Efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef by developing a marine park around it could come to nothing if the Australian Government doesn't also help protect it from greenhouse gases, according to a prominent biologist visiting Australia this week. Dr Thomas Lovejoy, who brought the problems of tropical forests to public attention in the 1980s and coined the term "biodiversity", has now turned his sights on the threat posed to sea life and coral reefs from rising acidity levels in oceans.
In Australia to talk to the Federal Government about its regional national heritage program and ocean acidification, Dr Lovejoy warned marine parks would not succeed as havens for sea life unless far greater efforts were made to cut greenhouse gas emissions. "What I think would be the great thing to happen would be if Australia were to look at the Great Barrier Reef in this context
because it is such an icon," said the former adviser to the World Bank and now head of US Heinz Centre for Science, Economics and the Environment. "You cannot look at it in isolation."
For years, scientists have viewed the ocean as a giant carbon sink that was absorbing some of the carbon dioxide generated when fossil fuels were burnt, and possibly limiting the changes to climate wrought by greenhouse gases. But a growing body of research shows the oceans' own chemistry has been upset by the huge amounts of CO 2 they have absorbed.
As carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, the water becomes more acidic, leading to a reduction in the level of carbonate ions used by tiny swimming snails to make their calcium carbonate shells. That leaves them vulnerable to predators but eventually could have disastrous consequences for larger species if shelled creatures disappear from the bottom of the marine food chain.
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http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/marine-park-useless-if-greenhouse-grief-continues/2005/10/26/1130302839011.html
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