Dusters

The locality was predetermined by the wind and traffic, the inflatable bollards were in place and the two ships were side by side and roped together. The bridging piece was in place and the dogs and their handlers were the first aboard.

The marine biologists who used the long range inflatable work boats could be out of sight, radar range and depending on the dust, intermittent radio contact.
Smugglers came in all shapes and sizes, so when the supply ship docked, a check was mandated.

Next to be set up, were the high power vacuum units to convey the ten millimeter gravel from the supply ship to the duster ship.
The original planning had twenty ton shipping containers to ship the gravel, until someone saw the "Blowers" on the South Australian opal fields. Realizing the potential to transship, but also to carry from the storages to the crushers and hammer mills, then blow it into the dispersers, was a fortunate happenstance.

The original technique of forest treatment and the technology of the Talc industry was an easy pattern to copy, for fine powder production from rock.
The duster ship was equipped with jet turbine motive power and generating equipment, but the use of jet engines on the fan tail decking was a test of engineering ability.
The vertical angle could be varied between thirty and forty five degrees from the horizontal. Forty five degrees from the ship's axis to port and starboard, to match the dust cloud produced to the conditions as appropriate. A bonus from the dust dispensing engines was some forward thrust to the ship.

The dust cloud could be a mile high and at maximum, three miles wide and up to fifty miles long. The biologists had to sample pre-dust and post-dust conditions at various water depths to find the best day time and cloud density to make the most efficient use of the dust.
Feeding the ocean surface was suggested over a period of years, but until algae was farmed in large area ponds, for farming feed and fuel production, the chance to try was lost in talk.
The increase in production at the farm ponds put the talk away and gave marine engineers the chance to develop the ship and shipping system that ultimately boosted Phyto-plankton growth with the benefit of carbon dioxide removal from the air.
The study of the phyto-plankton and the organisms that consumed it, is ongoing and may benefit all the oceanic food chains.

The dusting was a nine to five job, with the late morning to start and early afternoon to finish, as sunlight at best strength was optimum. So the noise of the jets was shut off along with tile crushers and hammermills.
The crew quarters never the less had to be sound proofed and ant conditioned as the equatorial region was the most productive area for the surface feeding.
Quiet sleeping quarters allowed the under-water marine biologists to do the night time free diving and glass bulb submersible sampling that traced tile food chain from the surface to the main biomass of the ocean. The increase of biomass was a task to measure accurately as the whole project depended on the figures.

The "dry" season with the minimum cloud cover in the equatorial regions was extended to the tropics as the cloud cover and weather conditions built up to the "wet" a huge potential area. The area to be dusted was determined by a large number of interests.
Local fishermen, local shipping, international shipping, recreational sailing, light aircraft, heavy aircraft, satellite monitoring of sea surface temperature, radar altimetry studies and weather fore-casting.
The increase in productivity helped to assist with the negotiations, the policing of interference and port facilities for any and all of the back-up necessities.