'The deadly trio': an ocean of problems

Picture planet Earth from space - what comes to mind? For me and I’m guessing for many of you too, the dark blue ocean dominates. Covering around 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean is the world’s largest ecosystem. Through its ability to absorb and release carbon dioxide whilst also transporting heat and water around the globe, it plays a fundamental role in the global climate. As a consequence, however, the ocean also bears the brunt of climate change (Tyrrell, 2011).

Since the Industrial Revolution, human’s impact on the Earth system has been ever increasing. Take carbon dioxide, for instance, over the last 300 years emissions have increased by 40 per cent. Humans have caused the Earth system to approach a number of planetary boundaries, transforming climate, ecosystems and biogeochemical cycling along the way. Resultantly, the Earth system is no longer dominated by natural processes, but by humanity. So much so that this time period of anthropogenic forcing has become a geological epoch in its own right - the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz et al., 2011). However, quite when this started remains a highly contentious debate.

Due to the ocean’s inextricable link to the global climate and the fact that I have always found the ocean fascinating, I chose to focus this blog on how the Anthropocene is impacting our oceans (hence the title AnthropoSea!). In particular, I will be looking at ‘the deadly trio’. This is the name coined by Bijma et al. to describe the three major impacts that climate change is having on our oceans; ocean acidification, ocean warming and deoxygenation (2013). Both individually and together, this deadly trio is dramatically affecting the ocean’s biodiversity.

So, where will I be taking this blog? Over the course of the next 3 months, I hope to cover a number of topics. I will be exploring each of the deadly trio in depth before examining what and exactly how marine biodiversity is being affected. Any criticism that I find in literature or the news will also be debated. With the recent issue of the IPCC report, I will later discuss the future of our oceans and any solutions that have been suggested.

Whilst I have chosen to focus specifically on the deadly trio, it is still a very broad topic; each deadly threat has repercussions of its own and additional factors that then exacerbate them. I have done this to allow myself scope for manoeuvre and besides, as they are all heavily interlinked, it would be impossible to only focus on one.

 

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoy following my exploration into the AnthropoSea! I will leave you with this rather dramatic but poignant insight into humanity’s impact on Earth.