Global warming spells ocean dwellers' doom

LONDON - Thousands of exotic sea creatures living in the cold Antarctic oceans face extinction because of global warming, say British scientists.

A predicted rise in sea temperature of just 2C would destroy some of the world's strangest marine wildlife, such as giant Antarctic sea spiders and crustaceans which grow up to a thousand times bigger than their warm-water cousins.

Experiments by British Antarctic Survey scientists in Cambridge have revealed that practically all marine animals living in some of the coldest parts of the world are extraordinarily sensitive to very small increases in ambient temperature.

Dr Lloyd Peck said these creatures died quickly when ambient sea temperatures reached 5C to 10C but began to suffer long before. Temperatures of just 2C or 3C caused them to lose the ability to survive.

It is precisely that sort of rise in sea temperature that is predicted by British Government climatologists at the Hadley Centre using computer models of global warming.

"The Hadley Centre model predicts a sea temperature rise of 2C to 3C over the next 100 years on average," said Peck. "If we have that average rise in the Antarctic, it will take summer temperatures up to 2C to 3C, exactly where these animals have problems."

The average summer temperatures of the oceans off Antarctica hover around 0.5C.

"If the models are correct ... we are likely to lose at least large populations of these species, such as scallops, bivalve molluscs, the giant isopods and the sea spiders."

Peck added: "It's probably the most fragile community of organisms on the planet."

- INDEPENDENT

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