Coral Triangle Dead At The End Of Century

Yesterday, the WWF proclaimed that the world’s richest reef sanctuary tabbed the Coral Triangle, encompassing East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands, could be wiped out by the end of this century (yes, 91 years to go) . Climate change, ocean acidification, and human destruction are all major causes for concern. This Yahoo! article also added that:

Collapse of the reefs would send food production in the region plummeting by 80 percent and imperil the livelihoods of over 100 million people.

With too little action on climate change, “you get a world in which you have perhaps tens of millions of people homeless by the inundation of coastlines through rapid sea level rises,” report lead author Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said.

What I would be more interested in is how we are going to remove the excess CO2 gasses that are acidifying our oceans. Apparently the ocean doesn’t have enough capacity to neutralize the carbon dioxide gasses that are making the water acidic. Even 0.1 pH changes in ocean’s range can drastically have an impact on the underwater life. I know through experience that corals are a lot more resilient to temperature change, rather than pH change.

Here is a thread that sparked my interest, as it has a lot of scientific discussion on ocean acidification. What do you guys think is the main problem that plagues our oceans? Do you tink there is anything that we can do?