to turn the tide of climate change.
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Water is ripe for transition. Due to simple neglect, it’s been allowed to slip into eutrophic or even hyper-eutrophic condition. To use a human analogy, it’s been fed a diet that leads to obesity. Think sudden cardiac arrest, if not dealt with. Literally, water is dying at pandemic levels across the developed world, wherever orthophosphate and additional fertilizer components are employed. This shows up in the incidence of harmful algae blooms. They are a symptom of this phenomenon. When they happen, water is dying.

If a water body is deep, then instead of relatively moderate carbon dioxide coming off, methane does. This has been proven by the DelSontro study. We have the science. And the volume of methane can be precisely measured and quantified. And today, because of innovation, we have the ability to prevent the anaerobic conditions that will otherwise occur in these settings.

Currently, some five hundred mayors across the U.S. have pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by a specific target date, usually ten years from now. Water will be a simple and inexpensive window of opportunity for these mayors. They will take a huge bite out of their carbon footprint, and they will move towards their commitment of carbon neutrality, as they employ today’s science on their internal waterways. Places like Chicago, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Memphis, Washington D.C., and hundreds more, will be offered means by which to fix their water, with systems that generate revenue.

Cleaning water effectively and for the long term is a function of employing nature’s wetland effect into our infrastructure, not the instant gratification of chemical fixes. We must not force our will into environmental challenges, but instead, design for collaboration with nature, otherwise, results will be simply stupefying in terms of expense. We must collaborate. And it is surprisingly easy, and nature is remarkably receptive.

Today we know how to cycle nutrients into healthy biota. We have the innovation and the design in hand. We can grow fish instead of algae. We are ready and able. And by leveraging today’s innovation into collaboration with nature, we can achieve all of this with systems that pay for themselves.

This is truly a hopeful time. The results, the implications, the outcomes, of moving towards Transition Water, and away from death by suffocation as harmful algae blooms are bio-digested, will renovate the American sportsman. Fish are a marker. When they do well, so does the water they come from. And they do incredibly well when their water is stewarded towards nature’s wetland effect. That’s where we grow fish instead of algae.

Methane production from nutrient impaired water accounts for 20% or more of actual climate changing greenhouse gas. Preventing methane is now easily, cost effectively, achieved. The mayors of progressive U.S. cities are ideally positioned to demonstrate this. What’s missing? An entity, ideally a nonsectarian, science-based nonprofit corporation, to quantify both current GHG emissions by specific waterbodies, and GHG reduction associated with smart, nature-based solutions.

Here’s advance notice… this is developing and will happen over the short term.

For several dozen years, a new lake management tool has evolved.  Lake managers can restore natural wetland function using constructed wetlands.  Various forms of man-made wetlands fill in the gap caused by destructive development trends.  When combined with fishery enhancement and strategic fish harvest, constructed wetlands like floating treatment wetlands can actually reverse a lake’s trophic index.  Floating wetlands support fish growth; as they grow, the fish pull nutrients out of the water, and - as long as they are ultimately harvested - the lake is transitioned back to health.

Lake managers can now “grow fish instead of algae.”  Algae prevention instead of chemical treatment.  In fact, nutrient-rich water that is poised to experience suffocating HABs is a prime candidate for treatment by floating treatment wetlands, which actually are positioned on the target waterway.  They can certainly be located up watershed as well, where they will favorably influence inflow water quality.  But floating treatment wetlands, like the BioHaven, can be positioned directly on a target lake, where they compete for nutrients with blue-green algae and potentially deadly cyanobacteria, and contribute to fishery improvement in the process.
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Strategically positioned islands can also provide wave mitigation and corresponding shoreline protection.  The BioHaven system has been proven internationally, and has withstood numerous hurricane events, with over 9,000 islands in place in both, fresh and marine water settings, from Alaska to Florida.  

Today the BioHaven brand is advancing into Water Resource Recovery (WRR), where island systems generate commercial volumes of solar energy which pay for large projects.  Such projects mean that even large water is treatable.   WRR systems can actually be aesthetic additions to water while enhancing a fishery.  And they can remove what is otherwise a public tax burden, as they mitigate and prevent disastrous algae blooms.  

