Acidifying Oceans Are Killing Oysters and Oyster Farms

We need to understand and make known: Ocean Acidification is really bad. Life can adapt to a few degrees of temperature and more storms of great power. Global warming/climate change will cause ecosystems disassemble and populations will reassemble in unexpected ways due to changes in climate, food source and predators.

The more deadly fact is bio-chemistry not thermodynamic. When ocean acidity changes by just one unit ocean ecosystems will collapse, calcium-based marine life dies.  Never in 300 million years, according to Geological records, has pH dropped by more than 0.6 of a unit, with the possible exception of some “rare and catastrophic events in earth’s history!”  I believe and I think you'll soon agree that a dead ocean is worse than a bit of climate change and global warming. Having the climate of my home move south a few states does not concern me as much as does never again being able to eat wild seafood or any fried clams. I am not big on raw seafood, but the sweet taste of fried clams. But you need not take my word for it.

Alanna Mitchell tells why in her excellent book, Seasick. Mitchell introduces us to a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, named Joanie Kleypas:

“Kleypas remembers when she first recognized the seriousness of the pH issue. She was in a meeting with Langdon in Boston in 1998. . .  [They were] talking about carbon dioxide and how it affects the concentration of carbonate ions in the ocean, a topic so arcane and seemingly irrelevant that the group’s members hadn’t even heard of it at the university.  It certainly wasn’t on the scientific radar.  Nevertheless, they pooled their information and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Once they figured out how low the carbonate ion concentration would fall if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere kept rising they realized they were looking at a marine Armageddon.  Kleypas ran into the bathroom outside the committee room and threw up.

“It’s pretty serious when you’re messing around with calcifiers,” she says, explaining that the fossil record shows what when carbonate saturation falls, some creatures that need calcium become extinct. Would humans survive if coral reefs and calcium-shelled plankton and other sea creatures that need shells disappeared?”

Alanna Mitchell, whom I believe writes ocean science better than Rachel Carson, concludes: “We have no idea what other life forms that we depend on would vanish if plankton were to die out or dramatically decline in number. And we still don’t know the degree humans are symbionts with all these creatures we are endangering.  Kleypas and other who are working on this issue of ocean chemistry have unwittingly embarked on the ultimate human quest: to find out not where we came from but where we are going.  It is the great endpoint of human imagination.”

“How do these scientists on the front lines keep going?” Mitchell writes.  “Langdon points to the great strides humans have made to stop acid rain and heal the Great Lakes, the banning of DDT sparked by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, the attempts to repair the ozone hole.  Kleypas has hope, too.

Kleypas’s point is that we only feebly understand how some of these great earth systems work.  The planet remains capable of tossing us some big surprises. In the ocean, we understand even less.  We don’t comprehend enough to know how great the risks are. In fact, the further along the logarithmic index of knowledge we get, the more we understand how little we know.”

Alanna Mitchell talks with me and reads from her book Seasick, and you may tune in or iTune our conversation at http://www.oceanriver.org/Alanna_Mitchell.php. Recently, Vicki Osis , marine education professor of Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State U, talked with me on how increasing acidity of the ocean was first documented by scientists researching around the globe and how increasing acidity has killed oysters and caused Oregon oyster growers to close up shop.

Many speak of climate change and global warming. Increasingly their cries are falling on deaf ears. Perhaps deafened by volume and how close we came to passing legislation in 2010.  

Now is the time to speak out instead for the ocean before it is scuttled by humanity into the depths of ignorance, irresponsibility and greed.   

Let’s educate and advocate for oceans! Take action to not give up on marine life and healthy seafood. Fried clams for those who want 'em, healthy ocean waters for marine life to thrive in and lovely beaches to walk on. The action needed is to simply reduce one's carbon footprint.