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Ocean Acidification

Posted on April 12, 2021July 6, 2023

A few years back when I heard the term ‘climate crisis’ I used to think about a number of things. Extreme weather, failure of harvests, sea level rise, mass refugees and hunger. However, these things are all mostly related to land. How the area of land is decreasing, how the land itself is changing and the consequences. However, the climate crisis doesn’t just affect the land. It also affects the oceans. Today I want to discuss a massive problem concerning the oceans: ocean acidification.

Ocean Acidification

Now, onto the explanation of the problem I wanted to discuss. Ocean Acidification. Ocean Acidification is one of the 9 planetary boundaries. And so, ocean acidification one of the 9 biggest problems we face today. Acidification is the proces of the oceans on the planet becoming lower in PH value. The lower the PH value, the more acidic the oceans become. Over the years the value has become lower and lower. It is now reaching dangerous levels, it is seriously threatening sea-life. Most important is that this proces is not a natural process. Humans cause the acidification of oceans.

How? As I said, oceans absorb CO2, they’re a carbon sink. Without humans emitting too much CO2 the PH value is in balance. However, since we humans are emitting insane amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, the oceans keep taking up more CO2. It’s the same problem we have with the atmosphere, that’a another carbon sink. We emit too much CO2, we create the greenhouse effect. Oceans take up about one third of the CO2 emitted and so this creates another problem with the same cause. The more CO2 we emits, the lower the PH values of the oceans become.

Consequences

The biggest effect of acidification right now is that sea-life can’t sustain calcium carbonate. Corals, shells, lobster and more, they rely on calcium carbonate. Their skeletons are made out of it. When the oceans get more acid, skeletons of all kinds of sea-life literally disappear. They vanish because of the high PH levels. Shells will literally dissolve. But also corals, which are the basis of life for fish.

However, this acidification also has other consequences. The acidification also affects the bodily functions (like blood circulation) of fish and makes some specific species thrive (which misbalances the eco-system, the reason why the amount of jellyfishes is exploding). Acidification also goes along with the oceans getting warmer in general which causes the flows inside of the oceans to stop functioning. This then again means a misbalance in the distribution of nutrients. Too much CO2 just means the destruction of the eco-systems in the oceans. Simple as that.

We Depend on Oceans

As I said, I learned about the problem of acidification much later in my sustainability journey and it isn’t the first thing most people think of when they hear the term ‘climate crisis’. I think the reason for that is that humans don’t live in the oceans. For most of us it’s one big mystery. For most of us it’s also an endless dump or endless resource. We take as much fish as we want and we dump as much waste as we like, to name some examples. We think it won’t affect us. It’s the ocean, we don’t live there.

However, we don’t see how much of a problem we have when we destroy the oceans. Yet, we depend on the oceans. The oceans support 80% of life on earth, it’s a fantastic eco-system. 85% of our oxygen comes from this eco-system. It’s also a huge carbon sink (but we still release too much CO2) and so much more. When we are destroying the oceans, we are destroying ourselves.

Solutions

We humans are the problem and so we’re also the solution here. And the biggest solution is the one I mention for soooo many problems on this planet: go vegan. I keep on being surprised by the new kind of damage we find from the fact that we eat animals. Why go vegan? Two reasons regarding this problem (but 1000 reasons in general). 1. Fish make the PH value of the oceans stabilize. They excrete calcium which makes the PH level go down (till a certain level, we can never have too many fish because the eco-systems in oceans sustain itself).

And so we harm double: we cause the climate crisis which causes the acidification. But at the same time we also literally eat the solution for the problem in insane amounts (most non-vegans eat 17 kilo of fish each year, multiple that by the amount of people who live on this planet …). The second solution is of course to lower our emissions to an acceptable level. On a personal level this means that we’ll have to live eco-positive, within the capacity of the earth (for the average Dutch person this again means that going vegan is part of the solution, because meat is at number 2 of the list of behavior that causes the most emissions. This is an average, sometimes meat is even number 1). We need more fish in the oceans and less CO2.

Did you know about the acidification of the oceans?

Yours sincerely,
Romee

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2 thoughts on “Ocean Acidification”

  1. Pingback: What is so bad about deforestation? - When A Teen Goes Green
  2. Pingback: The 9 Planetary Boundaries | When A Teen Goes Green

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ABOUT ME

 

when a teen goes green

Hi! My name is Romee Hoeksma and I am on a journey to an eco-positive life. An eco-positive lifestyle is a lifestyle in which I have a more positive than negative impact on the beautiful planet earth. On this blog you can follow my journey to a life with only positive impact. At this blog you can find all sorts of things, from tips to recipes to personal experiences, but most of all fun (I hope!). I write about how I want to change the world, but don’t look at it as if I’m judging you. If anything, I like responses from my dear readers the most, so don’t hesitate to contact me or respond to any of my posts!

Yours sincerely,
Romee

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Dit is hoe ik met de trein van Krásná Lípa (🇨🇿) naar Bratislava (🇸🇰) reisde. Dit was reisdag 3/6 van onze duurzame interrail reis. Ik ben vandaag 25 jaar geworden 🥳. Ik hoop heel hard dat dat betekent dat ik ongeveer op een kwart van mijn leven ben. En wat een verjaardag is dit! Ik mag het vieren in Kopenhagen met mijn favoriete persoon @casperchristiaanse , terwijl ik met de trein door Europa reis 🚃. Ik ben een gelukkig mens. Op naar de 50! Dit is hoe ik van Dresden (🇩🇪) naar Krásná Lípa (🇨🇿) reisde. Niet een bijster lange, maar wel een prachtige treinreis, omdat je door het nationaal park Boheems Zwitserland gaat. Dit was de tweede reisdag van onze interrail (2/6). We zijn op de helft van de interrail. Terwijl ik dit typ zijn we onderweg naar Warschau (8,5 uur vanaf Bratislava). Nog twee bestemmingen te ontdekken, maar wat hebben we nu al veel genoten. Elke dag goed en lang slapen, nieuw vegan eten proberen, bijzonder lang wandelen, spelletjes spelen, weinig schermtijd, genieten van de mooie uitzichten en zon: deze reis is genieten 💜. Dit is hoe ik met de trein van Amsterdam naar Dresden reisde 🚃. De interrail is officieel begonnen! (1/6) Vandaag verschijnt er geen artikel op mijn blog. En de komende twee weken hierna ook niet. Dat is voor het eerst, in de 7 jaar dat ik schrijf. Een heel leuk onderdeel van duurzaam leven is tweedehands kleding. Hier zijn 4 tweedehands outfits die ik droeg in augustus 2023 🌞. Je zag het al in de reel van vorige week: ik ben op vakantie geweest naar Gent, in België. Het was een ontzettende aanrader, en daarom verscheen er vandaag een artikel op mijn blog over de leukste en duurzaamste hotspots in Gent 🌆. Check it out via de link in mijn bio Gent, wat was je prachtig 🌆. Dit is absolute een duurzame vakantietip (oh, maar wees niet zo naïef als ik en ga lekker met de trein 🚃). Binnenkort is op Youtube de gehele vakantievlog te bekijken.

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