We moved up a narrow channel on Fish Fry and hooked and landed seven fish in the space of a hundred yards.  These included females heavy with eggs…three- and four-pound fish.  Releasers.  And there was the mixed age group, fifteen inches or less, the keepers.  The fillets that will sustain us and our paleo diet for the next nine months, or more.

Alarmingly we also saw carp.  We’ve avoided them to date, but now they’re here, they and their life model. These filter feeders that stir up the bottom add one more dimension to the stewardship of Fish Fry Lake.  But they will also be good eating.  Carp, the most popular freshwater game fish on the planet, but not so much here in the U.S..  But we will transition, and figure out a way to leverage the carp, a large minnow that grazes periphyton directly, into our stewardship thinking.  Maybe even into our diet?  After all, Fish Fry Lake, and what comes out of it, is water that I know and trust.  

The winter has been inordinately dry and warm, so Fish Fry was actually mostly open until a cold spell finally hit in early February.  This meant that the lake lost more water than normal through evaporation: it went down at least four feet.  But now with the recharge of water from the spiral wetland, an eighty-acre wetland filter that feeds over 300 million gallons of water into and through the lake annually, Fish Fry is back to full pool.  And our mission to demonstrate that agricultural nutrients can be cycled into fish, instead of algae, is back too.  What a blast!  Fishing is research!  Critical research that demonstrates a sustainable model, one that bumps up actual quality of life.  This becomes absolutely apparent as I witness bass after bass being hooked, played, sometimes lost and other times boated.  The action and the thrill are energizing!

BioHaven floating islands concentrate nature’s wetland effect.  They are floating biofilm reactors; they concentrate biofilm reactive surface area.  They are, just like the plastic worms we fish, made of recycled plastics, but with a 60-year design life.  Unlike other floating treatment wetland designs, BioHavens do not break down and use up dissolved oxygen in the process.  They do not contribute to Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) like jute or other short term floating islands do, but instead they function as perennial concentrated wetlands, and cycle excess nutrients into periphyton and then fish.

After many years of research, trial, error and abundant help from nature, we have learned stewardship wisdom, acquired hard-earned data and knowledge.  We understand how we can grow fish instead of algae.  We’ve paid our dues.

Now, with strategic investment, we are poised to generate revenue on water with FPV (floating photovoltaics), while stewarding that water towards health.  Towards water clarity and quality.  

It won’t be long before all of us will want, even “require”, or own solar charging stations.  Plug the vehicle in overnight, so we are good for another couple hundred miles tomorrow.  No waiting around.  No fuss.  Plug and play!

​Through much of the U.S., especially in the southern and central states, fish are fed commercial fish food.  Folks are taught how to condition their fish and orient them around feeder technology and product. The fish pellets look like rabbit food. They spray out on a regular basis, and specific varieties of fish can be conditioned to the feed. Eventually the fish will be there, and the water may boil with aggressive feeding as the shower of fish pellets occur.  

This approach is also employed by fish farmers too. It’s how aquaculture operates.  Fish are contained within ponds, or nets in marine settings, and fed their pellet ration.  Conditioning the fish to compete and consume as much as possible is the ongoing goal in such settings.  And the pellets include both, organic protein and mineral nutrients, in what a fisheries expert will describe as an optimal diet.  

The method works, and remarkably heavy, fat fish are farmed this way.  It’s aquaculture, fish farming, and it’s a proven way to grow fish.  But this system adds nutrients to the waterway, in the form of the “balanced” nutrient and mineral content of the pellets, and it’s always a bit uncertain as to the threshold…just how much of the fish pellets to add before the water becomes too nutrient rich.

The second approach is more focused on nature’s model.  It’s approaching one of nature’s methods, at least.  

In this setting, a waterway is spiked with fertilizer.  Owners or managers strew pellets of fertilizer across the water.  The plan is that the fertilizer will grow beneficial green algae.  Not blue-green, or cyanobacteria, but green algae, which in turn grows zooplankton and such, and triggers the food web.  This approach has been described and expanded on in great detail (for example, in Bob Lusk’s Pond Boss magazine) and is a favorite for southern water.  Water managers are actually taught to target a certain level of water turbidity, as it defines a rich phytoplankton bloom.  They are taught by fisheries specialists that there’s a balance, and they can achieve it by measuring and tracking a range of factors like dissolved oxygen, BOD, and such.  Their intent is to trigger one of the two primary engines of life…sunlight driven plant growth.  Phytoplankton to zooplankton and on up the food web.  This fertilization process is the second most frequent method to grow fish.

