Great Barrier’s Grief

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Great Barrier’s Grief

pacific.edu

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef, and the bivouac-ian backbone for many of the organisms that live in and around it.

Leave it to global warming to ruin both a day at the beach and an entire oceanic ecosystem. Researchers are blaming the environment’s public enemy No. 1 as well as rising seawater acidity for what has been the slowest coral growth rate at the Great Barrier Reef in more than 400 years.

The BBC:

Coral growth in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has slowed to its most sluggish rate in the past 400 years.

They studied massive porites corals, which are several hundred years old, and found that calcification has declined by 13.3% since 1990.

Global warming and the increasing acidity of seawater are to blame, they write in Science journal.

Coral reefs are central to the formation and function of ecosystems and food webs for tens of thousands of other marine organisms.

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TAGS: acidity australia coral coral reef environment global warming great barrier reef nemo ocean sea

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By jackpine savage, January 2, 2009 at 1:48 pm Link to this comment

Global warming and the rising acidity of the oceans are related. Oceans absorb CO2, but if there is not enough photosynthetic activity to break it apart it changes the pH of the body of water.

Unfortunately, photosynthetic organisms tend to be very sensitive to pH…and hence a vicious circle is born.

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