Natural Carbon Sequestration in Our Coastal Waters

Scientific explanations of climate change facts can be confusing for us all. I decided to do some reading to see if I could wrap my brain around some of the facts, and I discovered that I had a lot to learn! I was particularly interested in finding out more about coastal habitats such as seagrass beds and saltmarshes sequestering carbon. This sounds important and amazing - but I did not have a clue what it meant! So after some digging, I discovered just how natural carbon sequestration in coastal habitats works. Here is what I discovered.


Carbon Cycle
It all starts with the carbon cycle, which is the movement of carbon atoms through all things on the planet: the atmosphere, living and non-living organic material, our bodies, oceans, sediments (including fossil fuels) and the Earth’s core. There is a balance between these major reservoirs of carbon. Some things, like volcanic eruptions and burning fossil fuels, increase the amount of carbon in circulation in the atmosphere and oceans. Other natural processes like photosynthesis remove and store it. Plants take carbon from the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, and through photosynthesis turn it into the sugars and carbohydrates that form plant material. Some of this carbon in plants is consumed by other animals that use the carbon to build their own bodies. Some carbon returns to the atmosphere and oceans or into soil or marine sediments as life forms decompose. Although the carbon cycle is on the move, the proportion of carbon that is in our oceans or atmosphere has been pretty steady over the years, allowing the species that depend upon it to evolve based on its presence in set concentrations.




Sequestration of Carbon
The carbon cycle makes it seem as though carbon is always on the move, but much of our planet's carbon has been stored for millions of years, in fossil fuels, and for hundreds of years in large trees. So you can see why cutting down trees and burning fossil fuels has upset the carbon balance: It is all back in in the atmosphere and oceans! What is needed, in addition to to halting the burning of fossil fuels, are actions like protecting and increasing forest cover and supporting other processes that take carbon out of circulation from the air and water then store in a stable solid form. There are many schemes to artificially sequester carbon, but most of them are so energy intensive that they would create as much of a carbon footprint as they elevate, some would take to long to be useful on a massive scale, and others have been banned from consideration due to unknown side effects that could be worse than the problems we are starting with!

Natural Carbon Sequestration
Natural carbon sequestration is carbon stored by plants and animals. The most effective form is when terrestrial and marine plants sequester carbon into the soil or sediments around their roots in a mineral form, storing it for thousands of years or more. These carbon sequestering plants are extremely important for reducing the amount of carbon circulating in the atmosphere and oceans. Of these, the marine coastal habitats such as mangroves, salt marsh and sea grass do this job the best. Marine species sequester the same overall amount of carbon as terrestrial species, even though there is 99.95% less plant material in the oceans doing the same job. This is due to special chemical processes in marine sediments. (This means half a kilogram of marine plant material can sequester as much carbon as 1,000 kgs of plant material on land)

Protecting Seagrass and Saltmarsh
Seventy percent of the marine plants that naturally sequester carbon are found in coastal areas such as seagrass meadows and salt marshes. Much of these areas have been lost since the 1940s due to coastal development, and have been damaged by run off from agricultural and industrial activities. Scientists of the United Nations Environment Program recommended to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that 80 percent of the world’s remaining seagrass and salt marsh habitat be protected as an important step among the range of strategies necessary to combat global climate change and ocean acidification.

So given that we know what to do - why aren't we doing it?

There is one thing you can do right now that would only take one minute. Send a letter to our Minister of Fisheries and Oceans - telling her about the importance of protecting these critical habitats with marine protected areas in order to ensure that they keep on sequestering carbon.



Information about natural carbon sequestration (if you want more) is also available in these reports.

* IUCN: The Management of Natural Coastal Carbon Sinks
* UNEP: Blue Carbon Report

Carbon dioxide: what it is, what it's doing, and what we can do about it - a Coastal Voices series

Coastal Voices series
Carbon dioxide: what it is, what it’s doing, and what we can do about it

This December, representatives from over 190 nations will gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to hash out an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide. The timing is critical: scientists believe that the next decade will be our last, best chance to reduce emissions if we are to keep the climate from warming beyond an unacceptable level.

In addition to changing our climate, our carbon dioxide emissions are also making ocean water more acidic, and more corrosive to many marine animals with shells – an occurrence that is happening right now on the west coast, and which threatens the base of marine food webs.

Carbon dioxide is at the root of both climate change and ocean acidification – yet it is also a very common thing, so common that we exhale with every breath. Carbon dioxide is, in fact, essential to life. How can this be? How can it be both essential to life and threatening to life at the same time? And how can plain old carbon dioxide – an odorless, colorless gas that is all around us – be the cause of melting shellfish, spreading deserts, or threats to the national security of the most powerful nations on Earth?

