A more acidic Southern Ocean spells trouble for a key food-source, krill.
Climate change is causing the ocean to become increasingly acidic, especially cold waters that readily soak up CO2. One cold region, the Southern Ocean, may be so acidic by 2100 that the eggs of Antarctic krill — a key food source for many species — will fail to hatch.
So Kawaguchi of the Australian Antarctic Division in Kingston, Tasmania and colleagues exposed eggs of Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, to seawater in which the partial pressure of CO2 was set at three levels: 380 parts μatm, equivalent to today's surface level, 1,000 and 2,000 parts μatm (ref. 1). With continued fossil-fuel use, deep water in the Southern Ocean could rise to 1,400 parts μatm by 2100.
Eggs incubated in water of medium acidity hatched successfully. None of the eggs exposed to the highest level hatched, however, and 90 percent failed to even fully develop.
References
Kawaguchi, S. et al. Will krill fare well under Southern Ocean acidification? Biol. Lett. 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0777 (2010).
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Barley, S. High acid kills krill. Nature Clim Change (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1003
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1003
