Marine Life Can't Keep Up with Rapid Climate Change Emily J. Gertz - TakePart
go to original February 5, 2016

Why Do People Still Deny Climate Change? (TestTube News)

If you want an idea of what oceans around the world may be like in the not-too-distant future, look to the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast of the United States.

That’s the message from a team of scientists who analyzed dozens of recent research papers on climate change’s impact on ocean conditions. Their work was published in the journal BioScience.

From British Columbia to Mexico, increasing acidity, rising temperatures, and lower oxygen levels are putting multiple stresses on marine life at the same time, said George Somero, a marine biologist at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University in Pacific Grove, California, and the lead author of the analysis.

Scientists are just starting to understand how these threats combine to affect animals throughout the food web, Somero said. “You can go from the level of a proton, a single unit of acidity, all the way up to the level of marine mammals. If you acidify the water, the food chain starts to crumble literally and figuratively, all the way up to killer whales.”

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