A lot of people seem to be into the issue of climate change. I mean, there is global warming to consider and then all these unusually fierce hurricanes, earthquakes and sea level rise.
Yes, there are many changes expected.
It really isn’t a very pleasant thought, when you actually think about it. I mean, to think that we will in due time lose our beautiful beaches, our cities and towns will be under water and many coastal communities might have to be relocated. But then it is inevitable, it will take time before these occurrences actually came into being.
“We can’t do much, it is out of our hands,” said a marine professor at the Marine Institute at the University of the South Pacific, Johnson Seeto.
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However, he said that some corals may be in danger because they thrive in waters no more then 10 metres due to the sunlight. Corals need sunlight to survive because they are something like plants and photosynthesize. Meaning they need the sun-light to live.
However, a phenomenon that has Lovell worried is ‘ocean acidification’. This process involves the ocean absorbing carbon dioxide from the polluted atmosphere.
If there is an excess of cabon dioxide in the ocean the water gets acidic and then the corals will dissolve and liquify.
“It is really sad and quite puzzling because the chemical make-up of coral is calcium carbonate and you would think that these corals would be able to undergo a syncing of the carbon that the ocean absorbs. But this is not the case,” said Lovell.
We are in a period that is going to be extremely tough and hard to adapt to but changes will occur and it is only better to be well-informed and aware of how we can help ourselves. As Edward Lovell said, “We could always climb the mountains.”
Francis Whippy, Fiji Times Online, 14 June 2009. Full article.
