Lohafex

thumb|The Polarstern, the German research vessel used to conduct the LOHAFEX experiment. LOHAFEX was an ocean iron fertilization experiment jointly planned by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India and the Helmholtz Association in Germany. The purpose of the experiment was to see if the iron would cause an algal bloom and trap carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While an algal bloom did result, it was smaller than expected and as most of the algae were consumed by zooplankton instead of sinking to the ocean floor, the amount of carbon dioxide permanently removed from the atmosphere was deemed negligible. The result was thus a setback for plans to use iron fertilization of the oceans to create negative carbon dioxide emissions.

==Background== The experiment followed a Memorandum of Understanding signed on 30 October 2007 by Dr. T. Ramaswami, Director General, CSIR, and Dr. Juergen Mlynek, President, Helmholtz Foundation, Germany, on Cooperation in Marine Sciences, during the visit of then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to India. The experiment was conducted mainly by CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, India (NIO), Goa, and Alfred-Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Bremerhaven, with participation of scientists from Chile, France, Spain and the United Kingdom. The German research vessel, Polarstern, was utilized for the experiment on her ANT XXV/3 cruise. It was jointly led by Wajih Naqvi of CSIR-NIO and Victor Smetacek of AWI. Weekly reports of the expedition were published on the website of AWI.