Acidification and Other Ills Bring Oceans to Tipping Point, Study Says

Rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the world’s oceans, the spread of oxygen-free dead zones, and other human assaults on the seas are swiftly causing irreversible changes that have not occurred in several million years, according to a special issue of the journal Science. The review found that growing ocean acidification caused by increasing CO2 levels, rising ocean temperatures, and the expansion of dead zones are destroying coral reefs, sea grasses, and mangroves; causing a decline in fish populations and a breakdown in marine food chains; and leading to more frequent outbreaks of diseases among marine organisms. “If we continue down this pathway we get into conditions which have no analog to anything we’ve experienced,” said Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland in Australia and co-author of one of the studies in Science. “We are entering a period in which the very ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases beginning to fail.”