Monday, March 09, 2009

Time for your bad ocean acidification news of the week

Proof on the Half Shell: A More Acid Ocean Corrodes Sea Life: Scientific American

The shells of tiny ocean animals known as foraminifera—specifically Globigerina bulloides—are shrinking as a result of the slowly acidifying waters of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. ...

The researchers found that modern G. bulloides could not build shells as large as the ones their ancestors formed as recently as century ago. In fact, modern shells were 35 percent smaller than in the relatively recent past—
Not encouraging.

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