From Nov. 30-Dec. 11, leaders from more than 190 nations will gather in Paris for the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change, or COP21. The conference aims to achieve a binding international agreement to slow the pace of climate change. If we as a global community take bold and meaningful action in Paris, we can change course and leave our heirs a better world. In advance of COP21, Monterey Bay Aquarium is working to raise public awareness about the serious ways our carbon emissions affect ocean health, including ocean acidification, warming sea waters and other impacts on marine life. Today’s post focuses, in words and video, on the impact ocean acidification is having on some small but significant ocean animals.
Our colleagues at the independent Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) have been studying and documenting the lives of pteropods, swimming snails of the sea that play a critical role in ocean food webs. They’re delicate and beautiful animals, sometimes called “sea butterflies”, with interesting ways of finding food in the deep ocean. They’re also particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification, the change in chemistry that occurs as the ocean absorbs more of the rampant carbon dioxide produced when we burn fossil fuels.
Conservation & Science 