Around 30kms from the city of Naples in Italy, Castello Aragonese is a small island which has a stone bridge connected to an even bigger island of Ischia. The island of Castello Aragonese has a wonderful castle - which is how it gets it name - where you can enjoy scenic views and have a favourite drink of your choice. But according to scientists and marine biologists, this place is fascinating. You can find various varieties of limpets, barnacles, urchins and jellyfish and starfish along with very unique & confounding vents in the seabed. Yes, there are vents on the seabed. Due to these vents - which are present due to geological factors - people can witness the future of all other water bodies without actually waiting for the future to happen. These vents* - which become visible once you go deep - emit a gas which is, a hundred percent carbon di-oxide. They throw out bubbles of C02 which very much looks like silver pearls. Carbon di-oxide mixes with water to form acid which lowers the pH of the water; as the more acidic something is, the lower its pH value. The bad news is - with lower pH value, many life forms cease existing. 

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, humans have burned enough fossil fuels to add some 365 billion metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. Deforestation has added another 180 billion metric tons. So far, oceans - which are the largest carbon sinks - have absorbed roughly one third of all CO2 pumped into the air which comes to a staggering 150 billion metric tons - which pretty much explains why water bodies are turning more acidic. Thanks to all this extra CO2, the pH of the oceans' surface waters has already dropped from an average of around 8.2 to an average of around 8.1. Assuming the current trend continues, surface ocean pH will fall to 8.0 by the middle of this century and it will drop to 7.8 by the century's end. And unfortunately, the biggest tipping point, the one at which the ecosystem starts to crash is mean pH 7.8, which is what we are expecting to happen by 2100.

Ocean acidification was not a very popular topic until 2008 when a paper on these vents was first published by Jason Hall-Spencer, an English marine biologist. Since then various projects have been funded and various experiments and researches have been carried on. Ocean acidification is often called by scientists as global warming's 'equally evil twin' as it does have very devastating consequences. Of all the experiments that have been performed - scientists have concluded the disappearance of a number of life forms which cannot adjust to the extreme changes taking place. Out of these vulnerable life forms, calcifiers - organisms which utilize calcium and carbonate ions to build an exoskeleton for survival - were affected the most. When these organisms body regulations will be affected, it will alter the availability of key nutrients like iron and nitrogen which will lead to an extreme loss of biodiversity. That is to say, many life forms will simply cease to exist. Also apart from this as scientists are observing ocean acidification, they are also warning of another great danger. As per scientists, unparalleled amount of CO2 is being released at an unprecedented rate which is even bigger than the amount of CO2 released due to the end-permian extinction in what is now known as Siberia. So, the question for all of us here is, are we going in the direction of yet another mass-extinction event?

Footnotes:-

1. Vent*- https://youtu.be/uSdoSTAdng4

References:-

1. Kolbert, E. (2015). The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. In The Sea around Us (Reprint ed., pp. 111–125). Picador.