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Legal controversy surrounds the largest ever 鈥渋ron-seeding鈥� experiment to geoengineer the climate as it sets sail from South Africa.

Within weeks, a team led by of the Alfred Wegner Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, hopes to dump 20 tonnes of ferrous sulphate into the Southern Ocean. The aim is to trigger a plankton bloom that will suck carbon out of the air and lock it up at the bottom of the ocean.

After a company called Planktos sparked controversy in 2007 with plans to dump iron filings in the Galapagos, both the (IMO) and the recommended that governments restrict such activities because they could have detrimental effects on ecosystems. The IMO鈥檚 rules on marine protection do not cover experiments like Smetacek鈥檚, but 鈥渋t will be in clear defiance of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity鈥�, warns Jim Thomas of environmental research organisation .

Smetacek says his expedition has been approved by the German government, which helped define the UN guidelines. Others point out the experiment is unlikely to cause harm. 鈥淭wenty tonnes of iron particles in the vast ocean is very much a drop in the bucket,鈥� says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California. 鈥淭he rational concern is that experiments will lead down some slippery slope 鈥� that small experiments could be scaled up without any regulation.鈥