Removing carbon from the atmosphere is a growing field of business in the fight against global warming, but it’s not just big air vacuums doing the work. New technology is targeting an even bigger potential resource: the ocean.

At a waterfront lab in Sequim Bay, a quiet inlet on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the startup Ebb Carbon is trying to answer a crucial question for the climate: Can we supercharge the ocean’s role as a carbon sink to help limit global warming?

CNN's Chief Climate correspondent, Bill Weir, pens this heartfelt Earth Day letter to his 4-year old son River about why Ebb Carbon and its peers give him hope for the future.

An ocean-based carbon removal company founded by former Tesla, SolarCity, and Google X employees has just secured $20 million in Series A financing. (Subscription required)

In this one hour CNN documentary that aired on Anderson Cooper's "The Whole Story," CNN visits Ebb's headquarters and other climate capture companies, and finds optimism in the face of global catastrophe.

The ocean can suck up a lot of carbon (good!) but that process makes the water dangerously acidic (bad!). Ebb Carbon has found a way to put more carbon in, while lowering the acidity levels at the same time.

"The ocean is the unsung hero of climate change and it’s been pushed to its limits... we have both an obligation and an opportunity here to help the ocean by aiding its ability to sequester CO₂ and clean up some of the damage that humanity has caused it through carbon emissions and warming."

Ebb Carbon’s pioneering carbon-removal technology combines with electrochemistry to accelerate the ocean's natural process of carbon removal, safely storing it for 10,000+ years, whilst simultaneously reducing ocean acidity — helping heal one of our strongest assets in the climate change fight.

Why it's poised to take off: Ebb Carbon has built a system that fits into a shipping container, says Ed Phillips of Future Planet Capital. Ebb Carbon's system "can reach gigaton scale at sub-$100 a ton of CO₂ captured" while also using less energy than other methods, Phillips added.

A group of former Google, SolarCity and Tesla executives in April snagged $20 million in what is being called the largest ocean-based carbon removal investment to date.

In this video discussion, CTO Matt Eisaman joined panelists from Vesta and Planetary Technologies to examine the challenges, and opportunities, in the measurement, reporting, and validation (MRV) for ocean alkalinity enhancement.

Oceans are large carbon sinks, absorbing CO₂ and using it to form bicarbonate—essentially, baking soda—that safely stores carbon for thousands of years. But this carbon removal process currently happens over millions of years, and is being hampered by climate change. That’s where Ebb Carbon... comes in.