For more than two years, Canadian writer Alanna Mitchell travelled the world’s oceans, meeting scientists whose research was uncovering a crisis in the planet’s large bodies of water.
Overfishing, coastal dead zones and rising water temperatures are just some of the problems plaguing the world’s oceans. Mitchell found the most serious challenge the oceans face is climate change.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the air, the result of burning fossil fuels like oil and coal, mean more carbon dioxide is being absorbed into the ocean, making ocean water more acidic. Because calcium dissolves in acidic water, that poses a threat to corals, plankton and other life forms that use calcium to form a shell or skeleton.
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Monique Beaudin, The Montreal Gazette, 17 September 2009. Full article.
