Ocean Acidification and its impact on Marine Plankton : Is there a planetary emergency?
Is ocean acidification — the reduction in the natural alkalinity of the oceans due to the elevated absorption by the oceans of CO2 released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels – having an adverse impact on marine planktonplankton Plankton is a generic term for a wide variety of the smallest yet most important organisms form that drift in our oceans. They can exist in larger forms of more than 20cm as the larval forms of jellyfish, squid, starfish, sea urchins, etc. and can be algae, bacterial or even viral down to as small as 0.2µm. They are nutrient and light dependent, and form the essential foodchain baseline for larger dependent aquatic lifeforms. Fish species rely on the density and distribution of zooplankton to coincide with first-feeding larvae for good survival of their larvae, which can otherwise starve. Man-made impacts such as dredging, dams on rivers, waste dumping, etc can severely affect zooplankton density and distribution, which can in turn strongly affect larval survival and thus breeding success and stock strength of fish species and the entire ecosystem. They also form the essential basis of CO2 take up in our seas ecosystem, hence Global Warming. worldwide, and thus causing a planetary emergency? We provide here a link to a Marinet Special which addresses this question and its answer.
