COMMERCE
Subscriber Services
Classified Ads
Subscribe
Advertise
NEWS
This Month
Editorial
Letters
F/V Safety
Past Issues
ABOUT US
Contact Us
Latest Issue
Subscribe
History
MORE CONTENT
CFN Archives
Links
Each month exclusively in the PRINT edition of CFN
Along the Coast
Ask the Lobster Doc
Bearin’s
Classifieds
Coming Events
Editorial
Enforcement Report
FISH SAFE
Fleet Additions
Letters
Lobster Market Report
New Boats
News Catch
Quahog Market Report
|
Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 38 Number 2
October 2010
Ocean acidification merits a closer look
It’s hard for a lot of people to wrap their minds around the issue of climate change. The problem is so big, so intractable, and the impacts so vague, variable, and disputable that it’s not surprising we tend to tune out the incessant alarms. But rising concerns about ocean acidification may be a compelling reason to tune back in.
Sometimes called the “evil twin” of climate change, scientists say ocean acidification is happening basically because human beings are burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at too high a rate.
Since the beginning of time, atmospheric carbon dioxide has interacted with ocean waters to create carbonic acid, which ocean systems neutralized. However, the world’s oceans appear no longer to be able to keep up with the process. As a result, scientists tell us the pH of ocean water is falling. That is, the water is becoming more acidic.
The potential effects of this are unsettling. They range from falling populations of commercially valuable clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, and lobsters to the collapse of the entire marine food chain as the shells of tiny snail-like creatures that make up a vital link dissolve in acid seawater.
Edward Miles, the Virginia & Prentice Bloedel Professor of Marine and Public Affairs at the University of Washington, described the current situation this way in the documentary film “A Sea Change.”
“There are massive, unrecognized changes of geologic scale taking place in the ocean. Ocean chemistry is being altered on a scale not seen for millions of years,” he said. “And we don’t know what the consequences will be.”
It’s impossible to draw attention to the subject of ocean acidification without recognizing that many of the environmental groups that are beginning to take up the cause are the same ones that often mischaracterize commercial fisheries. In fact, an Internet search of the term “ocean acidification” will turn up a list of the usual suspects.
However, such a search also will display plenty of other names, researchers in a wide variety of disciplines from scientific institutions and government agencies all over the world. And so, fishermen might want to think twice before letting the involvement of fishing industry critics dissuade them from looking further into the problem.
In a statement on “A Sea Change,” film director Barbara Ettinger said that she asks herself and others around the country, “What will it take to convince people that there is urgency, that we are in fact in a state of emergency?”
Most of us have been conditioned by the “sky-is-falling” messages from the environmental community to be skeptical at best and dismissive at worst to news of global cataclysm. But from what we’ve learned during our investigation of ocean acidification, it makes sense to raise awareness of this subject and encourage our readers to seek out additional information so they can decide what they think for themselves. /cfn/
Back to story list
|
|
Tell us what you think.
