- Coral reefs could be dead within two generations and
cod replaced by jellyfish because of the acidification of the sea, scientists
said yesterday.
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- The potentially disastrous problem, discovered only recently,
is being caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
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- It is parallel to man-made climate change and scientists
believe that it will give new urgency to efforts to phase out fossil fuels.
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- Carol Turley, the head of science at the Plymouth Marine
Laboratory, told a conference in Exeter that the acidity of the sea was
rising through chemical processes that turned carbon dioxide into carbonic
acid.
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- She said: "It is happening now; nobody is saying
it is not happening. It is O-level chemistry but no one noticed until 15
months ago. This is a rapid change that the world - and the organisms in
the sea - have not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions.
There is a very urgent need to do more research."
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- Ms Turley said that acidification was likely to have
"a severe impact" on organisms with calcium in their shells or
skeletons, from plankton to sea urchins.
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- Corals' ability to produce calcium is expected to decline
by up to 40 per cent by 2065.
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- Lobsters and crabs, which form their shells out of another
compound known as chitin, may be less susceptible to damage.
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- As half of all carbon from the atmosphere is "fixed"
by microscopic plankton, the take-up of carbon is likely to slow down as
the seas became more acidic, accelerating global warming.
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- Ms Turley said that cod and other fish ate plankton and
shellfish that relied for their growth on calcium carbonate. If fish were
not there, the sea would fill up with organisms such as jellyfish, which
could eat other kinds of plankton.
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- "In cartoon form, you could say that people should
be prepared to change their tastes from cod and chips to jellyfish and
chips," she said. "The whole composition of life in the oceans
will have changed."
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- Ms Turley told the conference, called Avoiding Dangerous
Change, that coral reefs could find the sea too acidic within 35 to 70
years.
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- "Your grandchildren are unlikely to be able to dive
on a [living] coral reef," she told delegates.
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- The rise in the acidity of the sea, which is believed
to have begun with the burning of fossil fuels during the Industrial Revolution,
has emerged as one of the key messages from the conference on climate change
that will be relayed by Tony Blair to world leaders at this year's meeting
of the G8, of which Britain is president.
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- An estimated 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide from
fossil fuels emitted since the Industrial Revolution has been taken up
by the oceans - some 50 per cent of the carbon dioxide emitted.
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- Scientists from the Plymouth laboratory have given the
Government an urgent briefing on the problem.
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- Jerry Blackford, a colleague of Ms Turley, said that
the rise in acidity could kill coral reefs long before global warming made
the sea too hot for them.
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- The carbon from fossil fuels that was already in the
atmosphere could be enough to stop the coral forming.
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- "It is getting towards inevitable that the coral
reefs have had it," Mr Blackford said.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news
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