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Young World
Save the sea world
COPILED BY ROHINI RAMAKRISHNAN
CHANGING CHEMISTRY: Effects on marine life will be catastrophic.
The world's oceans are turning acidic due to the build-up of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and scientists say the effects on marine life will be catastrophic. In the next 50 to 100 years corrosive seawater will dissolve the shells of tiny marine snails and reduce coral reefs to rubble, say researchers. Four leading marine experts delivered this grim prognosis recently at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, California, U.S. The scientists stressed that increased ocean acidity is one of the gravest dangers posed by the build up of atmospheric CO2. "Ocean chemistry is changing to a state that has not occurred for hundreds of thousands of years," said Richard Feely of Seattle's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. "Shell-building by marine organisms will slow down or stop. Reef-building will decrease or reverse." Already, Feely said, ocean acidity has increased about 30 per cent since industrialisation began spurring harmful carbon emissions centuries ago. Unless emissions are reduced from current levels, an increase of 150 percent is predicted by 2100. Such an increase would make the oceans more acidic than they've been at any time in the last 20 million years, he added. The organisms most directly affected are those that build hard shells or other mineral structures of calcium carbonate. These include numerous species of corals, marine snails, and crust-building algae.
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