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Squids may have a harder time breathing with climate change

Email|Link|Comments (9) Posted by bdaley December 16, 2008 02:27 PM

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff

For several years, scientists have warned that the oceans’ absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is lowering its ph – an acidic threat to corals and other marine shells.

A jumbo squid (courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Now, researchers from the University of Rhode Island report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ocean acidification could also severely impact Humboldt, or jumbo, squids. The squids, which can grow up to seven feet long are found in Pacific waters and are an important ocean predator as well as food for marine mammals, seabirds, and fish.

They also live an edgy life: The animals must recharge their blood oxygen supply constantly from the waters around them.

According to Brad Seibel, URI assistant professor of biological sciences, and Rui Rosa, a former URI post-doctoral student, squids are active during the night when they feed in oxygen rich shallow waters, but their metabolism dramatically slows during the day when the descend to the low oxygen deep sea. Increasing ocean acidification, along with warming temperatures, is expected to limit the amount of oxygen the squids can get from their nighttime feeding ground waters.

Seibel and Rosa exposed the squids to concentrations of C02 equivalent to those projected to be in the ocean in about a century because of manmade emissions.

The squids took in less oxygen from the high CO2 water and as a result, their activity levels declined about 45 percent. Warmer ocean temperatures, which are expected to rise as global temperatures do, also hold less oxygen, exacerbating the effect.

That means squids could become far more sluggish in shallow waters, making them more vulnerable to predators. The change may also push the species to even shallower waters where they may find new species to feed on, altering the food web – or they may migrate to more northern waters as temperatures warm. While jumbo squids could possibly adjust to the changing ph in oceans over time, they have among the highest oxygen demands of any animal in the world, and it could likely be difficult for the animals to adapt.

tags humboldt, low oxygen, sluggish, squids

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9 comments so far...

In the 1970s ... environmental scientists gathered to discuss a pending crisis... "Global Cooling." They were wrong. In the 1990s, using faulty models and bad science, the same group of kooks declared our seas will disappear by 1999. They were wrong. Then they claimed that the earth will warm and burn up by 2050... They were wrong.. they planet has not warmed in 10 years.

With 10s of billions in research funding at stake, they have renamed this farce "Climate Change" so that no mater what happens to the weather or temperature... they can claim they are right. Sound silly? It is. Time for this scam to go away.

Posted by oscarbozach December 16, 08 08:13 PM

This is junk journalism. The Globe excels at it.

Posted by skeptic December 16, 08 09:14 PM

@oscarbozach: Try reading some of the refereed scientific journals instead of listening to Rush Limbaugh (whose degree, fi any, is /probably/ not climatology) and talking point robots. You might learn something.

Posted by nobody December 16, 08 11:58 PM

Captain Nemo, phone home!

Posted by Jim Bencivenga December 17, 08 07:54 AM

Actually, saying this is related to "climate change" is an utter misnomer. The hypothesis is that this is related to increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is allegedly related to climate change but not one and the same. Of course "climate change" is the grabbier headline so the globe uses it.

Of course, I think "climate change" is nothing but hideous lies but that's neither here nor there.

Posted by Rotten December 17, 08 08:17 AM

anyone read the scientists that came out against the Associated Press's article, " Obama has to much on his plate to tackle and not enough time to tackle this crisis? (i dont mean economic) saying it is a bunch of crap, backing up their reponse with real scientific data.

When Al Gore sells his private jet and boat house, I will believe.

Posted by Ryan December 17, 08 11:01 AM

i like mikayla

Posted by val December 18, 08 09:04 AM

It seems that there are still a fair number of climate-change nay-sayers.

Wonder why they expend so much energy with their heads in the sand.
Even if predictions are only partially right, surely it's better to act quickly to cut emissions and then collect all the data. We can always go back to driving Hummers and burning coal, but we can't re-freeze the Polar Ice Cap (or perhaps we can, in millions of years, after all the island nations and coastal cities are covered in water, salmon are gone and the oceans are filled with jellyfish (thanks to ocean acidification)).

Posted by A Sea Change December 18, 08 02:45 PM

Not to be a miser, but using appropriately sized images in blog posts would be a step in the green direction... this jumbo squid here is ironically a 1920px × 1080px image (scaled to 420px × 180px by the browser).

Posted by ben December 29, 08 10:47 AM