Rising CO2 ‘Driving Fish Crazy’

By on January 19, 2012 in News 20
Photo: Nick Hobgood (CC)

Photo: Nick Hobgood (CC)

Via Common Dreams:

New research shows the disastrous consequences the world’s rising carbon dioxide levels are having on ocean life.

A team of researchers from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. They document how elevated CO2 is “driving fish crazy.”

The Australian Associated Press reports that the new research point to ocean problems beyond acidification.  From Professor Phillip Munday, one of the researchers:

”We’ve now established it isn’t simply the acidification of the oceans that is causing disruption, as is the case with shellfish and plankton with chalky skeletons. But the CO2 itself is damaging the fishes’ central nervous systems.”

Agence France-Presse reports:

The team began by studying how baby clown and damsel fishes performed alongside their predators in CO2-enriched water.

They found that while the predators were somewhat affected, the baby fish suffered much higher rates of attrition.

“Our early work showed that the sense of smell of baby fish was harmed by higher CO2 in the water, meaning they found it harder to locate a reef to settle on or detect the warning smell of a predator fish,” said Munday…

[continues at Common Dreams]

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  • truth hurts

    complete and utter bullshit. CO2 is in decline. do your own research. CARBON IS NOT POLLUTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • Andrew

      But CO2 is toxic.

    • Anarchy Pony

      No it isn’t, do your own research.

    • JaceD

      What are you talking about? In decline…? More like in denial.

      • truth hurts

        if we reduce CO2 to the levels they want us to, all plant life will cease to exist. CO2 is not a pollutant. it’s what plants breath. plants die, we die. the whole thing is a mind fuck to make you believe, and behave in a certain way. use your fucking heads, people. stop listening to what the “so called” experts say and think for your fucking selves. you’re made of carbon, get it? they don’t want to reduce CO2… they want to get rid of YOU… ALL OF YOU. have fun reducing your carbon footprint… get it?! less footprints mean less feet, or less people. lol… fools…

        • Andrew

          Repeated use of that converse error makes it look like the truth is hurting you.  Too much CO2 kills.  Plants are one of the greatest reducing agents of CO2, and reforestation is the only way to clean up the environment.

        • Calypso_1

          We are indeed 18% HYDROCARBON in composition – not CO2.  CO2 is a human waste product.  It is our PRIMARY waste product.  Go check out a book on biochemistry.  When you’ve got the Krebs cycle under your belt maybe you’ll be able to apply some of the knowlege of cellular metabolism and biological homeostasis to the biosphere. 

        • JaceD

          Come on, do you think an overdose of CO2 is a good thing? Don’t you think having a bit too much of it in our atmosphere is going to have negative effects on our environment? Do you believe that every gas emission we create (which isn’t natrually occurring CO2) is having no impact on the planet at all? Come on, use your fucking head.

  • Anarchy Pony

    Humans don’t exist in a fucking vacuum, capitalist troglodytes, what you do, effects the fucking world around you, and no, a make believe sky god didn’t give the world to you to dominate either, despite the religious propaganda that you may get spoon fed. 

    Human industry spews massive volumes of gases over numerous decades, with more for every precious bit of growth that we do, it’s going to have a fucking effect, that isn’t controversial despite the corporate spin that gets put on it. Other human industry cuts down the forests and paves over the plains and prairies and that leaves two places for the gases to be absorbed, the ocean, which has been having its ecosystems systematically destroyed and polluted for decades as well, and the atmosphere, causing its heat retaining properties to change, allowing more heat to be contained within the climate system. Overall raising the temperature and adding more potential energy to cause more severe weather phenomena. The ocean will acidify, which will destroy its biodiversity and render it mostly dead as far as we are concerned.

    And now of course, we are starting up the positive feedback loops, which are releasing natural and previously safely contained gases out into the oceans and the atmosphere, and this may very well rapidly push all control out of our hands, and quite possibly destroy the world as we know it, causing the extinctions of thousands of species and a complete shift and change in all habitat around the world as temperature rises and the water sheds change, drastically effecting plant life which in turn effects animal life, thus affecting human life(as if we weren’t animals). This is not a joke, and it is not something to fucking play around with.

    Deniers be warned, when shit starts getting real bad, and action hasn’t been taken, I will hold you pricks responsible, for ecocide, and genocide, and I will get people to come for you.

  • http://www.facebook.com/AlaskanMan Kurtis Morin

    It’s all part of the natural cycle, our Oceans need to become acidic, huge piles of shells have built up on the sea floor these need to be broken down and when they do they will neutralize the acid and bring the Oceans back into balance once again.  I am a shellfish farmer and I spend 20 to 30 hours a week on the Ocean floor where I observe this as well as sample and monitor the Ocean conditions.

    • Andrew

      Please describe exactly what you’ve observed, for how long you’ve observed it, and cite a reputable scientist explaining how it’s natural.

  • JaceD

    There are whole dead zones in many of the world oceans where over fishing and trawling has destroyed plant life, effectively neutralizing oxygen in the water. Within these dead zones nothing lives, there are no plants and no fish. Coral reefs are indangered because of our over fishing and polution. Anyone who says that humans don’t make an impact on the Earth in a negative way needs a reality check, we live on a very small planet with finite resources that we are burning through faster than we can replace.

  • Superman

    hey

  • Superman

    whatta fag