A Sea Change: Imagine a World Without Fish

That pesky elephant in the room--wait, there's more than one: climate change, ocean acidification...

Courtesy of Google alerts (yet another reason to be grateful to Google, and I'm wondering when they're going to ask for my first-born child), I discovered the Gerry's Elephantine Blog. Loving the name and the writing. Intelligent analysis laced with dark humor: my favorite cocktail.

Gerry recently posted on climate change and ocean acidification. To really give you the flavor, I'm posting an extended quote here. Can't really do justice to his blog with a summary, would just boil out the humor and the clarity of the prose. (Learn more about Gerry Patterson here.)

"The most dangerous thing about the current global warming event is that it could trigger the release of clathrates. And if that happened, then we would be in serious trouble.

Since the turn of the century it has been confirmed that the pH of the oceans is now decreasing. And as I said this is something that should worry us greatly, because all biological systems are very sensitive to pH. For example our bodies contain their own mechanism for regulating the pH of our blood. If your body's pH should stray much from 7.4, you will get sick. Very sick! It has been postulated (with good reason) that the pH of the ocean might have been around 7.4 when our mammalian ancestors left the ocean in a previous geological era.

A sea change: the source text

We're certainly not the only entity called "A Sea Change." It's an evocative, enduring phrase, used variously by a brand-new grantmaking entity, an album by Beck, a search firm for ophthalmologists, a photo essay in Mother Jones, and a book about migration in Australia, to name just a few.

The phrase comes to us courtesy of Mr. Shakespeare, naturally, from Ariel's song in The Tempest (1,ii,403).

The full text:

Full fathom five thy Father lies,
Of his bones are Corrall made:
Those are pearles that were his eies,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a Sea-change
Into something rich & strange
Sea-Nymphs hourly ring his knell.
Harke now I heare them, ding-dong, bell.

NOAA defines ocean acidification

This is a detailed, clean explanation of what ocean acidification is. Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, i.e., from the NOAA website. NOAA is the U.S. government agency specifically charged with studying ocean and climate, fyi. You pronounce the acronym just like that guy from the Bible: remember the ark? It stands for National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.