“A UK scientist studying volcanic vents in the ocean says they hold a grave warning for future marine ecosystems.
These vents have naturally acidified waters that hint at how our seas might change if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to rise.
They are conditions that would make it harder for corals and similar organisms to make the hard parts in their bodies.
Dr Jason Hall-Spencer’s work suggests our oceans could lose perhaps 30% of their biodiversity this century.
The Plymouth University researcher has been presenting his latest findings to a major conference in Vancouver, Canada.
“I am investigating underwater volcanoes where carbon dioxide bubbles up like a Jacuzzi, acidifying large areas of the seabed, and we can see at these vents which types of organisms are able to thrive and which ones..”
They will be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by human activity, says top UN scientist
Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.
The claim is made in a book, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be “a new first for mankind – the ‘extinction’ of an entire ecosystem”. Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
The predicted decline is mainly down to climate change and ocean acidification, though local activities such as overfishing, pollution and coastal development have also harmed the reefs. The book, Our Dying Planet, published by University of California Press, contains further alarming predictions, such as the prospect that “we risk having no reefs that resemble those of today in as little as 30 or 40 more years”.
ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2011) — Sharks are in big trouble on the Great Barrier Reef and worldwide, according to an Australian-based team who have developed a world-first way to measure rates of decline in shark populations.
“There is mounting evidence of widespread, substantial, and ongoing declines in the abundance of shark populations worldwide, coincident with marked rises in global shark catches in the last half-century,” say Mizue Hisano, Professor Sean Connolly and Dr William Robbins from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
“Overfishing of sharks is now recognized as a major global conservation concern, with increasing numbers of shark species added to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s list of threatened species,” they say in the latest issue of the international science journal PLos ONE.
“Evaluating population trends for sharks is complicated,” explains Professor Connolly. “The simplest approach of looking at trends in fisheries catches doesn’t work well for sharks. First, many countries with coral reefs don’t keep reliable records of catches or fishing effort.
“London (CNN) — Marine life is under severe threat from global warming, pollution and habitat loss, with a high risk of “major extinctions” according to a panel of experts.
These are the conclusions of a distinguished group of marine scientists who met at Oxford University, England, in April to discuss the impact of human activity on the world’s oceans.
The meeting, led by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), examined the combined effects of pollution, acidification, ocean warming, over-fishing and depleting levels of oxygen in the water.
The panel found that oceanic conditions are similar to those of “previous major extinctions of species in Earth’s history,” and that we face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such..”
“Clownfish, the spectacular tropical species featured in the movie Finding Nemo, appear to lose their hearing in water slightly more acidic than normal.
At levels of acidity that may be common by the end of the century, the fish did not respond to the sounds of predators.
The oceans are becoming more acidic because they absorb much of the CO2 that humanity puts into the atmosphere.” Read the rest of this BBC article
“There’s some good news, for a change, in the latest climate forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA scientists say the world’s threatened coral reefs, which for decades have been bleaching out and dying off because of climate-induced changes in ocean conditions, might be getting a respite this year.”
Part of ‘cloud computing’, data centres and telecommunication networks, will likely consume about 1,963 BILLION kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2020. That’s more than the current electricity consumption of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil combined!
“The great sweep of water around Planet Earth has been captured from space in greater detail than ever before.
New observations from Europe’s Goce gravity mapping satellite have allowed scientists to plot ocean currents with unprecedented precision.
Understanding gravity is fundamental to being able to track the direction and speed of water across the globe.
The data should improve the climate models which need to represent better how oceans move heat around the planet.
Very strongly represented in the new map is the famous Gulf Stream, the most intense of all the currents where water zips along at velocities greater than one metre per second in places.
“The Gulf Stream takes warm water from the tropics and transports it to higher latitudes, and that warmth is released to the atmosphere and keeps the British Isles, for instance, much..”
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