Fish Carbon: Exploring Marine Vertebrate Carbon Services

OUR OCEAN – A BACKDROP

A healthy ocean is vital to our life on Earth. Covering nearly three-quarters of the surface of the planet, the ocean provides a wide range of resources and services that support human life, well-being, societies, cultures and economies. As pressure on the ocean to provide these resources and services increases, its ability to deliver many of them is compromised.

Many human activities that impact ocean health and are directly relevant to marine vertebrates, and potentially to the carbon services they provide. Amongst others, these activities include: Climate change and ocean acidification – Impacts are estimated to cause potential disruption of 60% of the ocean’s present marine biodiversity by 2050, through local or global extinctions and changes in the pattern of species’ distributions (Cheung et al. 2009). Climate change is driving marine vertebrate migration away from the tropics and toward the poles, with implications for food security in coastal and island states in the tropics (Cheung et al. 2013, Jones and Cheung, 2014); the impact of this movement for nutrient cycling are largely unexplored.

Rising levels of atmospheric carbon leads to increased amounts of dissolved carbon in the oceans; while overall still alkaline, the additional carbon lowers oceanic pH levels (Hönisch et al. 2012): current rates of this process, termed ocean acidification, are unprecedented in geological history (Hönisch et al. 2012). Ocean acidification impacts the formation of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) structures and impacts the larvae and adult stages of many marine vertebrates (Fabry et al. 2008) and invertebrates: the impacts on corals and shellfish are expected to present a serious challenge for the sustainability and way of life for coastal and island communities (Wittmann and Pörtner 2013, Mathis et al. 2014). Through its effects on phytoplankton, ocean acidification may also impact the formation of clouds and weather patterns globally (Six et al. 2013, Arnold et al. 2013).