Ocean News

What Is the PH of Seawater? https://www.reference.com/science/ph-seawater-ae8c3f06fac7d02d
The pH of seawater can vary between 5.0 and 9.0. The closer the seawater is to 7.0, the more neutral the water is for sea life. If the seawater becomes acidic or alkaline, it can become uninhabitable for marine life.

Water with a pH of less than 7 is more acidic, while water with a pH of more than 7 is more alkaline, or basic. The chemical components of seawater are resistant to pH change and may remain at a more neutral level. The introduction of biological activity to the seawater and an overabundance of algae may cause the pH level of the seawater to fluctuate significantly.

What is coral bleaching? https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral_bleach.html
Warmer water temperatures can result in coral bleaching. When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.

In 2005, the U.S. lost half of its coral reefs in the Caribbean in one year due to a massive bleaching event. The warm waters centered around the northern Antilles near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico expanded southward. Comparison of satellite data from the previous 20 years confirmed that thermal stress from the 2005 event was greater than the previous 20 years combined.

Not all bleaching events are due to warm water.

In January 2010, cold water temperatures in the Florida Keys caused a coral bleaching event that resulted in some coral death. Water temperatures dropped 12.06 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the typical temperatures observed at this time of year. Researchers will evaluate if this cold-stress event will make corals more susceptible to disease in the same way that warmer waters impact corals.




Ocean acidification | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-acidification
In the 200-plus years since the industrial revolution began, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased due to human actions. During this time, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units.

The ocean’s average pH is now around 8.1offsite link, which is basic (or alkaline),

Any ph above 7 is alkaline
The closer the seawater is to 7.0, the more neutral the water is for sea life

 

The smooth handfish hasn't been sighted for over 200 years despite extensive underwater surveys along the Australian coastline, the article you've linked says. If so, when and how and why did it go extinct, and how do they know the when and how and why ?

 

Amazing they had underwater color photography two hundred years ago, to get a picture before the fish went extinct!
Sniff, sniff! Smells fishy!

Dodo - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo#:~:text=The%20last%20widely%20accepted%20sighting%20of%20a%20dodo,brought%20to%20Europe%20in%20the%20early%2017th%20century.

Last seen about 340 years ago

 

I didn't know the handfish species, fascinating, thanks Sam for bringing it up !

 

Mistake in the years number I'll guess, I've shortened your link a bit Yob, it says: ‘‘ The last widely accepted sighting of a Dodo was in 1662. ’’

From the Dutch Wikipedia: Dodo → Chronology of general accepted sightings of the Dodo → Unfold - (my translation)

The last one there:
‘‘ July 3, 1681, in the southern winter, recorded in the ship's logbook of the "Berkeley Castle" by Benjamin Harry — The meat of the Dodo is the least tasty of all birds and it's very tough. ’’

So let's assume it's almost 340 years ago by now.

 

i thought I read 1882!
Thanks for fixing it.
Edited my post.

 

HMS Berkeley Castle: ‘‘ the British Royal Navy "Berkeley Castle" was a 48-gun wooden warship captured by the French Navy on 25 October 1695. ’’

 

I didn't say you were ineffective. I said that you are leading in the wrong direction.

I've long ago given up trying to dissuade you personally. You are far too proud to ever admit you are wrong. And we know that the Good Book says that "pride goeth before a fall."

What I do want to make sure is that other readers of this thread realize how un-scientific your arguments are. That why I am careful to include references for the articles that I post, and why I point out that so many of your assertions are not backed by science, only by your own wishful thinking.

 

Great whales found to have active role and monetary value in fight against climate change

A team of economists from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), with input from the Great Whale Conservancy (GWC), argue that the role of great whales in terms of carbon capture, increased fish stocks, and economic benefit through tourism means they contribute the equivalent of $2 million each to global ecosystem services. The team have estimated that the current stock of whales could be valued at more than $1 trillion (US). Their paper, Nature’s Solution to Climate Change: A strategy to protect whales can limit greenhouse gases and global warming, was published in the IMF’s Finance and Development (F&D) journal.

The paper states that great whales, especially blues, greys, humpbacks and rights, play a huge role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere. According to scientific estimates, when whales die, their bodies sink to the bottom of the ocean, each one sequestering 33 tons of CO2 on average, taking that carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries. In contrast, a tree absorbs up to 22kg of CO2 per year.