Fisheries specialists warn that it’s possible to over fertilize.  The result can be dramatic swings in dissolved oxygen levels, and fish can be killed, suffocated, if the balance is skewed. Note the old southern proverb… you're not a fish farmer ’till you’ve had a fish kill!  It’s important to note that adding fertilizer and trying to steer it towards a specific form of phytoplankton is edgy, at best.  Here in the north, few fishery managers go this route.  Those that do normally hedge their bets and provide aeration systems to guard against the suffocation risk.  And it’s revealing to note that when water does use up its oxygen, instead of simply generating carbon dioxide anaerobic bacteria take over, and they produce methane.  Methane, after correction for time in the atmosphere, is some 25 times more impactful than CO2.

I remember fishing on Richmond Mills with my wife Anne, when – after fishing all day without a catch - she finally hooked and landed a three-pound bluegill.  Frustrated, she’d craftily embedded her hook into a fish pellet, and thrown it into the maelstrom of boiling water as a fish feeder on the reservoir was strewing fish pellets into the gullets of ravenous fish.  I’ll tell you what…a three-pound bluegill is exciting!  Richmond Mills used option #1 to grow fish, but the reservoir enjoys another tactic as well.  The reservoir, which is an incredible fishery, contains dozens of naturally-occurring floating islands.  The combination of fish feed, the fish farm approach, and the floating island factor results in a tremendous fishery.

​Nature’s model has transitioned into practical water stewardship.  We know how to steward for healthy, beautiful fish and other appropriate biota, instead of monocultures of blue-green algae and cyanobacteria, or ultimately red tide.  We have the science, and we have a growing number of stewardship masters, we call them Island Masters, who today launch BioHavens in every kind of water imaginable, from marine settings off the coast of southeast Alaska to phosphorus poisoned waters down watershed from Piney Point off the west coast of Florida.  

Right here on Fish Fry Lake we’ve learned that hyper eutrophic water, that’s been nutrient enriched by agriculture and urbanity, can be transitioned to health (Transition Water).  Water clarity is one simple marker of this process.  We can go from 14”s, to nineteen feet, and allow sunlight, one of two primary engines of life to occur at depth.  We can design for optimization of autotrophic life, plants that require sunlight, as well as heterotrophs, that require surface area, to flourish and advance in their staircase trudge towards comprehensive utilization of every nutrient.  We can energize food webs, so that the water that leaves our systems is pure.  The water is clear, pristine, and allowed again to function as the lubricant of life.

​Today we know that manmade nutrients are being unleashed against water on nothing more than a happenstance basis.  Farmers have been prodded towards artificial productivity, non sustainable productivity, at the terrific expense of both, watershed and human health.  And today, now, we know how to fix this.  We also know that we have no choice, unless we are prepared to dig our own grave.

Methane happens when we humans grossly mismanage water.  When water is stripped of oxygen, methane results.  The water and its associated food web is impaired, and sick.  Nutrients stack up, and build on a downward spiral.  Life, other than anaerobic bacteria, is disallowed.  

When water is mismanaged, it generates methane instead of carbon dioxide.  After time correction, methane has 25 times the impact of CO2 in our atmosphere.  The UN's directive that the world must cut methane emissions to avoid the worst of climate change applies to fresh water too.

New and more comprehensive studies track what this really means for human sustainability. And the terrific irony is that we also have the data set required to turn this nutrient impairment factor into super abundance.  

Fish Fry Lake here at our research center in Shepherd, Montana exemplifies our potential.  Imagine 17” black crappie, or largemouth bass that weigh upwards of nine pounds, here in the north, in Montana.  Or northern yellow perch pushing two pounds, or bluegill and green sunfish, the fillets of which nudge the edges of a standard size cast iron skillet.  

