Hazy future for ocean life 13 August 04

Two new scientific studies give different views of the future for marine life like coral. One, by Chris Sabine at NOAA, suggests that the oceans have absorbed half the carbon dioxide so far pumped out by human activities since the Industrial Revolution. Although this has slowed down global warming, the resulting acidification of the oceans means that life forms with calcium carbonate shells face the danger of being dissolved. A second study, just published in Nature, gives a more optimistic view of the future for coral reefs, suggesting that doomsday predictions about mass bleaching may well be over-pessimistic. Corals seem to be able to take in more heat-tolerant sybiotic algae than was previously thought – though this should give no cause for complacency on climate change, according to the researchers who carried out the study.