According to a study conducted by an international team of researchers, the rate at which the oceans are currently becoming more acidic has increased due to carbon emissions from humans.

Oceanic acidification is nothing new; oceans have been naturally acidified in the past, notably, as scientists learned, several times in the last 300 million years.

During the process of acidification, the oceans moderately draw excess carbon from the atmosphere. The carbon then reacts with the seawater to create carbonic acid, which causes most marine life to die off. Over time, the carbon acid is neutralized to form fossils of dead organisms.

“We know that life during past ocean acidification events was not wiped out—new species evolved to replace those that died off,” Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoceanographer at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, states in a press release from the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “But if industrial carbon emissions continue at the current pace, we may lose organisms we care about—coral reefs, oysters, salmon.”

Due to the rate at which carbon is entering the atmosphere, oceans are forced to draw it in more quickly and, therefore, are unable to deal with the excess.

Based on their studies, researchers discovered that acidification causes mass extinctions of marine life and disrupts ecosystems. In the 1990s, scientists found a layer of mud between two beds of carbonated fossil beds (the mud was created from dissolved fossils) from the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) 56 million years ago.

They learned that in a span of 5,000 years, concentrations of atmospheric carbon doubled, and that the global temperature increased by 6º C (43º F), and the ocean pH dropped by 0.45, indicating that the acidity level rose.

Past research has revealed two other definite past occurrences of rapid seawater acidification, caused by massive volcanism. The first occurred in the Permian Period, 252 million years ago. In the vicinity of present-day Russia, immense amounts of carbon spewed from volcanic eruptions.

A staggering 96% of marine life went extinct. Researchers found dead zones around Russia’s coast and discovered that they only contain organisms able to withstand the high levels of carbon. The second occurrence took place 201 million years ago, during the Triassic period. A likewise percentage of species became extinct. In addition, the coral reefs were destroyed.

Numerous studies of oceans and the correlation of rising acidity levels and diminishing marine life are being conducted around the globe. For example, as stated by an article in the journal Nature, one study of the coral reefs at Papa New Guinea shows that the pH dropped 7.8 (a lot higher than the 0.48 stated before, as one can see), and so has coral reef diversity.

Christopher Langdon, a biological oceanographer at the University of Miami who co-authored the study on Papua New Guinea reefs, says “These studies give you a sense of the timing involved in past ocean acidification events—they did not happen quickly.”

Despite the present evidence of the build-up of carbon emissions and the detriments it has caused, decades would have to pass before the acidification would truly have to show its effects.

“Considering the effects we detect through fossil records,” Patrizia Ziveri, researcher at ICTA tells Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, “there is no doubt that we must tackle the problem at its roots as soon as possible, adopting measures to immediately reduce our CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.”

A number of the researchers involved with the original studies are from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA) of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), and the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA).

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This early January, a team of marine scientists discovered a new species of life in a most unlikely place: on the ocean floor, hidden from sunlight and steeped in pressures of thousands of pounds per square inch, swarming around vents that spurt scorching water.

Boarding the vessel, Atlantis, the team – led by marine biologist Dr. Jon Copley and marine geochemist Dr. Doug Connelly – descended five kilometers to the Cayman Trough, located south of the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean. At the Cayman Trough, like at other trenches, two tectonic plates are slowly shifting apart 0.6 inches or 15 mm per year, producing fresh ocean floor. Hydrothermal vents often sprout at trenches due to the volcanic activity occurring below.

Found commonly in ridges, they are essentially seafloor chimneys – as tall as ten meters – that spew mineral-filled water, whose temperatures range from 300 to 400° C (600-750° F). Their heat comes from magma chambers under the ocean floor. Upon reaching their destination, the marine scientists were surprised to see two hydrothermal vents that were six meters tall. The team did not expect to find vents because it was thought that they did not exist in the area.

This type of vent, known as a “black smoker vent,” gushes 450° C (~850° F) water, filled not only with minerals, but with metallic particles, making the water appear smoky. The explorers named the vents the Beebe Vent Field, after William Beebe, an American scientist who was the first deep-sea explorer. The team was surprised even further when they spotted a new species of shrimp clustering (2,000 per square meter) around the vents and feeding on the minerals.

In lieu of eyes, the ghostly white shrimp have a light-sensing organ on their backs to help them navigate through the dim glow emanating from the vents. Furthermore, white anemones were found laying on the sea floor, where they fed off of the copper-rich water that seeped through. In a previous expedition, the team also found vents around Mount Dent (3 km high), an underwater mountain located at the Cayman Trough.

“Finding black smoker vents on Mount Dent was a complete surprise,” Dr. Connelly says in the National Oceanography Center news release. Dr. Connelly works at the National Oceanography Center. “Hot and acidic vents have never been seen in an area like this before, and usually we don’t even look for vents in places like this.”

With their finding vents at Mount Dent and now at the Cayman Trough, the marine scientists surmise that there is more volcanic activity in the ocean than previously thought. Recently, another team of scientists discovered new species of crab and octopus – called the yeti crab and the pale octopus, respectively – hanging around vents in Antarctica.

With the combination of the discovery of life at the bottom of the Antarctic and at the Cayman Trough, marine scientists all over the world are expanding their perception of what sorts of conditions life can thrive in, especially in the deepest parts of the oceans. “Studying the creatures at these vents and comparing them with species at other vents around the world will help us to understand how animals disperse and evolve in the deep ocean,” states Dr. Copley of the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

“One of the big mysteries of deep-sea vents is how animals are able to disperse from vent field to vent field, crossing the apparently large distances between them,” he adds. “But maybe there are more ‘stepping stones’ like these out there than we realized.”

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Society for Marine Mammology Biennial Conference — Wildlife Acoustics, the leading supplier of acoustic monitoring systems for endangered and threatened wildlife species around the world, announces a new ultrasonic marine submersible recorder. ”Wildlife Acoustics has proven to be a market changer in wildlife monitoring,” said Ian Agranat, President and CEO of Wildlife Acoustics.

“Leveraging our experience in the ultrasonic bat world, we are excited to introduce an ultrasonic version of our SM2M marine recorder.” The Song Meter SM2M Ultrasonic autonomous submersible marine recorder provides researchers the ability to record and monitor anthropogenic and biological acoustics from 2Hz up to the ultrasonic frequency of 192kHz.

“We have now used the SM2M in two different locations to record dolphin sounds and ambient noise levels. Wildlife Acoustics supported us every step of the way with great advice,” says Kathleen M. Dudzinski, PhD, Director of the Dolphin Communication Project & Senior Marine Scientist at Geo-Marine, Inc. “The deployment was straightforward and the recordings were clear. We look forward to working with the new ultrasonic version.”

Designed for quick refurbishment ship side for immediate redeployment, the SM2M and SM2M Ultrasonic may be anchored and recovered via tether, diver or optional acoustic release for easy retrieval. Lee Shores from Marine Acoustics, Inc. comments, “The SM2M recorder works very well to record anthropogenic noise and marine mammal vocalizations.

The software is easy to configure in the field, it is simple to rig for the marine environment, runs for weeks without changing batteries, and records months of data on SD cards. I was able to recover the recorder, get the SD cards out, plug them into my laptop and complete the analysis in the field.”

Customers can also deploy for months using a recording schedule or duty cycle with negligible power consumption during “sleep” mode. Wildlife Acoustics, Inc., a privately held Massachusetts corporation, is the leading provider of bio-acoustic monitoring technology for scientists, researchers, government agencies and environmental consulting firms worldwide since 2003. Their customers monitor birds, frogs, bats, insects, fish, whales, elephants, rhinos and other wildlife.

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