Live-fish market grows, stripping reefs

NF Reporter · 01-24-2007, 02:42 PM

AP - Amid banks of bubbling aquariums, Hong Kong resident Kerry To sat back and admired his plate-size steamed grouper plucked from one of the tanks in this Malaysian restaurant and cooked live. "It is very special," said the 45-year-old To, who flew to the northwest coast of Borneo Island for a holiday featuring a chance to sample the rare delicacy. "These fish are so big and taste so good. I'll be telling my friends."

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waltky · 10-27-2008, 01:22 AM

May be past the tipping point for reefs already...

CO2 curbs may be too late for reefs, study warns
Oct 27 2008: Ambitious targets to stabilise greenhouse gas levels still place over 90% of coral in jeopardy

Quote:

A new global deal on climate change will come too late to save most of the world's coral reefs, according to a US study that suggests major ecological damage to the oceans is now inevitable. Emissions of carbon dioxide are making seawater so acidic that reefs including the Great Barrier Reef off Australia could begin to break up within a few decades, research by the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University in California suggests. Even ambitious targets to stabilise greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, as championed by Britain and Europe to stave off dangerous climate change, still place more than 90% of coral reefs in jeopardy.

Oceanographers Long Cao and Ken Caldeira looked at how carbon dioxide dissolves in the sea as human emissions increase. About a third of carbon pollution is soaked up in this way, where it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Experts say human activity over the last two centuries has produced enough acid to lower the average pH of global ocean surface waters by about 0.1 units.

Such acidification spells problems for coral reefs, which rely on calcium minerals called aragonite to build and maintain their exoskeletons. "We can't say for sure that [the reefs] will disappear but ... the likelihood they will be able to persist is pretty small," said Caldeira. The new study was prompted by questions by a US congressional committee on how possible carbon stabilisation targets would affect coral loss.

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