SiliconBeat

Planktos, the Foster City company we first wrote about in September when it reported receiving a $2 million funding in its carbon-credits business from an unnamed investor, says it “has been forced to indefinitely postpone its ocean fertilization efforts once intended to restore marine plant life and generate ecological offsets for the global carbon credit market,” according to a press release it issued Wednesday.

The company blamed the moved on a “highly effective disinformation campaign waged by anti-offset crusaders has provoked widespread opposition to plankton restoration in the environmental world, and has caused the company to encounter serious difficulty in raising the
capital needed to fund its planned series of ocean research trials.’

Planktos has recalled its research vessel Weatherbird II and crew back from the Portuguese island of Madeira where they been docked “awaiting the resources necessary to initiate and monitor its first research plankton blooms.”

Management has “radically downsized the company’s staffing” while its board has formed a new committee to explore “all options,” including a possible re-launch of planned marine operations, should it find more funding, “new partnerships, as well as the possible pursuit of other promising business opportunities in the environmental sphere.”

No mention was made of the company’s other project, a plan for “the planting of indigienous trees in the national forests of Hungary. The press release ended on a dramatic note:

“The board of directors continues to believe in the urgent ecological necessity of its ocean restoration plans and the scientific speciousness of objections voiced to date. However, ideological hostility to and misrepresentations of this work will continue to stymie progress
until the true gravity of our climatic and ocean crises is more widely understood.”

Planktos shares, which trade on the Pink Sheets, closed at 3.3 cents Wednesday, down one-tenth of a penny. Amazingly enough, 78,471 shares changed hands that day.