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John mentioned this in Tech5, yesterday. Since I already had the article at hand, thought I’d offer it up: |
An international team of scientists surveying the waters of the continental shelf off the West Coast of North America has discovered for the first time high levels of acidified ocean water within 20 miles of the shoreline, raising concern for marine ecosystems from Canada to Mexico.
Researchers aboard the Wecoma, an Oregon State University research vessel, also discovered that this corrosive, acidified water that is being “upwelled” seasonally from the deeper ocean is probably 50 years old, suggesting that future ocean acidification levels will increase since atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased rapidly over the past half century.
“When the upwelled water was last at the surface, it was exposed to an atmosphere with much lower CO2 (carbon dioxide) levels than today’s,” pointed out Burke Hales, an associate professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and an author on the Science study. “The water that will upwell off the coast in future years already is making its undersea trek toward us, with ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide and acidity.
“The coastal ocean acidification train has left the station,” Hales added, “and there’s not much we can do to derail it…”
Interesting article. I don’t get to hang out with oceanographers, too often – living in New Mexico. Doesn’t make this phenomenon any less intriguing.
Gosh, no responses? Misanthropic Scott must be out bird watching.
YES–the collapse of the ocean biosphere is well on its way. Probably before ocean rise it will cease to be a source of food for human beings. Areas that could be fished with bare hooks now only support jellyfish.
Its fun to track these stories in the news. Many stories about how a certain species has “recovered.” But if you can get behind the story, “usually” the fish numbers used to be say 100x. The healthy sustainable number is 50x–meaning we can take 50x to feed ourselves and the remaining 50x will resupply us. But we overfish and the stock falls to 10x. Then we protect the species and it rebounds to 20x and we start fishing again.
It all works until the ocean turns into battery acid and the coral and algae dies and the food chain collapses.
I live better than my father did. My kids don’t live as well as I do. We are past peak production on all sorts of resources.