China Daily (Hong Kong)

Fears of ‘rat-like’ ocean infestatio­n

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CANBERRA — Small “weedy” fish described as the cockroache­s or rats of the ocean could dominate the world’s seas if ocean acidificat­ion continues at its current rate, researcher­s at the University of Adelaide said on Friday.

For the first time, researcher­s have managed to demonstrat­e the effects of ocean acidificat­ion, and according to University of Adelaide marine ecologist Ivan Nagelkerke­n, fish diversity would be reduced as a result of changes to the ecosystem.

In a statement, Nagelkerke­n said ocean acidificat­ion nega- tively affected large sea plants such as kelp, which is used by medium-sized predators to hide from larger predators.

He said if kelp disappears but “low grassy turf ” remains, as happened in the university’s studies, then smaller, “weedy” species would thrive due to having fewer predators and more places to hide.

“The result is a lot of what are known as weedy species — the marine equivalent of rats and cockroache­s, and plenty of them around but no one will really want to eat them.”

Nagelkerke­n said ocean acidificat­ion had one major negative effect, and that was that biodiversi­ty within the ocean would be lost due to having higher numbers of fewer species of fish.

“If we look at the total number of fish we actually see that these increase under ocean acidificat­ion but local biodiversi­ty is lost,” Nagelkerke­n said.

He said the future effects of ocean acidificat­ion could be further mitigated by restrictin­g the overfishin­g of those medium-sized predators to ensure the natural food chain remains intact.

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