Second of a two-part series. Click here for the first part.

The second phase of what is believed to be the world's largest ocean-based geoengineering experiment started out with an early morning knock on the door of the Vancouver offices of the aboriginal corporation in British Columbia that had conducted it.

A team from Canada's equivalent of U.S. EPA, Environment Canada, came with a search warrant on the Haida Salmon Restoration Council (HSRC) that allowed it to probe the results of the controversial project that the tribe had conducted with Russ George, a California businessman, in the summer of 2012.

Tons of iron sulphate had been dumped into the ocean off the coast of British Columbia in an effort to stimulate salmon fishing and to earn money in a projected carbon offset market.

On March 27, 2013, about 10 agents spent all day going through files and computers, making copies of any potential data they might need to support a lawsuit against the corporation for a potential breach of Canadian and perhaps international law.

Media had almost unanimously lambasted the effort George conducted alongside the HSRC, and later reports alleging George had falsely represented himself to the First Nations corporation in Canada didn't help.

Questions of the legality of the experiment, combined with George's reputation, had generated a number of lawsuits and counterclaims in British Columbia's Supreme Court. The result was a very slow release of information from the experiment that covered more than 5,000 nautical miles.

But some scientists say the data from the massive experiment, legal or not, could potentially be beneficial in terms of what it teaches us about the still mysterious cycles of feast and famine among salmon fishing stocks and, on a larger level, about how much carbon sequestration may have occurred.

"It provides insight into a part of the ocean where research has never been conducted," said Jason McNamee, a former director and operations officer of HSRC and occasional spokesman for the corporation.

In theory, dumping iron phosphate into the ocean can create a huge algae bloom that feeds phytoplankton -- one of the primary food sources of juvenile salmon that were migrating into the Pacific Ocean in the summer of 2012, when HSRC dumped 100 metric tons of iron in it. Proponents of ocean fertilization said the process mimics natural phenomenon like volcanic eruptions or winds blowing iron-laden desert sand into the ocean (ClimateWire, Nov. 12).

So what was the result of man's attempt to mimic nature? George Leonard, chief scientist of the Ocean Conservancy, said that "the political overtones are unhealthy and a distraction." While he questioned the scientific sophistication of the experiment, he said that it could be "interesting and valuable" if done right.

Crossfire of lawsuits

Shortly after authorities and the media got wind of the experiment and scientists and environmental groups had launched vehement objections, George was fired from his position as director of HSRC. In return, the California businessman sued the Haida corporation.

The Haida village of Old Massett had fronted all the money for the ocean fertilization project and hired George on a salary. It also gave him a 48 percent stake in the company, and, based on this, George said that it couldn't fire him.

"In this action the Plaintiff's are suing the Defendants for their oppressive and unfairly prejudicial to the interests and rights of [Ocean Pastures Corp.] and Russ George [sic]," the lawsuit said. OPC is George's personal corporation.

HSRC filed a countersuit in February in the Supreme Court of British Columbia that alleges that George misrepresented himself on a resume for another forestry project involving watershed restoration in the area of the Haida Gwaii, islands off the coast of British Columbia, where Old Massett is located.

The lawsuit alleges that George claimed of having a number of qualifications and had received honors that he did not in fact receive. The counterclaim says HSRC relied on these so-called false qualifications when it gave George a 48 percent state in the company.

Other false-representation allegations have been discussed elsewhere, including an article in The Christian Science Monitor that found that George once sold carbon offset credits to the Vatican City based on a forest that was never planted.

The HSRC counterclaim said George also failed to follow an agreement regarding dealing with the media and made statements "that were false, exaggerated, embarrassing or otherwise inappropriate."

"Mr. George's continued contact with the media caused great damage to HSRC and its reputation at a time when HSRC was subject to intense media scrutiny."

George's lawsuit, on the other hand, contends that "as a result of the actions of the Defendants, OPC and Russ George have suffered damages and continue to suffer damages and Russ George has been denied his right to direct management of HSRC in protection of the interests of HSRC and OPC."

