Ocean Acidification

Gabe Ryan

ES/ENG 155

Final Paper

December 21, 2015

Ocean Acidification

A young girl stands, toes wriggling as the cold ocean water slithers around her small ankles. She laughs gleefully as her feet sink slightly into the sand. Her parents stand a few yards behind her on the dry, coarse sand. They watch as their kicks at the gentle waves as the attack her bare feet. The girl slowly gets tired of the incessant water chasing her back and forth. She turns her attention to the small pools that the ocean seemed to have left behind as it receded during low tide. She smashed through the rippling surface, causing small striped bass to scattered, desperately searching for some cover. The girl chased small sea creatures all around the pool, flipping rocks over and plunging her arm into the water, fervently trying to catch elusive crabs before they dive beneath barnacle laden rocks. Soon, her parents call to her, signaling the end of her playful vendetta against the ocean and its inhabitants. She lags behind her parents as the three walk over the dune, leaving the beach. She turns and stares back, the wind licks at her cropped golden hair. A blazing ball is slowly reaching to her ocean, lighting it on fire. An image she would never forget.

An aging woman walks across a white beach, her right hand gripped tightly around her granddaughter’s tiny hand. The pairs shoe’s slid slightly as they walked towards the open ocean. The hand the woman held in her own began to wriggle, a desperate attempt to escape the jail in which it found itself locked. Her granddaughter strove, driven from curiosity, to run to the water in front of her, lapping at the land she and her mother stood upon. The woman wouldn’t let go. The ocean was no longer safe to enjoy. Improving the world had devastated the oceans. No longer could children jump and splash and play with the powerful creature lapping at the borders of the land. Fish no longer darted among pools during low tides. Rocks, once coated in sharp barnacles, sit alone, smooth, with no creatures residing beneath them. The woman shudders and pulls her granddaughter from the wretched water. Before descending behind the shrunken dunes, the woman turns and watches the sun fall from the sky. It lights the water up, sending brilliant, shimmering light bouncing from the undulating sea. The woman smiles slightly, a tear escaping from her tired eyes. She reaches down to the young girl, whose eyes are gleaming from the light cast in front of her, and tucks a lose strand of the girl’s golden hair behind her ear. All the woman can do now is remember.

The Earth’s oceans are one of the most complex and balanced systems on our planet. Humans have explored 10% of the vast amount of water that dominates our planet. Somehow, though it is forgotten about. Its size lends a false sense of security for its safety. However, the oceans are home to the majority of life on Earth. The creatures that live in the ocean have evolved to survive in a very specific climate that must remain stable in order to sustain life. Over the last hundreds of thousands of years, the oceans have hovered at a pH level of 8.2. This level has allowed incredible food chains and habitats evolve into balanced systems. When this number drops, these systems are thrown into turmoil. The smallest organisms in food chains are the most quickly effected by the smallest shifts in pH levels. While seemingly unimportant, when these tiny, sometimes microscopic, organisms begin to disappear, the effect is reverberated up the food chain. Predator looses prey; predator can’t survive and dies off. Habitat destruction is also greatly affected by acidification. Coral reefs are one of the most fragile ecosystems that exist. A balanced pH is imperative to the creating of the calcium carbonate that these incredible important and diverse habitats to continue to grow. Shifts in acid levels, even small ones can, and currently are, destroying coral habitats. Currently, the pH has only shifted down by 0.1, a 25–30% increase in acidity. Seemingly minute changes can be devastating to such fragile systems.

The oceans become acidic through a natural process. Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is absorbed from the atmosphere into the ocean and forms carbonic acid. Carbonic acid (H2CO3) forms simply by reacting and bonding with water molecules. The oceans absorb roughly 30% of all atmospheric carbon, much of which reacts with the water molecules to form acid. This process is done naturally and has maintained the correct pH balance for thousands of years. The reason why the pH level of oceans has dropped is because of the amount of CO2 entering the system. Man-made levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have shot up since the 19th century and with that increase, many issues have followed. For more than half a million years, the atmospheric CO2 levels have stayed below 300ppm (parts per million). In the 1900s that number was surpassed and levels continued to rise until today, which crept over 400 ppm. As these levels skyrocketed, levels of CO2 in the ocean also increased. More CO2 entering the system means more reactions occurring, which decreases the pH of the ocean, making it more acidic. The Industrial Age marked the first chapter in which humans begin to have devastating effects on nature.

Pushing oceans to the point where they are no longer safe for humans to enter most likely won’t happen for a long time, even if we continue on the path of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. However, the effects of ocean acidification will most likely become apparent to most people very soon. If acidification continues, smaller species, that we might never see will begin to disappear because of dissolving shells. The effects will rise up through the food chain and humans will begin to see a lack of small fish and other ocean creatures.

The human impact on ocean acidification is apparent. That past few hundreds years have seen more CO2 pumped into the atmosphere and subsequently absorbed by the oceans that ever before in that span of time. The ocean system is one of the most fragile and connected systems on our planet, which means a fall in one species results in the fall of another. Humans direct impact on the ocean system results in a responsibility to make sure that this does not occur. We must find a way to reduce our atmospheric CO2 emissions as quickly as possible; otherwise, we will lose these incredible ecosystems for good and will suffer the consequences.

Works Cited

“Ocean Acidification.” National Geographic. Web. <ocean.nationalgeogrphic.com>.

Henriques, Sasha. “Ocean Acidification — Cause for Alarm and Action.” Internation Atomic Energy Agency. 12 June 2012. Web. <iaea.org>.

“Graphic: The Relentless Rise of Carbon Dioxide.” NASA. Web. <climate.nasa.gov>.

“Ocean Acidification.” Ocean Portal — Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Web. <ocean.si.edu>.