Ocean Acidification Already Weakening Coral Reef Growth, Australian Scientists Find
The world's coral reefs are already being weakened by climate change with new research claiming to identify for the first time in nature effects of more acidic oceans. Separately, researchers are predicting the possibility of a major coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef because of unusually warm ocean waters - including in the region where the ocean acidification experiment took place.
The coral study, details of which were published on Thursday in Nature, noted that each year about one-quarter of the additional carbon-dioxide released as a result of human activities is absorbed by the world's oceans, altering their chemistry.
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The scientists targeted One Tree Island, a unique series of micro atolls near Heron Island off Gladstone, for the test site. As a result of the way the circular reef drains at low tide, isolating it from sea, the scientists could pump in sea water from a 15,000-litre tank at varying acidity levels to see how the ecosystem responded - without the effects of other influences such as ocean warming or pollution. When acidity was lowered to pre-industrial levels, calcification rates increased. The result implied corals were growing about 7 per cent faster than has become normal today, Mr Wolfe said.
"It's the first experiment using an entire ecosystem of corals, crabs and fish and manipulating the acidity levels in situ," he said.
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http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/coral-growth-already-being-affected-by-acidifying-oceans-new-research-finds-20160223-gn1vs4.html