We’ll dig into these questions, and more, over the next month in a five-part series on carbon dioxide, climate change, and ocean acidification, and what these issues mean for our region and for you. We’ll start at the most basic level – what is carbon dioxide and why is it an issue? – and work our way up to today’s most pressing concerns. Look for the first post early next week.

Part I: Carbon dioxide: the basics

· Why do people say that something that is essential to life is so dangerous for our future?

· Where does all of the extra carbon dioxide come from?

Part II: Carbon dioxide and climate change

· Why does more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to climate change?

· What does this mean for B.C. and Canada?

Part III: Carbon dioxide and ocean acidification

· How does more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere make ocean water corrosive to marine life?

· What does this mean for B.C. and Canada?

Part IV: What can we do?

· Why don’t we just remove it from the atmosphere?

· Wait - you mean I can’t really “offset” my carbon emissions?

· Won’t the problem be solved if we all become ‘carbon neutral’?

· So what can we truly do?

Part V: What is being done by Canada and the international community to reduce emissions of
carbon dioxide?

· Why is “Copenhagen” so important?

· How can we make our voices heard at Copenhagen?

Dead Cormorants in San Francisco

Lately, Californians have been finding hundreds of dead Brandt's cormorants washed up on beaches near San Francisco. Most of the dead cormorants are notably emaciated, and wildlife officials suspect that a dip in the birds' food supply could be what is killing them. Specifically, biologists point to a decrease in the availability of anchovies, a staple of the Brandt's Cormorant's diet:

Last year, some species of small fish were scarce, according to trawl information gathered by the National Marine Fisheries Service. Northern anchovies - popular food for Brandt's cormorants - hit their lowest numbers since 1990 as the bulk of the fish moved to Southern California, where they normally spawn in years of cooler waters.

Steve Ralston, research fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Santa Cruz, said it took 10 trawls to catch one anchovy last year. In a typical year, more than 600 anchovies are caught in a trawl, he said.1

The fact that these seabirds are dying, likely as a result of our changing oceans, is just one example of the interconnectivity of life on our planet. Sadly, I think that we will continue to see more and more stories such as this one as our ocean ecosystem is affected by climate change and acidification, human use, and other impacts.

Book Review of "Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis" by Alanna Mitchell

By Candace Newman

No matter where you live on this earth, every second breath you take comes from oxygen produced by plankton in the seas. Every third molecule of carbon dioxide you exhale is taken up by the ocean. Your every action or will profoundly affect the ocean - your life support system.

In Alanna Mitchell's new book, Sea Sick, she poignantly describes how human actions are having a measurable effect on the ocean. We are changing ocean salinity, temperature, volume, and function. From the deepest ocean basins to the surface sea currents, human impact is evident.

Mitchell relates her journey across five continents over two and a half years, investigating the state of the oceans, answering questions about what is really happening in the ocean and the outlook for its future. Speaking with internationally renowned scientists in Australia, the United States, Puerto Rico, Plymouth, Panama, Canada, Spain, China, and Tanzania, she describes startling evidence that the ocean is changing in a way and at a speed it never has before.

Mitchell’s journey begins in the Gulf of Mexico with a group of American scientists investigating the 'blob', a thick and dense, constantly moving layer of water that contains almost no oxygen. No oxygen means no fish and massive die-offs of crustaceans. What is startling is that this dead zone is no anomaly; the Gulf of Mexico low-oxygen zone is only one of several around the globe that are expanding and staying in areas for months at a time.

On the second leg of Mitchell’s journey, she explores ocean acidification with scientists in Puerto Rico. The scientists explain that the ocean is becoming increasingly acidic, and that the creatures that live in it are extremely sensitive to pH changes. Mitchell makes this point all too clear: if the pH in our bodies changed as much as it has already in the global ocean, we’d be dead.

Mitchell also travels to Halifax, where she investigates changes in fish populations, to China where marine management is challenged by the nation’s rapidly expanding population, and to Tanzania where ocean health has direct impacts on the nation as a whole.

Despite these vital signs that point to an emerging ocean crisis, Sea Sick concludes with a message of hope. Engulfed in a submersible with 13-cm thick walls, Mitchell descends to the bottom of the Atlantic and witnesses unidentified fish, giant squids, crabs, black lobsters, marine snow, and brightly coloured corals and sponges. Mitchell writes eloquently that there are still brilliant, thriving, and healthy places in the ocean, and that there is still time maintain our life support system. Hope will propel us to action, she writes, and that is exactly what the ocean needs right now.

