While searching for an idea for this IAN diary, I happened on this incredible piece of news:
Japanese scientists have this almost unbelievable idea on how to prevent tsunamis. Use bacteria.
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Yes, you read that right...bacteria. Tsunami-fighting scientists in Japan have come up with this rather brilliant idea to inject bacteria into fault lines on the seafloor in the hopes that the bacteria would grow calcium carbonate and curb an underwater earthquakes propensity for forming tsunamis. The Calcium carbonate will act like cement and solidify in the fault lines preventing “slip”, the sudden springing back to a prior position after the plate has been slowly pushed in one direction. This sudden release produces an earthquake.
A trench earthquake long expected along the Nankai Trough off Japan's Pacific coast is believed to occur when a continental plate pushed by a moving oceanic plate reverts to where it was before. The slippage of the continental plate will cause the seabed to shake, spawning a tsunami.
After the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, a huge tsunami generated by a slip of a fault a few kilometers below the seafloor that is situated near a trench struck northeastern Japan.
Based on lessons learned from the 2011 disaster, Hamada and his colleagues hit upon the idea of solidifying the earth 1 km under the seabed to reduce the impact of tsunami and started research in March last year.
www.asahi.com/...
The team have conducted experiments in an environment similar to conditions that would be found at depth (1-2 kilometers) and they have had success. A 10% reduction in “slip”. It may not seem like much, but given Japan’s very real and frequent dangers from earthquakes and the tsunamis they produce, it will help a great deal.
The scientists are now in search of the right kind of bacteria to produce the crystals faster and more efficiently than what they currently have, and will continue experimenting. Preventative science is the best kind of science. And if this works, it could be used all over the world and make many of us safer.
Another thought occurred to me while writing this. Ocean acidification due to climate change has been causing shellfish to build thinner shells and corals to disintegrate:
This net decrease in the amount of carbonate ions available makes it more difficult for marine calcifying organisms, such as coral and some plankton, to form biogenic calcium carbonate, and such structures become vulnerable to dissolution.[13] Ongoing acidification of the oceans threatens food chains connected with the oceans
en.wikipedia.org/...
and these scientists are considering adding calcium carbonate to the ocean. Could that be a boon to shellfish, coral and plankton?