Sea exiled

2008/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ekologia
• Ingurumena

Researchers have shown that in very large areas of the ocean oxygen is disappearing and fear that further deterioration of marine ecosystems.

Hot water cannot ingest as much oxygen as cold water. Therefore, scientists suspected that as the temperature of marine waters rose, changes in the concentration of dissolved oxygen would occur. However, so far they have been investigated in cold waters, since most of the fish species of value in the market are of cold waters and large fluctuations have not been detected.

Now, however, data collected in tropical waters have been analyzed since 1960, when dissolved oxygen has decreased in some places by more than 15%. The situation is particularly severe on the African Atlantic coast, with an 85% increase in the thickness of the low oxygen layer.

According to researchers, when low oxygen layers expand vertically, the downward and reverse migration of fish and plankton is endangered. They warn that this would affect the entire food chain. The research has been published in the scientific journal Science.