Note: Candace Newman is the Marine Protected Areas Campaign Manager at the Living Oceans Society

Clownfish

Studies are showing that the rising acidity of our oceans is causing changes in certain fish characteristics. For example, a recent study showed that clownfish (who rely on smell when searching for a home) lost some of their sense of smell when they grew and developed in waters that had high acidity levels. This study has the overall implications that the falling pH of our oceans may give fish a biologically harder chance of survival. The change in sensory perception was only applied to clownfish in this study, and has yet to be studied with other fish.

Oceans to Fuel Auto Addiction

I’m not sure what to think of this. It seems like another excuse to mine the sea. In the frenzy to develop alternative fuels, a group in Korea have learned how to turn algae and seaweed into bio-ethanol.


The pluses: This innovation shifts the bio-fuel pressure from agricultural land to the sea, leaving food production areas to feed a hungry world. They also say that the sea based bio-fuel plants grow 6 times as fast as land based biomass. As well, algae and seaweed do not contain lignin and require no pre-treatment before they can get processed into fuel. They also say sea plants absorb 7 times as much carbon dioxide as wood. (The logic in this statement is perplexing. They are proposing to mine the plants that help mitigate the effects of increasing carbon emissions.)

Detractions: The group – the Korean Institute of Technology suggests treating all sizes of algae, from the large kelp forests to single celled spirulina, using an enzyme to break them into simple sugars which get fermented into ethanol. In other words, every green thing that lives in the sea and provides habitat for creatures becomes a potential fuel to maintain our addiction to cars.


What do you think?

New Study on Ocean Acid Levels

Previously I have posted about the acidification of our oceans, so I thought I would share a new study, published in the academic journal Science and financed by the U.K. Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, The Royal Society, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, United Nations Environmental Program, the Pew Charitable Trust and the U.K. Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

This study finds that calcium carbonate crystals, produced by bony fish to dispose of the excess calcium ingested through seawater, contribute to maintaining ocean alkalinity when these crystals are excreted and dissolved in the ocean.

This study gives us just one more reason to try to keep our oceans full of healthy fish!

"Why Storms are Good News for Fishermen"

I always knew that weather played a role in how many fish I caught on a given day. I'm a fair weather fisher, so if the weather is bad, I stay at home! But, for those more dedicated fishermen and fisherwomen (sidenote: are women fisherMEN as well?) and for those who fish for a living, it turns out that the weather plays a pretty important role in a given fishing harvest.

According to an article in the New Scientist, individual storms or particularly cold winters can lead to bumper fish harvests years later:

In many cases [...] it comes down to the survival of the young. "It's all about making it through that first summer," says Nicholas Bond of the University of Washington in Seattle

Take the walleye pollock in the Bering Sea off Alaska, the basis of the largest single fishery in the world. [...] When Bond looked at the years in which high numbers of young pollocks survived, he found they were characterised by summer storms.

Storms matter because they bring up deep water rich in the nutrients essential for the growth of phytoplankton. "These events essentially fertilise the oceans," says Bond. During calm summers, phytoplankton growth slows early as the nutrients brought up by winter storms are used up. Summer storms refresh the surface waters, allowing phytoplankton to continue thriving - and young pollock to grow fat.

While predicting individual storms is not possible, says Bond, predicting their effects is. Three years after a stormy summer, when pollock that hatched in the good year become large enough to be caught, catches will rise. Recent falls in pollock numbers could be partly due to a series of calm, warm summers, he says, although 2006 was a good year for young pollock."

The case of the pollock mentioned above is just one example of harvest variability that is shown with changing weather conditions. Also mentioned in this article are salmon, crab, cod, tuna, and anchovies. Having climatic insight into a given fishing season's potential yield, 3 years in advance, could help to reverse the effects of the mismanagement of our fisheries here on the Pacific North Coast.

With many other fisheries teetering on the brink, these new insights could prove vital. If we can predict how fish numbers will vary naturally months or even years in advance, managers can reduce quotas before stocks are decimated, or increase them when conditions are favourable.

To read more about how different marine species are impacted by a change in climate, visit the full article in issue 2689 of the New Scientist.

Ocean Health Data - Just a click Away

Check this out! An interactive mapping website has just been launched showing the cumulative impact of human activities on marine ecosystems around the world.

The tool allows you to view maps of cumulative human impacts on oceans anywhere in the world. You can also produce a summary report that includes explanations for the impact scores. Just zoom in on an area of ocean you are curious about and then with a quick left-click a detailed data summary popup will appear.

For example, when I zoom in and click on the area around the Vancouver harbour the pop up says the ocean based pollution index is .490 (the maximum is 1.00). Clicking on the area between the north island and the Queen Charlottes, the pollution index is .197.

Other indicators include: Organic pollution, Sea temperature increase, Demersal (the area just off the ocean bed) destructive fishing, UV radiation Nutrient runoff, Pelagic (any water in the ocean that is not near the bottom) high-bycatch fishing, Demersal non-destructive high-bycatch fishing, Ocean acidification, Pelagic low-bycatch fishing, Direct human impact (population pressure), Oil rigs.

