Acidified Seawater Ahead of Schedule: Our Dying Oceans...

Acidified seawater showing up along coast ahead of schedule

Climate models predicted it wouldn't happen until the end of the century.

So a team led by Seattle researchers was stunned to discover that vast swaths of acidified seawater already are showing up along the Pacific Coast as greenhouse-gas emissions upset the oceans' chemical balance.

In surveys from Vancouver Island to the tip of Baja California, reported Thursday in the online journal Science Express, the scientists found the first evidence that large amounts of corrosive water are reaching the continental shelf — the shallow sea margin where most marine creatures live.

More...

The article continues:

"What we found ... was truly astonishing," said oceanographer Richard Feely, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle...

All along the coast, the scientists found regions where the water was acidic enough to dissolve the shells and skeletons of clams, corals and many of the tiny creatures at the base of the marine food chain. Acidified water also can kill fish eggs and a wide range of marine larvae.

"Entire marine ecosystems are likely to be affected," said co-author Debby Ianson, an oceanographer at Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

Very depressing news.


[edit on 25-5-2008 by loam]

reply to post by loam


Good luck getting a reponse out of this thread, I already posted one on it, no replies yet though.

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

Thank you, Loam, for this very important news. This is certainly depressing. What's even more depressing is that alot of people probably won't think this is important and nothing will be done to fix it. I sure hope I'm wrong, though.
The other thing is that fish are the best source of Omega-3 oils, which makes us smart. Without sealife to give us that, we will be much dumber than we are now.

One of the most influential global change articles you will ever read. Pacific is acidifying. When our oceans become overrun with CO2 suck up that it is actually measurable. We are screwed. Everyday I read new species at risk of seeking to exist. The latest sharks. Brave new world.

[edit on 5/25/2008 by jpm1602]

This does not add up. In the mesozoic atmospheric CO2 was as high as 2000 PPM. The order Scleractinia (stony hexacorals) evolved during this time.

I own a reef aquarium and am fairly well read as far as life support goes; adding CO2 to what's called a "reactor chamber" with calcareous media actually helps make calcium available to the animals because it dissolves it in small levels. Still, low pH, in the truly acidic range, is difficult to achieve if not impossible with CO2 additions alone, unless there is an outside influence (chemical input) or extremely poor water quality.

This is indeed a catastrophe (assuming it's a true report) but I think that these people are jumping the "global warming did it" gun too early. There are far more important issues in our oceans than rising amounts of plant food, and they should be searching for another source.

We need to do something to stop this mess from happening the ocean is a storehouse of most the worlds food if the ocean dies then we die with it.

reply to post by caballero


What would you suggest?

[edit on 5/28/2008 by darkbluesky]

I wouldn't worry too much about killing all the life in the oceans. Living things in the ocean have survived periods of much higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 than we are producing, or will ever produce by the use of hydrocarbon fuels.



source