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Ocean deoxygenation is the reduction of the oxygen content in different parts of the ocean due to human activities. [ 2 ] [ 3 ] There are two areas where this occurs. Firstly, it occurs in coastal zones where eutrophication has driven some quite rapid (in a few decades) declines in oxygen to very low levels. [ 2 ]
Open ocean areas with no oxygen have grown more than 1.7 million square miles in the last 50 years, and coastal waters have seen a tenfold increase in low-oxygen areas in the same time. [ 34 ] Measurement of dissolved oxygen in coastal and open ocean waters for the past 50 years has revealed a marked decline in oxygen content.
Ocean deoxygenation is an additional stressor on marine life. Ocean deoxygenation is the expansion of oxygen minimum zones in the oceans as a consequence of burning fossil fuels. The change has been fairly rapid and poses a threat to fish and other types of marine life, as well as to people who depend on marine life for nutrition or livelihood.
Oceanic plants and animals easily capture what they need for their daily life, which make them 'lazy' and 'slow'. Sea water removes waste from animals and plants. Sea water is cleaner than we can imagine. Because of the huge volume of ocean, the waste produced by oceanic organisms and even human activities can hardly get the sea water polluted.
Hypoxia that leads to eutrophication caused from ocean deoxygenation is one of the main underlying factors of these die-offs. Eutrophication causes enhanced nutrient enrichment which can result in seagrass productivity, but with continual nutrient enrichment in seagrass meadows, it can cause excessive growth of microalgae , epiphytes and ...
Generally, seagrass is able to combat the sulfides by supplying enough oxygen to the roots. However, deoxygenation causes the seagrass to be unable to supply this oxygen, thus killing it off. [76] Deoxygenation reduces the diversity of organisms inhabiting seagrass beds by eliminating species that cannot tolerate the low oxygen conditions ...
Another effect of climate change on oceans that causes ocean deoxygenation is circulation changes. As the ocean warms from the surface, stratification is expected to increase, which shows a tendency for slowing down ocean circulation, which then increases ocean deoxygenation. [57]
Global map of low and declining oxygen levels in the open ocean and coastal waters, 2009. [1] The map indicates coastal sites where anthropogenic nutrients have exacerbated or caused oxygen declines to <2 mg/L (<63 μmol/L) (red dots), as well as ocean oxygen minimum zones at 300 m (blue shaded regions).