We’ve all heard about rising sea levels and the possibility of more frequent, stronger storms. But oyster death? The Post’s Darryl Fears on Monday highlighted one of the many consequences of carbon dioxide emissions that scientists are only just beginning to detect — and most Americans have probably never considered — in Washington’s nearby Chesapeake Bay.
“Higher levels of carbon in the ocean are causing oysters to grow slower, and their predators — such as blue crabs — to grow faster,” Justin Baker Ries, a marine geologist at the University of North Carolina’s Aquarium Research Center, said in an recent interview.
Over the next 75 to 100 years, ocean acidification could supersize blue crabs, which may then eat more oysters and other organisms and possibly throw the food chain of the nation’s largest estuary out of whack.
See full Article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/04/08/climate_change_effects_crabs_carbon_emissions/?hpid=z7
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