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Acidic Oceans Could Confuse Fish: Study

Global warming hiking up oceanic acidity levels

By Gabriel Winant, Newser User

Posted Feb 3, 2009 9:00 AM CST

(Newser) – Climate change could be a disaster for marine life, a new study finds. As the atmosphere fills with CO2, the ocean absorbs it, and becomes more acidic, Wired reports, and clownfish, which navigate by scent, lose their ability to do so in water as acidic as the ocean is expected to become.

In the lab, clownfish had no problem following scent as usual in water with a pH of 8.15, the ocean’s standard. At the more-acidic 7.8, behavior became erratic, and at 7.6 they stopped following scents entirely. “It is possible that other species may be affected,” one researcher says. And hopes for adaptation are low: Acidity is probably changing too fast for evolution to keep up.

[Images (4)]

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Former Vice President Al Gore points at a screen showing the new Google Earth 5.0, which explores the ocean, at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Monday, Feb. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Sylvia Earle, explorer in residence, National Geographic Society and founder, Deep Search Foundation, cheers at the image shown on the new Google Earth 5.0. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

This undated photo released by the Australian Institute of Marine Science, shows dying coral on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Acidic oceans are one of several causes of mass coral death. (AP Photo/Australian Institute of Marine Science, File)

A Gold Stripe Maroon Clownfish (Premnas biaculeatus) is seen swimming in an Anemone in an exotic fish store aquarium in Tyler, Texas on Sunday Dec. 2, 2007. (AP Photo/Dr. Scott M. Lieberman)

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If acidification continues unabated, the impairment of sensory ability will reduce population sustainability of many marine species, with potentially profound consequences for marine diversity. - Philip Munday and Kjell Døving

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Acidic Oceans Could Confuse Fish: Study