Industrial whaling largely ceased since an international moratorium came in to force in the 1980s, with ship strikes now currently a leading cause of death for large whales.

 

Coral Reefs - Ocean Health Index

......Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause increased amounts in surface waters, leading to ocean acidification (lowered pH). Acidification decreases the availability of calcium carbonate, making it harder for corals and other calcifying organisms to form their shells; it also dissolves existing shells.

By the end of the century, it is predicted that ocean pH will drop from its current value of about 8.1 by as much as 0.4 units; by 2050, conditions will not be sufficient for the formation of calcium carbonate (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007).......
​

So, yet again, the un-scientific assertions of Yob are incorrect.

 

I thought it might be best to state that my post about whales was sarcasm. I also hope the deniers don't take your post to mean that a good whale is a dead whale and start slaughtering whales as a solution to climate change.

This is interesting,
In September 2018, Japan chaired the 67th IWC meeting in Brazil and attempted to pass a motion to lift the moratorium on commercial whaling. Japan did not receive enough votes and the IWC rejected the motion.[74] Subsequently, on 26 December 2018, Japan announced that it would withdraw its membership from the IWC, because in its opinion, the IWC had failed its duty to promote sustainable hunting as the culture within the IWC moved towards an anti-whaling, pro-conservation agenda. Japanese officials also announced they will resume commercial hunting within its territorial waters and its 200-mile exclusive economic zones starting in July 2019, but it will cease whaling activities in the Antarctic Ocean, the northwest Pacific ocean, and the Australian Whale Sanctuary.[75][76][74]

In 2019, the Australian Marine Conservation Society and International Fund for Animal Welfare commissioned legal opinion, which concluded that Japan's commercial whaling program within its territorial waters breaks international convention and law and that Japan makes itself vulnerable to potential international legal action.[77]

So was this, which seems like an absurd loophole...

Norway registered an objection to the International Whaling Commission moratorium and is thus not bound by it.

Whaling - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling

 

How Ocean Noise Pollution Wreaks Havoc on Marine Life

e360: What are the sources of this sound?

Clark: There are two major types. One would go under the heading of chronic, and that is mostly the byproduct of ships driving engines through water — it’s the grinding of propellers, it’s the hull radiating all the noise from the internal mechanics of a large ship. Many ships today are now bigger than aircraft carriers, and they send out enormous amounts of sound energy at low frequencies that propagate very efficiently in water. Noise from ship traffic is doubling every decade.

e360: Then there are other types of noise that are on again, off again. Could you talk about them?

Clark: The more insidious and acute sounds come from ocean exploration for oil and gas, which is accomplished by setting off huge explosions — it used to be dynamite, and now it is seismic air guns. The exploration companies generally deploy 30 or 40 air guns that all go off simultaneously. A typical air gun survey will go off every 9 to 12 seconds. They go back and forth, back and forth, over huge areas of the ocean, like mowing the lawn — and they do this for weeks and months at a time.

e360: How loud are these air gun bursts?

Clark: The sound is six or seven orders of magnitude louder than the loudest ship sounds. It is so loud that when someone is surveying off northern Brazil, I can hear that explosion on a small piece of instrumentation that I deploy 60 miles off the coast of Virginia. I can hear the explosions from surveys off Ireland, I can hear them happening in Nova Scotia.

e360: You have studied the impact of anthropogenic sound on whales. Why are they a special concern?

Clark: On a good day, whales can barely see their tails 60 feet away in turbid waters. But they can maintain their social network acoustically for many miles. Whales see the ocean through sound. So their mind’s eye is their mind’s ear. You are dealing with animals that are highly acoustically oriented. Their consciousness and sense of self is based on sound, not sight.

e360: Are there actual behavioral changes that you have observed when whales are exposed to high levels of sound?

Clark: At first, their calling rate may go up a bit — as you and I might do when we shout in a loud space in order to be heard. But then, shortly thereafter, when the noise level goes beyond a certain threshold, the counter-calling, the chitchat between right whales, for example, just stops — they just give up. When the noise decreases, they start up again.

