http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42361-eight-year-study-confirms-all-sea-life-will-be-affected-by-acidic-oceans
[links in on-line article]
Dahr Jamail | Eight-Year Study Confirms "All Sea Life" Will Be Affected
by Acidic Oceans
Wednesday, October 25, 2017 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Report
The recently published Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification report
is an eight-year-long study by more than 250 scientists investigating
the impact of increasingly acidic oceans on sea life.
The chemistry of oceans has been changed by anthropogenic climate
disruption (ACD), as the oceans absorb carbon dioxide humans are
emitting into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide produces carbonic acid,
which lowers the pH of seawater.
The study is a product of the BIOACID project, which is based in Germany.
The research shows that all sea life will be affected by the increasing
acidification. Just one example: The numbers of baby cod that grow into
full adulthood could fall anywhere from one-quarter to just one-twelfth
of today's numbers.
Twenty-Five Percent Increase in Ocean Acidity
The BIOACID project shows that since the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution, the pH of the surface waters of Earth's oceans has dropped
from 8.2 to 8.1.
While this may sound like a miniscule amount of change, it is a stunning
26 percent increase in acidity.
Ulf Riebesell from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in
Kiel, Germany is the lead author of the recently released study, and a
global authority on the topic of ocean acidification. He explains that
various species are affected differently by acidification -- and those
effects can have a rippling impact.
Riebesell told the BBC, "Warm-water corals are generally more sensitive
[to acidification] than cold-water corals. Clams and snails are more
sensitive than crustaceans." He added that "even if an organism isn't
directly harmed by acidification it may be affected indirectly through
changes in its habitat or changes in the food web."
Given that more than one billion people rely on food from warm-water
coral reefs alone, humans will obviously be impacted heavily as
acidification progresses.
Sea life has been in trouble for a long time, due to overfishing,
pollution and ACD impacts.
Global fish stocks are in decline, as 85 percent of them are either
over-exploited, depleted, fully exploited or in recovery from exploitation.
Large areas of the seabed in the North Sea and the Mediterranean have
long since resembled deserts, and 90 percent of all large fish are
already gone from the oceans.
Acidification as a Kill Mechanism
The worst global mass extinction event thus far was the Permian Mass
Extinction event that took place 252 million years ago.
That event wiped out more than 95 percent of all life on Earth. It was
triggered by a dramatic increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, which was
absorbed by the oceans, which subsequently acidified and acted as the
primary kill mechanism for the event.
Another recently released study, "Thresholds of Catastrophe in the Earth
System," published in the prestigious journal Science Advances, showed
that if humans continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere and oceans, a
global mass extinction event could be triggered by 2100.
Many scientists believe we are already in the sixth mass extinction
event, primarily triggered by human CO2 emissions. Several peer-reviewed
scientific studies agree.