The increase in global carbon dioxide emissions is not just damaging the Earth’s climate, but also threatening the very fabric of life in our oceans.

Corrosive Water and Ocean Osteoporosis

Up to now, oceans have functioned as a "carbon sink", absorbing about one third of human-generated CO2 emissions. This has helped slow down global warming, but at the cost of making the ocean water more corrosive and acidic.

In a more acidic environment, many speces of plankton, shellfish and coral reefs begin to lose calcium out of their shells and skeletons, similar to what happens to human bones in osteoporosis.

We may already be seeing the impacts. For the fourth year in a row, the oyster larvae in Willapa Bay, Oregon,  failed to reach maturity, impacting jobs in the multi-billion-dollar aquaculture industry. While corrosive waters may not be only cause, scientist Richard Feely of the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory warns that ocean acidification will have far-reaching consequences for the entire marine food chain.

If we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere at the present rate, the ocean's acidity will rise to corrosive levels, beyond the capacity of many marine species and ecosystems to adapt. The most vulnerable are organisms at the base of the food chain, with devastating consequences for fish and fisheries, as well as marine mammals.

Too warm for comfort

The warming of the ocean surface is another consequence of climate change that is already disrupting marine ecosystems in BC and worldwide. Warmer ocean temperatures are severely stressing the West Coast icon -- wild salmon -- even as species previously associated with warmer latitudes, such as the Pacific sardine and jumbo squid, expand their range northward. Warmer temperatures also negatively affect the reproduction and movement of plankton and krill -- tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain - affecting fish stocks, marine mammals and lowering the ocean's overall productivity.

What can we do?

• Emergency treatment: immediate and dramatic reductions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is the only way to keep acidity down and preventing runaway climate change; and
• Nurturing the ocean back to health: By protecting key marine areas with high fertility and biological diversity we can help species adapt and rebuild their populations. This includes protecting forests of the sea - salt marshes and eelgrass beds - whose capacity for carbon storage surpasses that of land-based forests.