New reports indicate that ocean acidification is becoming a real problem in waters off of Washington State and could affect the Southern Ocean a lot sooner than we thought.
The first study shows that, over the last eight years, waters near Tatoosh Island, Wash., have become acidic 10 times faster than predicted. The changing seawater pH has killed 10-20 percent of the mussels on the island. Scientist J. Timothy Wootton of the University of Chicago said that rising ocean acidity could kill 60-70 percent of the the mussels in the coming decades. The NPR article about the study notes that “Mussels provide shelter for many animals that live along the tide line. They form a key part of the food web that includes the fish we eat.”
A separate study describes how the tipping point for acidification in the Southern Ocean may come in 2030, rather than 2060 as previously thought. That’s because plankton with calcium carbonate shells in the Southern Ocean appear to be more vulnerable to rising acidity at certain times of the year. Because these plankton form the base of the food chain, a large die-off could impact organisms higher up the chain, such as fish, dolphins and whales.
I also saw that in the latest issue of Science, Canadian scientists have shown that a decline in calcium in freshwater lakes correlates to a decline in crustacean zooplankton — which form the base of the food webs in these lakes. The study further shows that a large proportion of Ontario’s lakes will soon have dangerously low calcium levels. In these cases, the calcium decline can be traced back to increasing acidic soils, caused by acid rain and the impacts of timber harvesting.
We should be concerned about the acidification of our oceans and lakes, because of the effects on ocean life and the food chain. I wrote about this issue back in May, when a study came out showing how acidified sea water was coming up from the deep ocean along the U.S. West Coast some 100 years before scientists had predicted. Now, these more recent studies further illustrate how serious a problem ocean acidification is — and will be.
The image I’ve used is from a NOAA animation of how calcium levels are predicted to fall between now and 2100. Click here or on the image to see the brief movie, or read about the data and the movie here. Blue and purple areas indicate low levels of calcium carbonate, due to more acidic waters. The Xs represent coral reefs, which are in danger of dissolving if waters become too acidic.
Obviously you buy the fact of CO2 resulting in ocean acidification. Since 20 years ago the international science community has spent a quarter of billion dollars developing the only solution for this cataclysmic problem. Since CO2 has a residence time in the air of more than 100 years, there is little avail to reducing CO2 emissions even if it is a “good” thing to do. The dose of CO2 already airbone is a carbon bomb that is and will continue to impact the surface ocean for another 100 years. There is but one means to slow this acidification and that is to help the green plants of the ocean compete for the CO2 and convert it to living biomass instead of the default reaction of H2O CO2=H2CO3 carbonic acid.
With the report 2 weeks ago showing that the Southern Ocean has only 21 years left before it goes over the “tipping point” of acidification, 2030 the Aust. Acad. of Sciences says, we have scant time to do something. But note the biological observations of ocean health are far worse than the model projections and chemical observations. Since 1980 we’ve seen a 10% loss of green plants in the Southern Ocean, but even worse is the 17% loss in the N. Atlantic, 26% in the N. Pacific, and 50% in the tropical oceans. Then along comes the report of the US Acad of Sciences this past week that the N. Pacific has acidified at a rate 10-20 times faster and more than expected. Along with this shocking chemical measure there is the even more cataclysmic observation of the dramatic die off of shell fish at the Washington State study site.
While most simply cry out green political slogans, point blaming fingers, and call to screw another energy saving lightbulb such pervasive crys are cleary neither enough nor on target. What is imperative is that we begin immediate ocean eco-restoration by replenishing the mineral micro-nutrients we have denied the oceans and retoring ocean plants to the state of healthy growth they, and we, enjoyed some 30 years ago.
Ocean eco-restoration will restore the ocean forest, green plants, and in doing so those plants will use the power of photosynthesis to convert our deadly CO2 into life and abundance in the oceans instead of acid death. Read more at http://www.planktos-science.com