As human-created CO2 increases in the air, so does the oceans acidity

-
Regardless of whether increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) will cause global warming, we know it will cause the oceans to become more acidic.

Corals and shellfish and calcareous algae, such as in the image below, rely on a low-acid ocean to produce their skeleton, and if the oceans become more acidic these animals and plants will not be able to grow properly.
The native Top Shell snails, and the pink calcareous algae in this tide pool,
rely on a stable and alkali ocean chemistry that is now being made
more acidic by anthropogenic CO2. Image (c) 2007 T. Murdoch

The only way to safely remove the additional CO2 that we have added to the atmosphere is to reduce emissions (exhaust) from cars, factories and other petroleum and coal burning sources.

You can read more about this global problem here (New Scientist) and how local scientists at BIOS are researching it here (BIOS).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LION FISH TOURNAMENT

-
Image
Prior BREAM research intern Matt Strong is hosting a Lionfish Tournament next weekend: SHOW SOME REEFSPECT AND "EAT'UM TO BEAT'UM" Host: GROUNDSWELL Price: $15 per individual & $30 per boat Date: Sunday, August 23, 2009 Time: 7:00am - 3:00pm Location: Pier 41 Marina - Dockyard Phone: 7047413OR3314440 Lion Fish Tournament Aug 23rd JUNGLE RULES APPLY Safely catch as many Lion fish as you can; spear them, hook them, net them. Basically get them how ever you can legally and safely. All Lion Fish Catches accepted - no size or number limits Tournament time: Sun-up to 3 p.m. SET ON AFTER at PIER 41 MARINA IN DOCKYARD From 3 p.m. until 7 p.m. Weigh-in and Awards/Prize Giving Lion Fish- Handling, Preparation and Tasting Big Tune by Harrington Sound... THESE FISH ARE DANGEROUS TO HANDLE. THEY HAVE VENOMOUS SPINES. EDUCATE YOURSELF BEFORE HANDLING. ENTER TOURNAMENT AT YOUR OWN RISK. We will have two information sessions and lion fish collection permit cou
Read more

Clod cards are what??

-
Image
By Brittany Huntington, Doctoral Student, RMSAS Univ. of Miami and BREAM summer graduate intern, funded by ACP What are these? Fossilized marshmallows? White chocolate petite fours? No no…this is real science people! This abundance of ice cube shaped trapezoids are nicknamed “clod cards”: a simple yet effective way to measure water movement as a proxy for current and flow exposure at underwater sites (developed by Doty et al., 1971). The mechanism is straight-forward. These plaster of paris ‘clods’ are all identical in composition, shape and size. Each clod should therefore dissolve slowly underwater at a constant rate. By weighing the dry clod cards before deployment, leaving them underwater for a fixed time period (usually between 24-48 hours) and then collecting them and re-weighing each clod, we can determine the precise weight of plaster of paris lost from each card. Clods losing more weight were exposed to greater water flow than cards exposed to less water flow. I am a visi
Read more

Mapping Bermuda's Coral Reefs

-
Image
BREAM, as part of the Bermuda Biodiversity Project at BZS, has developed the most comprehensive maps of Bermuda's coral reefs and other marine habitats that exist. In this post we will describe how we mapped all of the 35,000 patch reefs in the North Lagoon of Bermuda. Our goal was to create a Geographic Information System (GIS) of all the reefs found around Bermuda. A GIS is a computerized map that also contains information about each object mapped. Computerized maps are better than paper maps because once you put all the information you know into the program, you can then ask it to tell you new information which the program can calculate based on what you told it. Some questions you can ask a computerized mapping programme are listed at the bottom of this post. Before we mapped the location of each reef into a GIS (also called a geo-referenced map database) , we needed a set of images of the entire Bermuda reef platform. The BBP, with assistance from the Dept. of Conservation
Read more