The Loss Of Marine Life

The ocean is one of our most precious natural resources. Every living thing depends on our ocean. The ocean hold 97% of the earth water, as they produce oxygen and absorb carbon. The ocean is a source of food and a natural living habitat for all sea creatures. Over the years as we move closer, the surface of our oceans is beginning to stew up with millions to tons of marine debris, as it has a huge impact on our ecosystem. The oceans are becoming vital for our life and breath and as we are abusing and polluting it without giving thought of the consequences.

The rising carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities continues to affect our atmosphere, resulting in global warming and climate change. This carbon dioxide is also altering the chemistry of the oceans, causing them to become more acidic. From scientists and marine resource managers, to policy and decision-makers, there is growing concern that the process called ocean acidification could have drastic consequences on marine ecosystems. Such as altering species composition, disrupting marine food webs and ecosystems and harming fishing, tourism and other human activities connected to the sea.

Over the years Carbon Dioxide has been significantly increasing from human activity. CO2 has a concentration of about 400 ppmv (parts per million volume). Its concentration in the atmosphere was about 280 ppmv before the Industrial Revolution, now it has increased immensely to about 380 ppmv in 2006. Many have said Carbon Dioxide has been the main reason or cause of global warming; saying that if we produce too much of this greenhouse gas it can create a global climate change. Even though carbon dioxide affects the temperature of the atmosphere it also affects the acidity of water specifically in the ocean.

Ocean Acidification is a process that occurs everyday and majorly affects our planet, but most people don’t even realize it exists. Though it can technically be argued that Ocean Acidification has some benefits for the planet, most of the time the effects of this process are very poor and negatively affect the entire world around us. Human evolution has played a major role in contributing to Ocean Acidification. Whenever humans use energy we release Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere or also known as CO2. This can be in the form of burning fossil fuels from the ground or the removal of national forest by burning. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which means whenever we can emit it in large quantities or unnatural amounts it can have negative effects on the atmosphere. These high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere result in climate change and more specifically Ocean Acidification. Ocean Acidification occurs when excess Carbon Dioxide is absorbed into the ocean. When this process takes place it can completely disturb the chemical balances of the water. For example, it can reduce pH levels, Biodiversity, and the abundance of calcifying species.

This increase in oceanic inorganic carbon has offset the seawater carbonate chemistry by causing increasing concentrations of CO2 and bicarbonate, while causing decreasing concentrations of carbonate and pH levels (Dedmer 2013). Rost and colleagues (2008) express that emissions of fossil fuel have caused an immense increase in the levels of atmospheric CO2, which are then deposited into the surface water of oceans. This increase in carbonic acid is in turn decreasing the pH balance, which poses a threat to marine organisms.

The ocean makes up nearly three-quarters of the planet 's surface and contains about eighty percent of the life on earth. Millions of people all over the world depend on seafood heavily as a primary source of food. Americans alone consumed as much as 15.8 pounds of seafood per person in 2009 (NOAA). This is a lot of fish. In fact, it is so much that many populations of fish are going extinct. At this particular rate according to National Geographic, scientist predict that the earth is expected to lose all of its current fisheries by the year 2048 (Roach). The overfishing of our oceans leads to unmanageable practices that will eventually cause many species of fish to become extinct.

About half of that man-made CO2 has been absorbed by the oceans, increasing the concentration of carbonic acid, which has caused the oceans to become more acidic. Over the past 300 million years, ocean pH has averaged about 8.2. Today, it is around 8.1, a 25% increase in acidity over the past two centuries. That increase is projected to reach 150% by the end of this century, a rate of change not seen in 65 million years. A more acidic ocean inhibits shell growth in marine animals such as corals, crustaceans and mollusks, and disrupts entire food chains all the

“How acidification threatens ocean from the inside out: Carbon dioxide emissions are making the oceans more acidic, imperiling the growth and reproduction of species from plankton to squid”, by Marah J. Hardt and Carl Safina addresses the dangers of increasing acidity in the ocean caused by carbon dioxide. Hardt, a research scientist and writer, is the founder of Ocean Ink. Safina, an adjunct professor at Stony Brook University, is the founding president of the Blue Ocean Institute.

Ocean acidification is known as a significant and destructive issue of a substantial amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere and settles in the ocean. Humans are not able to see or feel this happening based on the fact its process only occurs underwater. Each day the ocean consumes twenty two million tons of carbon dioxide, which originates from burning fossil fuels and destruction of park trees. Carbon dioxide fuses with water, which then generates it to become

Ocean Acidification began over 200 years ago when the industrial revolution came along. This caused carbon dioxide levels to rise.

The Earth is a very miniscule piece in a much grander puzzle called the universe. Within that tiny rock in space are complicated systems that help to sustain life. The atmosphere surrounding us is a mixture of many different components. It is composed of roughly 78% nitrogen, about 21% oxygen, and about 1% other, which includes carbon, the most fundamental element on Earth (Hopkins 2010). Carbon is present in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (Hopkins 2010). Carbon dioxide may have a small presence in the earth 's atmosphere but it plays an important role in the processes within the ocean, having a huge influence over the chemistry of seawater carbonate and its equilibrium process (Hopkins 2010). One way it impacts the ocean is via a process called ocean acidification. Carbon dioxide is a compound that can be found in nature, but the elevated carbon dioxide levels caused by humans can have a lot of unintended consequences, particularly to the seawater carbonate chemistry (Hopkins 2010).

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that we exhale in our daily lives. Plants use carbon dioxide to create oxygen that all mammals use. However, carbon dioxide can also change the chemistry of the ocean, this is often referred to as ocean acidification. The excess carbon dissolves into oxygen in the water, producing a chemical called carbonic acid. This acid causes the ocean to become more acidic. In the eighteenth century, the pH was 8.07 which was slightly basic. Currently, the pH is around 8.01 this is about a twenty-five percent increase in acidity. (National geographic) While this slight change may not seem outrageous, it is causing multiple marine life struggles. The acid melts the shells of pteropods causing a low supply of food that would support larger fish.

It was Mihaljo Mesarovic, the author of “Mankind at the Turning Point”, who once said “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is man”. He was definitely onto something. In fact, humans have had a major negative impact on the world’s marine environment. Throughout recent human history, it has been obvious that the wellbeing of the marine environment has been in jeopardy. Pollution of the ocean, overfishing and the greenhouse gases these are all the aspects that can cause the destroying of the precious environments, such as reefs, sea-grass and coastal habitats. According to the essay and interview “Seafarming at the End of the World”, written by Peter Meehan, he presents the fact that human impact on the ocean is the main reason that causes the awful situation of marine ecosystem and organisms.

Marine life is an important aspect to not just the community but to the whole entire world. The oceans holds almost sixty percent of our oxygen that not only we the people need to survive but creatures too. In the past four decades the population of sea creatures have nearly declined by fifty percent. A reason that could be a huge cause for the declination of the population is pollution.

Majestic animals that live in the ocean are rapidly dying and subsequently washing up on numerous shorelines that touch the Pacific Ocean’s waters. Disposal of a variety of toxins and damaging waste finding a path into our oceans are to blame for the deaths, which are largely preventable. Sharks, sea turtles, whales, dolphins and birds are just fraction of the marine life that are suffering because they are becoming sick or are dying of starvation. Their food sources are diminishing or disappearing as the cycle of destruction continues on down to the tiny, minute plankton that are the core of the food chain in the ocean. Contamination is causing the sudden increase of marine life deaths in the Pacific Ocean. The most recent reports of dead sea animals found washed up on shorelines don’t state scientific evidence of the cause of the mysterious deaths.