You also get a summary of human activities. For the Vancouver harbor area:
· High levels of human activity related to Ocean acidification and UV radiation.
· Moderate levels of human activity related to Ocean-based pollution and Sea temperature increase.
· Low levels of human activity related to Demersal non-destructive low-bycatch fishing, Demersal non-destructive high-bycatch fishing, Artisanal fishing, Organic pollution, Inorganic pollution, Pelagic low-bycatch fishing, Demersal destructive fishing, Commercial shipping and Nutrient runoff.
· No human activity related to Oil rigs, Direct human impact (population pressure), Pelagic high-bycatch fishing and Invasive species.

This is one of those web sites you’ll want to play around with for a while and then bookmark for future reference. http://globalmarine.nceas.ucsb.edu/

Ocean and Climate Advocate to head NOAA

There is another encouraging piece of news for the oceans from south of the border. President-elect Barack Obama has tapped Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco, one of the US’s most prominent marine biologists, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This along with Tuesday’s announcement about the designation of 200,000 square miles of marine reserves in the South Pacific (see Bush’s Ocean Legacy below) bode well for oceans and climate.

Lubchenco, a conservationist who has devoted much of her career to encouraging scientists to become more engaged in public policy debates, is also a vocal proponent of curbing greenhouse gases linked to global warming. Apparently over the years, Lubchenco has also been critical of the agency for not doing enough to curb overfishing. This sounds hopeful; she is now in charge of the agency she was critical of.

Obama has selected a woman, the first to head the agency, and one who's both a respected researcher and been an active player in national policy discussions. Andrew Rosenberg, who served as deputy director of NOAA's Fisheries Service under Clinton, praised Lubchenco as an "absolutely world class scientist." He added, "It's saying that science agencies have a role in policy. They need to be tightly connected, and I believe they will be tightly connected under Jane."

Dr. Lubchenco said, "The dialogue is now shifting gears from climate science to climate action. There's still a lot we need to learn about the science, but the events of the past year have ended much of the lingering debate and controversy. The most important question now is what can individuals, communities, states and nations do to reduce and prepare for climate change."

Does that ever sound like a breath of fresh air after 8 years of denials about climate change from the Bush administration.

Surprising Levels of Acid in our Oceans

A new study by scientists at the University of Chicago has found that rising ocean acid levels in the Pacific Ocean are making it more difficult for coral polyps to create reefs and are impeding the ability of marine organisms such as mussels, clams, and oysters to produce the calcium needed to generate their shells. Scientists have shown that acidity levels in the ocean were ten times greater than previously thought.

This study and other recent research links increased atmospheric carbon dioxide to a decline in ocean alkalinity. Scientists believe that "atmospheric CO2 concentrations could exceed 500 ppm by the middle of this century, and 800 ppm near the end of the century. This increase would result in a decrease in surface-water pH of ~0.4 by the end of the century, and a corresponding 50% decrease in carbonate ion concentration (5, 9). Such rapid changes are likely to negatively affect marine ecosystems, seriously jeopardizing the multifaceted economies that currently depend on them." [1]

Rising levels of ocean acidity are a concrete (and scary) indicator of things to come in the age of global climate change. This recent research about ocean acidity shows that conditions severely detrimental to our marine ecosystems could develop "within decades, not centuries as suggested previously". [2]

For a recent article about the University of Chicago study, visit:
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3452


[1] Feely, Richard A.; Sabine, Christopher L.; Hernandez-Ayon, J. Martin; Lanson, Debbie; and Hayles, Burke, "Evidence for Uprising of Corrosive "Acidified" Water onto the Continental Shelf", Science 320, 1490 (2008)
[2] Orr et al, "Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms", Nature 437 (2005)

Brave New Ocean

A frightening new study released about the state of our oceans. Authored by Jeremy B. C. Jackson - Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego.

Jackson compares the current loss of species to the mass extinctions of the fossil record stating that human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparable mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences.

He concludes by saying “Halting and ultimately reversing these trends will require rapid and fundamental changes in fisheries, agricultural practice, and the emissions of greenhouse gases on a global scale.”

Some disturbing numbers are included in the article:

Percent decline (biomass, catch, percent cover) for fauna and flora from various marine environments
Large whales 85% loss globally
Small whales 59% loss globally
Seabirds 57% loss globally
Shorebirds 61% loss globally
Sea Turtles 87 % loss globally
Sea Grass 65% loss globally
Oysters 91 % loss globally
Corals 61% loss globally
Atlantic cod 96% loss Scotian Shelf since 1900

To view full report: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/suppl.1/11458