An acid attack on our oceans

An award winning Forensics Team Speech on Ocean Acidification

2016 Forensics Team State Champion in Informative and Persuasive Speaking (an original, factual speech to fulfill the general purpose of informing, convincing, and inspiring the audience)

2016 Forensics Team Regional Champion in Impromptu Speaking (preparing and presenting a speech on a randomly provided topic in seven minutes)

Also experienced in Impromptu, Extemporaneous, Improv, and Improv Duo

You sit down and click the “on” switch to your computer. Just like any other day, you log on, update your status, look at artistic pictures of food, and completely ignore the same article of 68 percent of the population: the one about the environment.

Every day we hear about the same threats to the environment: global warming, pollution, deforestation, and several others. We listen to the why we should recycle and know that the red panda is extinct and reply to it with the shrug of the shoulders because it's “not our problem.” The extensive coverage of these topics has caused most of Americans to become numb to environmental issues as a whole. What happens to the 68 percent of the environmental articles that go unread, including ones centering around ocean acidification.

For thousands and thousands of years, oceans have been a critical part of people's lives. The oceans have been our grocery stores, highways, pharmacies, and source of entertainment.

Now, imagine a world where there are no sand crabs along the beach. No conch shells to listen to what you once thought was the sound of the ocean. No broad walks due to high sea levels. Well, this world isn't far off.

Due to our ocean’s vastness, we see them as infinitely bountiful, infinitely abundant, infinitely ample. Now, more than ever we are seeing beaches that are so polluted people can't swim. We are seeing an increase in bleached coral reefs. We are seeing shellfish unable to reproduce. We are seeing massively overfished areas.

Our oceans are facing many pressures now: climate change, overfishing, nitrate pollution, and perhaps the most overlooked and commonly unknown issue: ocean acidification. The rapid increase of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution has caused the acidity of the world's oceans to increase potentially causing consequences for marine plants, animals, and humans alike.

Ocean acidification, osteoporosis of the sea, silent killer of our oceans. Whatever your preference it all means the same thing. Over the last 250 years, the average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has made an unbelievable increase from 280 parts per million to 390 parts per million. That's a 30 percent increase. Half of which was made between 1980 and today. To most people this just seems like numbers, but when you realize that in past, humans have only lived in concentrations of 190-330 you can begin to comprehend the problem at hand.

At its core, ocean acidification is the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans caused by the uptake of anthropogenic, human caused, carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One third of the carbon dioxide emitted from you driving your car, burning down trees, or producing cement gets absorbed by the world’s oceans. As carbon dioxide is absorbed from the atmosphere, it bonds with salt water creating carbonic acid. This acid then releases a bicarbonate ion and hydrogen ion. The hydrogen ion bonds with free carbonate ions in the water forming another bicarbonate ion. Typically, the free carbonate would be available to marine animals in order to create calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. In conclusion, the more CO2 dissolved in the ocean, the less carbonate ions available for forming calcium carbonate.

Imagine snorkeling or scuba diving a coral reef only to find an area as bare and deserted as the Sahara desert. An area with no life. A vast nothing. Although ocean acidification effects all of our oceans, it most heavily affects coral reefs. Marine organisms that provide up to 50 percent of the oxygen that we breathe, such as Plankton and other small organisms, are abundant in coral reefs and will decrease dramatically. These small organisms not only affect us, but other marine organisms as well. These small, bottom of the food chain organisms support almost all food chains in the ocean. Once their numbers start to rapidly decrease, all fish in the ocean, especially ones whose habitats are coral reefs, will be greatly effected.

In long-term ocean acidification is likely to have the most significant impact on the coral reef ecosystems. Marine organisms that provide up to 50 percent of the oxygen that we breathe, such as Plankton and other small organisms, are abundant in coral reefs and will decrease dramatically. These small organisms not only affect us, but other marine organisms as well. With pH levels dropping at this rate, current estimates reveal that we will lose 50 percent of our coral reefs over the next 40 years. That means that the quarter of marine species that rely on coral reefs to provide them a home will face extinction unless able to adapt. At a pH level of 8.2, our seas are already acidic enough to dissolve shells. This is evident due to the 85 percent of oyster reefs gone because of the acidification of our oceans.

For us, the ocean seems far away. It's vastness can hardly be comprehended. Not only does it threaten 25 percent of marine organisms, ocean acidification also effects the estimated 500 million people who depend on coral reefs for their daily food and income. Finding jobs, I'm sure you all know, is hard enough in this economy, nonetheless it will become harder. Travel agencies workers, fishers, ecologists, chefs, food manufacturers and marine biologists will all be affected by ocean acidification. Areas such as Cairns, Australia, will no longer be generating over 6.5 billion dollars in tourism revenue due to the death of the Great Barrier Reef. As a result, 63,000 people would lose jobs in the area.

Although research is underway to improve the conditions of our oceans, not much is being done at the local or global level. Seeing that this is a reasonably recently discovered problem, scientists are still researching ocean acidification and its effects on the environment. Even so, scientific research has already saved species such as the Pacific Oyster from extinction.

Scientists do know one thing: irreversible damage will occur around 2060. Even if all carbon emissions stopped today, the pH of the ocean would still drop 0.1-0.2 pH units and it would take thousands of years for the world’s oceans to recover. Nonetheless, that is still better than the 0.5 units the pH was expected to fall by 2100, a 320 percent increase in acidity.

Our highways, our entertainment, our medicines. Our food, our stress reliever, our memories. Our expansion, our destruction, our mess. Ocean acidification will be a problem for centuries to come. Environmental problems have become apart of our society. Although some are discussed until the point of no longer caring, others are worth listening to.