We know how to grow fish instead of algae.  We know how to collaborate with nature’s model.  We have the tools, and if we can sustain against conventional inertia, the pop-a-pill thinking that has led us to this current precipice, we can achieve a new level of quality of life.  Humans vector with edge habitat.  We occur around water.  Some ninety percent of humans live within range of coastal or edge water.  We vector with water, it’s really that simple.  And to keep water healthy we must employ nature’s model…surface area and circulation sustain nature’s food web.  When this combination happens in sufficient abundance, aerobic microbial life is sustained.  It rewards us with abundance.  In the presence of concentrated nutrients, it rewards us with super abundance.

On one occasion, ironically, in Clear Water, Florida, I experienced their passive and gentle presence. Unequivocally, the nuances around their life model require hard science. But it seems like, today at least, human political divisions are being superseded by the manatee. We are putting political division aside, in order to save a remarkable species.

Fortunately, the Piney Point water that has breached its contained setting, is “treated” water. It includes only a fraction of the toxicity of countless other local Bone Valley impoundments of what’s known as “tailings water” connected with phosphate mining.

Here’s the problem: the phosphorus concentrations in this spill will not directly kill manatees, but ultimately will result in harmful algae blooms (HABs). Watch out for both cyanobacteria freshwater blooms and red tide in brackish and marine settings. These in turn will occlude sunlight from a major source of food for manatees, as in submerged seagrasses. And in some instances, the blooms will excrete toxins, which add just one more variable to the mix.

Seagrasses are a vital link in the manatee’s life model. And it takes sunlight to grow seagrasses. As water becomes turbid due to algae bloom, sunlight is blocked. Seagrass diminishes, or disappears. As do the manatee.

Life is resilient. And yes, there are actionable human designs that can provide forage for manatees. The designs can also supplement the warm water (above 68°F) that manatees require. Human-designed systems can provide survival forage and warm water, and perhaps help the species survive the environmental insult of millions of gallons of nutrient-impaired water inundated into their core habitat.
Nature’s food web is comprehensive

Manatees consume at least sixty forms of plant life. Reflective of species resilience, a number of these are shoreline plants which are not impacted by water turbidity. In fact, the nutrient load associated with water turbidity may enhance their growth. Bottom line…if sunlight can’t make it through the water, then grow survival forage above the water. This is truly just a stop-gap measure. Nature’s wetland effect will be in play. The water clarity will come back. But know that surges of nutrients will resurrect for the indefinite future. And manatees can survive periods of scarcity. After all, they have fat reserves. But providing alternative forage through such periods will help.

Nature’s food web is comprehensive. Given enough time, every niche is filled with biota that competes, synergizes, and symbiotically sustains. Nature’s resilience knows no bounds. Nature is the ultimate inventor. She will plow her way through the current episode, and as long as we don’t eviscerate all options our manatees will survive, if only on a downward trend basis.

Humans must partner with nature to undo damage

Without a doubt, provision of the basics for survival for the manatee will help. Growing forage on floating islands that surround solar farms will do just that. And as a wonderful example of accidental synergy, the solar farms generate high volumes of waste heat. This heat combined with immediately available forage is a survival combination for the manatee population at Piney Point, and Port Manatee.

Floating islands are long-term solutions. They are not the pop-a-pill solution we’ve become accustomed to over the last several dysfunctional decades. Instead, they mimic nature’s model, in which “time” figures prominently. Ultimately, floating islands biomimic nature’s model, and we can’t force nature. Instead, we must partner with nature. This means launching volumes of nature’s concentrated wetland effect, and doing so now, in order to ally with time, and ultimately, fix settings like the Bone Valley of Florida. With nature as an ally, as a partner, the nutrient-impaired water of Bone Valley will be transitioned to health.

We’ve already got the start of a commercially viable solution

Today it’s vital that conservation projects are affordable. There really aren’t many options. So projects that pay for themselves have a much greater chance of enactment. Human design, combined with our commercial endeavor affinity, is a terrific combination. This is how we help the manatee pull through.

Floating photovoltaics (FPV) projects are gaining traction for alternative energy. But there is incredible synergy with FPV and dealing with spills with high phosphorus concentrations. Floating photovoltaics platforms can launch the food web that will compete with algae for the excess nutrients.

