KIEL, Germany, Greenpeace today announced its ‘Arctic Under Pressure Expedition’ in which it will join with leading scientists to investigate the most urgent threats to the Arctic Ocean: ocean acidification, melting of the sea ice due to climate change and the fishing industry’s northward race (1).
In the first ocean acidification experiment of its kind (2), Greenpeace is supporting the German marine research institute IFM-GEOMAR (Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences), in exploring the effects of rising CO2 levels on marine life. The impacts of CO2-induced acidification are expected to hit first and hardest in the Arctic. It is changing the oceans’ chemistry, and could cause a breakdown of ocean ecosystems as we know them. The survival of plankton, corals and other critical sea life are threatened.
“Ocean acidification is pollution of the sea on a global scale and one more result of the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. Governments must make urgent and deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions now before it’s too late,” said Dr David Santillo of Greenpeace’s Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter.
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GREENPEACE, 12 May 2010. Full press release.
