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Today is the BLUEMiND Summit and you can join us LIVE online 8:00am to 5:00pm PST at www.MindandOcean.org. This ocean post is from the PBS Correlations archive, originally published on November 6th, 2007.
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You may have been hearing all the hullabaloo over ocean acidification. Sure sounds frightening [visions of a melting Wicked Witch of the West], but no, the oceans are not turning to acid. Still, it is a very real and scary possibility nonetheless. So let's explore what's going on just beneath the surface...
Ocean acidification means that the pH of oceans is becoming less basic because of us. Really. I know what you're thinking and sure... oceans are pretty big. But the truth is, yes, our actions indeed have a significant impact in the marine realm.
A little Ocean Acidificaiton 101
All the excess CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels, land-use changes, and so on winds up in one of three places... It's either taken up by terrestrial plants, remains in the atmosphere, or is absorbed by oceans. No matter what the outcome, it contributes to throwing off our natural long established system of environmental checks and balances. In oceans, dissolved carbon dioxide bounces around with carbonic acid, bicarbonate, and carbonate and all this chemistry leads to decreased overall pH at the end of the equation.
So what?
Bear with me readers and hold on tight... things are about to get serious. Rewind a bit and science suggests that surface ocean pH decreased by approximately 0.1 over the last 250 years. During that period, marine organisms evolved slowly and adapted to changes in acidity. But we now realize that pH has been decreasing at a faster pace since the upstart of the industrial revolution... Suspiciously about the same time we started emitting lots of carbon. Go figure. The thing is, less basic oceans present dangerous impacts for calcifying organisms. This means more vulnerable corals, coccolithophores, algae, pteropods and so on. (As if they didn't already have problems!) Reduced calcification and enhanced dissolution should raise red flags in anyone's book.
Now keep in mind that while oceanic uptake of CO2 may have originally mitigated excess carbon in the atmosphere, the unnatural human induced decrease in pH outweighs potential benefits. With full ecological consequences uncertain, we can bet certain marine species will be in trouble. In the direct sense, animals may suffer reproductive or physiological effects. But while we understand the consequences of acidification well enough to predict there will be problems, we don't know how extensive the change in acidification globally will be. Trophic cascades will likely also occur when predator and prey relationships are interrupted. And ever notice how things have a way of echoing up the food chain? Translation: humans will be affected. Yep. Us.
The big question is, well, what actually happens when these slowly evolved relationships between species and systems are thrown out of whack? Your guess is as good as mine. As for me, I'm just not comfortable with so much experimentation in our planetary adolescence. And remember all the interest in iron fertilization? The folks engaged in that research claim it won't necessarily lead to a more rapid rate of acidification... but the idea of loading even greater amounts of CO2 in oceans for storage seems a bit questionable to me all things considered.
What do readers think?