We have demonstrated that in Cape Cod Bay in the run-up to Boston harbor that right whales lose 50 to 70 percent of their opportunities to communicate due to routine ship traffic. It means that as shipping traffic increases, the ocean area over which a whale can communicate and listen has shriveled to a small fraction of what it was less than a century ago. There is this constant stopping and starting of their communication. What you are doing is you are tearing that social fabric over and over again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There is more to the story here...

How Ocean Noise Pollution Wreaks Havoc on Marine Life https://e360.yale.edu/features/how_ocean_noise_pollution_wreaks_havoc_on_marine_life

 

Suggest changing name of thread to Anti-human Rhetoric, because everything humans do is bad, according to the alarmist's posts here.
There is desperate poverty in the world.
There is desperate poverty on this thread! Poverty of spirit.
Don't believe in souls? Maybe you lost yours, and so don't find evidence for it.
You insist upon being miserable, so go ahead, be miserable to your wizened heart's content.
Not letting you have your way because you throw tantrums. Nope. Scream and gnash your teeth!

I do not believe in a hell as eternal life under torture. I believe it is eternal death.

The life of self torture you create in your own minds, worrying and fretting and hating is a hell of your own making.

I don't torture myself. I don't need to. My wife won't permit me. Claims that is HER job!.

 

What Is the PH of Seawater? https://www.reference.com/science/ph-seawater-ae8c3f06fac7d02d

"The pH of seawater can vary between 5.0 and 9.0. The closer the seawater is to 7.0, the more neutral the water is for sea life. If the seawater becomes acidic or alkaline, it can become uninhabitable for marine life.

Water with a pH of less than 7 is more acidic, while water with a pH of more than 7 is more alkaline, or basic. The chemical components of seawater are resistant to pH change and may remain at a more neutral level. The introduction of biological activity to the seawater and an overabundance of algae may cause the pH level of the seawater to fluctuate significantly."

The quote is from the site above. And seawater is ph 8 more or less, not acidic, but alkaline.
I know, the claims it is becoming more acidic really mean slightly less alkaline by 0.1 ph, and sometimes you admit it, but the truth doesn't make good headlines! Hyperbole looks better in large print!
PROPAGANDISTS!

Fresh water is ph 7. Neutral.
Fish like salmon migrate from the sea to freshwater rivers to spawn. Is it because the nuetral ph is more gentle on the fragile eggs and fry?

Great Lakes Fishery: The start of the industry and the fall of fish populations - Great Lakes Now https://www.greatlakesnow.org/2019/11/great-lakes-commercial-fishing-history/

Seems freshwater supports abundant fish life. Over fishing depletes fish, but that is something humans CAN control, unlike climate change they can't.

 

Of course it is correct that the "closer seawater is to 7.0, the more neutral the water is for sea life." It's too general to include the clause "for sea life." For some organisms a smallish change in pH is inconsequential. For coral, a decrease in pH is detrimental.

Ocean Acidification: Saturation State | NOAA

Ocean acidification is an often overlooked consequence of humankind's release of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning. Excess carbon dioxide enters the ocean and reacts with water to form carbonic acid, which decreases ocean pH (i.e., makes seawater less basic), and lowers carbonate ion concentrations. Organisms such as corals, clams, oysters, and some plankton use carbonate ions to create their shells and skeletons. Decreases in carbonate ion concentration will make it difficult for these creatures to form hard structures, particularly for juveniles. Ocean acidification may cause some organisms to die, reproduce less successfully, or leave an area. Other organisms such as seagrass and some plankton species may do better in oceans affected by ocean acidification because they use carbon dioxide to photosynthesize, but do not require carbonate ions to survive. Ocean ecosystem diversity and ecosystem services may therefore change dramatically from ocean acidification.

This datasets shows computer model simulations of surface ocean aragonite saturation state from 1861 to 2100, based on historical data and future projections of carbon dioxide emissions, with continents and coral reefs in purple marked. Aragonite saturation state is commonly used to track ocean acidification because it is a measure of carbonate ion concentration. Aragonite is one of the more soluble forms of calcium carbonate and is widely used by marine calcifiers (organisms with calcium carbonate structures). Corals and other calcifiers are more likely to survive and reproduce when the saturation state is greater than three. When aragonite saturation state falls below 3, these organisms become stressed, and when saturation state is less than 1, shells and other aragonite structures begin to dissolve. The predicted pH decrease of approximately 0.3 units during the 21st century would be a greater change than possibly at any time in the last 300 million years.​