So, here’s the solution: We launch FPV projects asap, and surround them with forage islands, across as much of the affected watershed as achievable.

In fact, today’s massive volume of nutrient-impaired inventory water, as in the hundreds of impounded ponds just like the Piney Point system that just breached, are tomorrow’s Transition Water. It will be incredibly productive, and healthy, at levels that supersede anything we currently know of. I think of my own Fish Fry Lake, the first example of true Transition Water, where nutrients are cycled into desirable, beneficial forms of life.

Bone Valley, and its huge volume of inventoried nutrient, is a latent opportunity to demonstrate true sustainability. And at the same time, we help the manatee survive.

With some two-trillion dollars earmarked for climate action by the Biden administration just in the U.S., FII is poised to fill in the critical environmental gaps associated with conventional FPV projects.
The environmental impact of FPV projects is squarely in the realm of BioHaven Floating Islands. A space where the US could break out around FPV is with the cleaning of impaired waterways, a no-brainer integration between what we do and what floating solar market needs. Freshwater, currently the source of some 20% of total greenhouse gas, can be stewarded back to health, fish productivity, and high impact climate changing gas reduction.

Carbon credit implications notwithstanding, FII will lead around water quality improvements associated with large FPV projects. Numerous waterways in North America are currently labeled as “nutrient impaired” and are targets for FII’s (Transition Water) strategy. Lakes and reservoirs, including drinking water reservoirs, that now experience harmful algae blooms, exemplify water that we can employ the principals of “water resource recovery” on, where projects generate substantial revenue and in which water quality improvement is the “byproduct."

The nexus of freshwater and agriculture in the developed world is our bathtub. Whether it be Lake Erie, Chesapeake Bay, or the Los Vegas Wash, FII plans to team with international floating solar developers to bring clean alternative energy and significant water quality improvement to FPV projects, even on massive waterways. And we will earn carbon credits in the process, which will address the previously limiting issue of “scalability.”

FII brings an answer to the question of environmental impact associated with large FPV projects. FPV is emerging as the fastest growing form of solar energy generation, but has been plagued by questions around environmental impact.

We have over 9,000 island launches to support our water quality improvement claims. We fix water using nature’s model…nature’s wetland effect. Bringing this phenomenon to the FPV market represents an innovative new variable. High levels of greenhouse gas reduction will be a byproduct of BioHaven technology integration into the FPV market.

FII was launched in 2005 and currently has six licensed island manufacturers positioned around the globe.

Today we face a pandemic virus. And we don’t know where the end zone is. As a race, we will do our best to survive and thrive, but the reality is that we don’t know how to contend with every natural threat. We do know, however, that another massive threat is looming. Our fresh water has been hit with a triple punch…massive nutrient surges, inaction by uninformed water stewards, and climate change. The result is a form of desertification.

We must enlist Nature to work through this imminent pandemic. We must partner with Nature. She is willing. She is on our side.

Last night Anne and I fished one side of Fish Fry Lake, covering maybe a half-mile of its southern shoreline. We landed eight largemouth bass, and released one fish that was over 17 inches, large enough to forage on bluegill. The other seven smaller bass, the ones that focus on crawfish as forage, we kept. They will become larder for us, the trim for our canine support troops, and anything they won’t consume is biomass that goes back into crawfish and black crappie and Northern yellow perch that fill in critical niches of the Fish Fry Lake food web.

Fish Fry Lake is healthy and becoming more so as we cycle nutrients out of the lake. This is what it looks like to partner with nature. On an annual basis, we will harvest nutrients out of the lake at approximately the same level that they enter it. Last night we harvested nutrients in the form of fish. Tomorrow we will do so in the form of specific plants. This is stewardship.

Stewardship is not simple. It requires specialized expertise. If you don’t invest in actual science, you are not functioning to your greatest potential as a water steward. Likewise, if you don’t partner with nature as model.

Please contact FII. We will help you figure out what next steps you need to take. We will connect you and your water with an Island Master. We will support you as you move closer towards sustainable scientific solutions, towards Nature’s Model!