(ORDO NEWS) — According to the latest data, by 2080 about 70% of the world‘s oceans will suffer from a lack of oxygen. This will affect the survival of many ecosystems, including fish.
Researchers believe our grandchildren are at risk of a global shortage of fish and seafood due to global warming
Fish, like other animals, breathe oxygen only dissolved in water. However, due to climate change, the amount of this gas in the seas and oceans of the Earth is beginning to decline.
Scientists have been monitoring the steady decline in oxygen for years, but a new study has shown that things could be much worse than we thought.
Chinese scientists decided to see how the amount of oxygen in water will change in the future. To do this, they used climate modeling.
The results of the work showed that deoxygenation – a decrease in the content of oxygen dissolved in water – began already in 2021, since it was then that the oxygen loss anti-record was broken.
Global warming is causing the temperature of the water to rise, as a result of which oxygen is already less retained in the seas and oceans, and because of this, the circulation between the layers of water is deteriorating.
In this situation, the so-called middle layer of the ocean (mesopelagic zone – from 200 to 1000 meters deep), which does not contact directly with air, is especially vulnerable, so oxygen comes there from the upper layer. Worldwide, the mesopelagic zone is home to many commercial fish species.
“This zone is actually very important to us because there are a lot of fish living in this zone,” said oceanographer Yuntao Zhou, lead author of the study. “Deoxygenation affects other marine resources as well, but fishing is more important in our daily lives.”
The results indicate that by 2080 there may be serious economic difficulties associated with a shortage of fish and seafood.
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