The ocean is not safe! You know, the ocean? The thing that started all life on earth? You don’t know it’s in danger? Well, I just can’t let that slide. It’s a long story, but let me educate you. Here’s what’s happening; coral bleaching. If you don’t know what that is, it’s climate change (specifically C02 levels in the deep blue sea), which causes the ocean to become more acidic, atleast 0.1 PH since 1985. This may not seem like a lot, but PH is measured logarithmically, like the earthquake Richter Scale, and that means that like how a 6.0 Earthquake is 10x more powerful than a 5.0, a PH of 2.0 (as acidic as lemon juice!!!) is ten times as strong as a 3.0 PH. For reference, water has a PH of 7. Coral can’t keep up with this PH change, and is stressed. When coral is stressed it lets out the algae that colors it, causing it to turn white, and become weaker. This is (called coral bleaching) really terrible, because as you may know, fish live in coral reefs, which means that not only was Finding Nemo accurate, but the food chain is being thrown off. While you may think, “Well, I don’t care! None of this affects me! Right? RIGHT?” It actually does affect you, if you live in europe. Let me explain. Science has proven that the only reason Europe is habitable to humans is because the ocean PH was high enough. So this affects fish, coral, and (possibly) us too! We can fortunately stop Ocean acidification, all we have to do is (yeah this may be a big ask though,) stop using fossil fuels and banning fishing subsidies, or financial aid for fishing sent by the government. Sources: noaa.gov, ocean.si.edu, bodyglovehawaii.com, earth.org. With all that said, my friend Coral Man wants to speak. Here’s his part.
