Climate Change Is Suffocating Large Parts of the Ocean

[Judi Lynn]

A new study says warming has reduced the oxygen levels in large swaths of the deep ocean, threatening marine life around the world.

By Craig Welch
PUBLISHED JANUARY 4, 2018

One day more than a decade ago, Eric Prince was studying the tracks of tagged fish when he noticed something odd. Blue marlin off the southeastern United States would dive a half-mile deep chasing prey. The same species off Costa Rica and Guatemala stayed near the surface, rarely dropping more than a few hundred feet.

Prince, a billfish expert who has since retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was stumped. He’d studied blue marlin off the Ivory Coast and Ghana, Jamaica and Brazil, and he’d never seen anything like it. Why wouldn't these expert divers dive?

The billfish, it turns out, were trying to avoid suffocation. The marlin near Guatemala and Costa Rica wouldn't plunge into the murky depths because they were avoiding a deep, gigantic and expanding swath of water that contained too little oxygen. The discovery was among the first examples of the many ways sea life is already shifting in response to a new reality that hasn't gotten much attention: Marine waters, even far out in the high seas, are losing oxygen thanks to climate change, upending where and how sea creatures live.


"This is a global problem, and global warming is making it worse," says Denise Breitburg, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Research Center. "It requires global solutions," she says.

More:
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/climate-change-suffocating-low-oxygen-zones-ocean/

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. The oceans die, then we die.

[pansypoo53219]

2. stupid is suicide.