27 January 2009

Smother fish

Fish could vanish from huge stretches of the ocean for tens of thousands of years unless we drastically reduce our carbon emissions.
-- New Scientist reports a study Gary Shaffer of the University of Copenhagen:
Under the worst-case scenario, average ocean oxygen levels will fall by up to 40%, and there will be a 20-fold expansion in the area of "dead zones", like those already discovered in the eastern Pacific and northern Indian Ocean, where there is too little oxygen for fish to survive. Even in the mid-range scenario, dead zones would expand by a factor of 3 or 4. Cold, deep waters will also be affected if warming stifles the currents that deliver oxygen to greater depths.

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