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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Ocean oxygen levels decreasing

by

Soyini Grey
2049 days ago
20191219

Hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty is dri­ving oxy­gen from oceans at a rapid rate.

A new re­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Union for the Con­ser­va­tion of Na­ture, en­ti­tled ‘Ocean de­oxy­gena­tion: Every­one’s prob­lem” was re­leased in No­vem­ber.

It is the largest, peer-re­viewed study of the caus­es, im­pacts and so­lu­tions for this prob­lem.

The study test­ed oxy­gen lev­els in oceans around the globe from 1960 to 2010. It re­veals that world­wide ar­eas of low-oxy­gen or no oxy­gen in ma­rine ter­ri­to­ries are in­creas­ing.

In the 1960s there were 45 low oxy­gen ocean sites around the world. Now there are around 700.

Ex­perts say that T&T ought to be con­cerned about these find­ings.

“With our ris­ing tem­per­a­tures, and our ris­ing sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures you would have less oxy­gen be­ing able to be dis­solved in the wa­ter, and in essence it would go back in­to the at­mos­phere,” said Dr Rhea Gup­py, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of Ma­rine Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Sci­en­tists fear that if our wa­ters are warm­ing, this will af­fect ma­rine life neg­a­tive­ly.

They al­so said lo­cal fish­er­men may start to no­tice low­er qual­i­ty fish, or they may find them­selves hav­ing to go fur­ther out, in­to deep­er wa­ters for their catch.

Our coral reefs may al­so be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed as well, which should be a con­cern for the lo­cal tourism in­dus­try that de­pends on the beau­ty of them to at­tract vis­i­tors to our shores.

How con­cerned should we be? Dan Laf­fo­ley is the Se­nior Ad­vi­sor, Ma­rine Sci­ence and Con­ser­va­tion at IUCN. He is al­so a co-ed­i­tor of the re­port.

He said, “The find­ings in this study are per­haps the ul­ti­mate wake-up call from the un­con­trolled ex­per­i­ment hu­man­i­ty is un­leash­ing on the world’s ocean as car­bon emis­sions con­tin­ue to in­crease.”

Clos­er to home, Dr Gup­py spoke about what she and her stu­dents have them­selves seen, right in the wa­ters of the Fore­shore.

They have been test­ing the area since 2013, and the amount of bi­o­log­i­cal life they are find­ing in the area has di­min­ished sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

“We used to find a lot of worms, poly­chaete worms which were use­ful for in­di­ca­tors of en­vi­ron­men­tal health. Now we are lucky if we get a hand­ful of them,” she says. They al­so find lots of emp­ty shells on these shores. Life isn’t liv­ing here the way it used to. “The degra­da­tion in six years is vast.”

But lo­cal aware­ness of the gen­er­al poor health of our wa­ters is low. Dr Gup­py would like to see this change. She said peo­ple need to know that ocean health is tied to our health.

“This is where we eat. This our food. This is where we get our fish, where we get our shrimp. That is go­ing in­to our own bod­ies.”

On­ly 15 per cent of Trinidad and To­ba­go is above wa­ter.

Yet the on­ly pro­tect­ed ma­rine space is To­ba­go’s Buc­coo Reef.

The health of our ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment is not on our radar, but as the IUCN re­port sug­gests, and as Dr Gup­py has urged, per­haps it ought to be.


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