Better monitoring urged for ailing oceans by 2015

* New system could give warning of tsunamis, acidification
* Scientists to put plea to governments at Nov. 3-5 talks
* Say set-up $10-15 billion, $5 billion annual costs
Alister Doyle, Reuters AlertNet 31 Oct 10;

OSLO, Oct 31 (Reuters) - Ocean scientists urged governments on Sunday to invest billions of dollars by 2015 in a new system to monitor the seas and give alerts of everything from tsunamis to acidification linked to climate change.

They said better oversight would have huge economic benefits, helping to understand the impact of over-fishing or shifts in monsoons that can bring extreme weather such as the 2010 floods in Pakistan.

A scientific alliance, Oceans United, would present the plea to governments meeting in Beijing on Nov. 3-5 for talks about a goal set at a 2002 U.N. Earth Summit of setting up a new system to monitor the health of the planet.

"Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic and less diverse," said Jesse Ausubel, a founder of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), which leads the alliance and represents 38 major oceanographic institutions from 21 nations.

"It is past time to get serious about measuring what's happening to the seas around us," Ausubel said in a statement.

POGO said global ocean monitoring would cost $10 billion to $15 billion to set up, with $5 billion in annual operating costs.

Currently, one estimate is that between $1 and $3 billion are spent on monitoring the seas, said Tony Knap, director of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences and a leader of POGO.

Knap said new cash sounded a lot at a time of austerity cuts by many governments, but could help avert bigger losses.

JAPAN TSUNAMI

Off Japan, officials estimate an existing $100 million system of subsea cables to monitor earthquakes and tsunamis, linked to an early warning system, will avert 7,500-10,000 of a projected 25,000 fatalities in the event of a huge subsea earthquake.

"It sounds a lot to install $100 million of cables but in terms of prevention of loss of life it begins to look trivial," Knap said.

New cash would help expand many existing projects, such as satellite monitoring of ocean temperatures, tags on dolphins, salmon or whales, or tsunami warning systems off some nations.

Ausubel told Reuters: "The Greeks 2,500 years ago realised that building lighthouses would have great benefits for mariners. Over the centuries, governments have invested in buoys and aids for navigation.

"This is the 21st century version of that," said Ausubel, who is also a vice-president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in the United States.

Among worrying signs, surface waters in the oceans have become 30 percent more acidic since 1800, a shift widely blamed on increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels.

That could make it harder for animals such as lobsters, crabs, shellfish, corals or plankton to build protective shells, and would have knock-on effects on other marine life.

Scientists said it was hard to predict the effects of acidification. Colder water retains more carbon dioxide -- making the Arctic most at risk. Warmer water in the tropics could mean less retention of carbon dioxide.

Scientists: Big Brother Network for Ailing Oceans Overdue
livescience.com Yahoo News 31 Oct 10;

A Big Brother-style network for keeping an eye on the world's oceans is long overdue, a group of oceanographers says.

The world's oceans have changed dramatically over the past several hundred years. The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, with much of that increase occurring in the last 50 years - a rising trend that could both harm coral reefs and profoundly impact tiny shelled plankton at the base of the ocean food web, scientists warn.

Despite the seriousness of the impacts of such changes to the ocean's marine life patterns, water temperature, sea level and polar ice cover, the world's oceanographers have yet to come together to deploy their swarm of spy cams and sensors to monitor these ocean conditions that have a fundamental impact on life across the planet.

A team of major oceanographic institutions from around the world will urge government officials and ministers meeting in Beijing on Nov. 3 to help complete an ocean-wide monitoring network by 2015. The system could cost $15 billion up front, and $5 billion each year to operate. However, those backing the project say the value of such information would dwarf the investment required.

"Most ocean experts believe the future ocean will be saltier, hotter, more acidic and less diverse," said Jesse Ausubel, a founder of the oceanography group behind the monitoring push, Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO), and of the recently completed Census of Marine Life. "It is past time to get serious about measuring what's happening to the seas around us."

The average pH level (a logarithmic scale that measures a liquid's acidity) at the ocean surface has dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 units, "rendering the oceans more acidic than they have been for 20 million years," with expectations of continuing acidification due to high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which dissolves into the world's oceans, the POGO scientists write in a recent report.

Because colder water retains more carbon dioxide, the acidity of surface waters may increase fastest at Earth's high latitudes where the zooplankton known as pteropods are particularly abundant. Pteropods are colorful, free-swimming sea snails and sea slugs on which many animals higher in the food chain depend.

"Ocean acidification could have a devastating effect on calcifying organisms, and perhaps marine ecosystems as a whole, and we need global monitoring to provide timely information on trends and fluxes from the tropics to the poles," said Peter Burkill, who is involved in the ocean monitoring push.

The U.S. and European Union governments have recently signaled support, said Kiyoshi Suyehiro, chairman of POGO. However, "international cooperation is desperately needed to complete a global ocean observation system that could continuously collect, synthesize and interpret data critical to a wide variety of human needs."