…
Because fish carbonate production goes up with temperature, fish are likely to produce more carbonate – and be more effective buffers of ocean acidity – as temperatures increase through global warming. That’s the good news. The bad news is that overfishing may have an additional downside: in addition to depleting food stocks, it could also deplete the precious carbonate buffer.
Because of the complexity of ocean chemistry, “we cannot really say much with any confidence about how overfishing might affect ocean acidification says Wilson. “But we definitely need to study this more to help make better predictions about these future changes.”
“We must buck the current trend of clear-cutting of the oceans and foster these unrecognised allies against climate change,” says Christensen.
Catherine Brahic, NewScientist, 16 January 2009. Full article.
