Oceans will be 150% more acidic by 2050

Far from Copenhagen’s turbulent climate talks, the sea lions, harbor seals and sea otters reposing along the shoreline and kelp forests of Marine Sanctuary marine area, stand to gain from any global deal to cut greenhouse gases. But reducing carbon emissions worldwide also would help mend a lesser-known environmental problem: ocean acidification.

Nothing in the treaty negotiations specifically addresses the effects of carbon absorption in the oceans on marine life, which studies show is damaging key creatures’ hard shells or skeletons. Oceans absorb about 25% of the world’s greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere from human activities each year, says a new UN report released at the Copenhagen. That helps slow global warming in the atmosphere.

By 2100, some 70% of cold water corals, a key refuge and feeding ground for commercially popular fish that also are food for the seals and otters will be exposed to the harmful effects. Ocean acidity could increase 150% just by mid-century, according to the report by the secretariat of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. This dramatic increase is 100 times faster than any change in acidity experienced in the marine environment over the last 20 million years.