BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Oct 13, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Tourism and fishery-
dependent Caribbean nations plan to test the acidity of the Caribbean Sea as
a result of increased absorption of greenhouse gases, a senior regional
official said Friday.
The International Atomic Energy Agency “will assist” with the project,
said Milton Haughton, Executive Director of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries
Mechanism.
“I am very positive that we will have things going by next year,” he told
AFP in Barbados where Caribbean agriculture ministers are holding their
annual meeting.
Haughton said the Caribbean would also be establishing laboratories and
training personnel to conduct future testing.
Scientists already believe that the increased acidity is caused by the
sea’s absorption of carbon emissions.
“In more recent times scientists have realized that the absorption of
carbon dioxide in the ocean is actually causing serious, serious problems in
the ocean itself. Basically, the seawater is becoming more and more acidic
and that is not good for the living marine organisms,” Haughton said.
He added that acidic and increasingly warm seas were causing coral
bleaching and dissolving the carbonates that shellfish require to make their
shells. “The fact is that for many of our countries, our fisheries are based
on the health of the coral reefs,” Haughton said.
Avoiding global climate chaos will require a major transformation of
society and the world economy that is “unprecedented in scale,” the United
Nations said Monday.
It warned that the world must become “carbon neutral” by 2050 to have at
least a 50/50 chance of keeping global warming below 1.5 C.