“We have this crazy situation in the Bay of Bengal where the microbes are poised and ready to remove lots more nitrogen than they do, but the trace amounts of oxygen keep them from doing so,” said Bristow, now a scientist at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) in Germany.
“Remove the last amounts of oxygen, and the Bay of Bengal could become a major global player in nitrogen removal from the oceans,” said Wajih Naqvi, former director of NIO and a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Geosciences.
Removing more nitrogen from the oceans could affect the marine nitrogen balance and rates of marine productivity.
