Let's Save Our Oceans.
Our actions are hurting marine ecosystems. Aside from pollution and overfishing, we release excessive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) causing oceans to be warmer, more acidic, and have less oxygen. The dropping pH levels in our oceans causing the water to be more acidic is called ocean acidification.
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We release tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, cutting down trees and more; each year about 25 percent of that CO₂ is absorbed by the ocean. When oceans absorb CO₂, a series of reactions occur that increase the hydrogen ion (H⁺) concentration. Those hydrogen ions then bond with carbonate ions present in the ocean to form carbonic acid. The carbonic acid lowers the pH of the ocean meaning that the ocean becomes more acidic. This is ocean acidification. So the more CO₂ we release into the atmosphere, the more acidic the ocean gets.
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Ocean acidification has dire consequences on marine life. Pteropods (aka "sea butterflies") are integral to the marine food chain, but they are vulnerable to the now more acidic water; their shells degrade due to the acidity.
Additionally, because of ocean acidification, there is more excess acid that fish need to expel from their bodies. Ocean acidification will cause fish to decrease in size because fish will have to use more energy to expel the excess acid from their bodies instead of using that energy to digest food or escape predators.
Carbonate ions are essential to marine ecosystems. Ocean acidification decreases the amount of carbonate ions available to marine organisms since those carbonate ions bind to hydrogen ions. Coral structures are made of calcium carbonate which needs carbonate ions. Since there are less carbonate ions because of ocean acidification, coral reefs will be more brittle and have more difficulty reproducing. Likewise, shell fish such as mollusks, crustaceans, sea-urchins, crabs, and plankton need carbonate ions to help form their protective shells made of calcium carbonate. Less carbonate ions leaves these organisms with more defective shells. This leaves the creatures vulnerable making it harder for them to survive.
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Our actions impact our communities as well as the marine ecosystem. Many people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods and our excessive release of CO₂ is actively destroying marine ecosystems and the economies that rely on them. We are directly impacting such communites, but we are indirectly affecting ourselves. We are all bound together by the environment so our negative actions toward it have a large scale "domino" effect.
The health of the ocean is important, and our excessive release of CO₂ impacts everyone on this planet. Rising sea levels, toxic air, destroyed ecosystems and communities are happening right now because of our careless actions. There are numerous problems we caused and are causing because of burning large amounts of fossil fuels, destroying forests, and polluting our environment. Let's save our oceans, our air, and our environments. Because when we do, we save ourselves.
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Everyone can help mitigate CO₂ emissions. We need to hold our leaders accountable to take CO₂ emissions seriously by passing policies that protect our environments, our oceans, and our air. We need our leaders to fund scientific efforts to protect and research our ecosystems and environments. We can all advocate on the behalf our environments and we can all take measure to educate ourselves and others. And we can all take measures to reduce our carbon foot-print (the individual carbon dioxide emissions we release).
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Image taken from this website.