George's suit also claims McNamee was going to release the data to the public -- data that George felt was valuable in the carbon offset market. He also accuses people he refers to as John Doe as nefariously working to get him fired from HSRC "at a time not known to the Plaintiffs."

U.N. jumps in

The search by the team from Environment Canada added another layer to this legal quagmire. It was looking for information about whether the ocean disposal violated Canada's Environmental Protection Act.

McNamee said that the investigation is ongoing and that the agency has two years to press charges after executing the search warrant. "According to our understanding at the time, we weren't breaking any laws," he said.

No charges have yet been filed, but the case could be further complicated by allegations from foreign governments and through documents obtained by the London Guardian of Canadian government complicity in the experiment.

The actual experiment was conducted from between 180 and 320 nautical miles off the Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, and the ocean current into which it was dropped affected both Canadian and international waters. That drew the attention of the United Nations.

Wendy Watson-Wright, the executive secretary and assistant director-general of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC), said that she is not aware of any papers demonstrating that these experiments had some success other than magazine articles, which should be "read with caution."

"As such, given the lack of new scientific data, the IOC position on this controversial experiment is that the potential side effects of ocean fertilization are presently not well-understood and will likely include unintended ecological consequences, which in turn can pose important political, social and ethical challenges."

She pointed to an IOC scientific review that says that although ocean fertilization can increase the uptake of CO2 across the ocean surface, long-term sequestration is difficult to assess.

What might we learn?

But Tim Parsons, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and an honorary research scientist at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Canada, said there have been 12 iron fertilization experiments conducted around the world at different times to date -- all of them with accompanying studies.

"They all show a fairly massive increase in production," he said.

Victor Smetacek, the head of the Department of Pelgiac Ecosystems at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, is one of the few other scientists who have actually conducted ocean fertilization experiments in different parts of the globe, albeit on a smaller scale than HSRC.

"Of the various macro-engineering schemes proposed to mitigate global warming, ocean iron fertilization (OIF) is one that could be started at short notice on relevant scales," he wrote in 2008 in a paper.

In terms of carbon dioxide, he wrote that "even under the best possible conditions, OIF will have only a limited effect on the rate at which atmospheric CO2 is projected to rise, but the amount involved is too large to be discounted; in short, we cannot afford not to thoroughly investigate the potential of this technique."

But in his view, scientists and nations have been slow to prepare and fund properly designed experiments that follow national and international rules.

McNamee, speaking for the Haida, said they are willing to share their data and chemical and biological ocean samples with other researchers and institutions "that will help us determine the value of the experiment."

While George may still hold a 48 percent state in HSRC until lawsuits are resolved, he wouldn't respond to questions about whether he intended to conduct further ocean fertilization experiments himself.

Leonard of the Ocean Conservancy said that experiments should move forward with the right government and scientific scrutiny. "If we're going to try to consider approaching human intervention, the whole issue needs to be above board, and this issue does not seem to be above board."

Some fishy returns

Meanwhile, the remaining interested party that could shed more light on this dispute -- the salmon -- has been sending in mixed messages.

Alan Frick, the manager of C B Islands Ltd., a fish processing plant near the Haida, said that chinook and other species have shown a bigger return than normal, but he doesn't think that it has anything to do with the experiment. Chinook have a longer migration cycle, though, and this year's catch may not have been affected by the experiment.

Pink salmon, which may have been affected, have been doing very well, he said. "These guys were coming in and filling their boats in a matter of a half a day to a day," he said, but Old Massett and Masset villagers don't benefit much from pinks, which aren't very valuable compared with sockeye, chinook or other varieties.

But while sockeyes are thriving with huge returns in the Fraser River and other areas, sockeye aren't doing so well. "Who knows why, but it definitely was a poor year for returns of sockeye on the northern island [of the Haida Gwaii]," Frick said.