Exposure to carbon dioxide-rich seawater is stressful for some deep-sea species: an in situ, behavioral study

Since the industrial revolution, the burning of fossil fuel has produced carbon dioxide at an increasing rate. Present atmospheric concentration is about ~1.5 times the preindustrial level and is rising. Because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, its increased concentration in the atmosphere is thought to be a cause of global warming. If so, the rate of global warming could be slowed if industrial carbon dioxide were not released into the atmosphere. One suggestion has been to sequester it in the deep ocean, but theory predicts that deep-sea species will be intolerant of the increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and the increased acidity it would cause. The aim of our research was to test for consequences of carbon dioxide sequestration on deep-sea, sediment-dwelling meiofauna. Recent technical advances allowed us to test for effects in situ at depths proposed for sequestration. The basic experimental unit was an open-topped container into which we pumped ~20 L of liquid carbon dioxide. The liquid carbon dioxide mixed with near-bottom sea water, which produced carbon dioxide-rich sea water that flowed out over the near-by seabed. We did 30-day experiments at several locations and with different numbers of carbon dioxide-filled containers. Harpacticoid copepods (Crustacea) were our test taxon. In an experiment we did during a previous grant period, we found that large numbers of individuals exposed to carbon dioxide-rich sea water had been killed (Thistle et al. 2004). During the present grant period, we analyzed the species-level data in greater detail and discovered that, although individuals of many species had been killed by exposure to carbon dioxide-rich sea water, individuals of some species had not (Thistle et al. 2005). This result suggests that seabed sequestration of carbon dioxide will not just reduce the abundance of the meiofauna but will change the composition of the community. In another experiment, we found that some harpacticoid species swim away from an advancing front of carbon dioxide-rich sea water (Thistle et al. 2007). This result demonstrates a second way that deep-sea meiofauna react negatively to carbon dioxide-rich sea water. In summary, we used in situ experiments to show that carbon dioxide-rich sea water triggers an escape response in some harpacticoid species. It kills most individuals of most harpacticoid species that do not flee, but a few species seem to be unaffected. Proposals to reduce global warming by sequestering industrial carbon dioxide in the deep ocean should take note of these environmental consequences when pros and cons are weighed.

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 289:1-4 (2005) - doi:10.3354/meps289001 Deep-ocean, sediment-dwelling animals are sensitive to sequestered carbon dioxide D. Thistle1,*, K. R. Carman2, L. Sedlacek1, P. G. Brewer3, J. W. Fleeger2, J. P. Barry3 1Department of Oceanography, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-4320, USA2Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803-1725, USA3Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, California 95039, USA *Email: thistle@ocean.fsu.edu The burning of fossil fuel is producing the greenhouse gas CO2 at a rate that is causing global warming and threatens to change the global environment adversely. One proposed solution involves sequestering in the deep sea a substantial portion of the excess CO2 produced. Because large areas would be affected and this environment harbors one of the world’s largest reservoirs of biodiversity, the approach is controversial. In particular, deep-sea diversity is found largely in the animals that live in the sediment, but the effects of sequestered CO2 on these organisms are not known. We therefore introduced ~60 l of liquid CO2 onto the seafloor at 3250 m depth and sampled ~2 and ~40 m from the deposition site 30 d later. The pore water in the samples taken near the site was 0.75 pH unit more acidic (pH decreases when CO2 concentration increases) than that in samples taken farther away. Representative infauna had been killed in significantly greater numbers in the former than in the latter location. This demonstration that sequestered CO2 can adversely affect the deep-sea infauna brings CO2 sequestration in the deep sea into potential conflict with the preservation of deep-sea biodiversity. KEY WORDS:· Global warming · CO2 sequestration · Deep sea · Benthic infauna · Harpacticoid copepods · Diversity Full text in pdf format NextExport citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 289. Online publication date: March 30, 2005 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2005 Inter-Research.

MEPS Marine Ecology Progress Series Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsTheme Sections MEPS 334:1-9 (2007) - doi:10.3354/meps334001 Extracellular acid–base regulation during short-term hypercapnia is effective in a shallow-water crab, but ineffective in a deep-sea crab Eric F. Pane*, James P. Barry Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, 7700 Sandholdt Road, Moss Landing, California 95039, USA *Email: epane@mbari.org ABSTRACT: Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide could be curbed by large-scale sequestration of CO2 in the deep sea. Such a solution requires prior assessment of the impact of hypercapnic, acidic seawater on deep-sea fauna. Laboratory studies were conducted to assess the short-term hypercapnic tolerance of the deep-sea Tanner crab Chionoecetes tanneri, collected from 1000 m depth in Monterey Canyon off the coast of central California, USA. Hemolymph acid– base parameters were monitored over 24 h of exposure to seawater equilibrated with ~1% CO2 (seawater PCO2 ~6 torr or 0.8 kPa, pH 7.1), and compared with those of the shallow-living Dungeness crab Cancer magister. Short-term hypercapnia-induced acidosis in the hemolymph of Chionoecetes tanneri was almost uncompensated, with a net 24 h pH reduction of 0.32 units and a net bicarbonate accumulation of only 3 mM. Under simultaneous hypercapnia and hypoxia, short-term extracellular acidosis in Chionoecetes tanneri was completely uncompensated. In contrast, Cancer magister fully recovered its hemolymph pH over 24 h of hypercapnic exposure by net accumulation of 12 mM bicarbonate from the surrounding medium. The data support the hypothesis that deep-sea animals, which are adapted to a stable environment and exhibit reduced metabolic rates, lack the short-term acid–base regulatory capacity to cope with the acute hypercapnic stress that would accompany large-scale CO2 sequestration. Additionally, the data indicate that sequestration in oxygen-poor areas of the ocean would be even more detrimental to deep-sea fauna. KEY WORDS: CO2 · Deep sea · Physiology · Decapod crustacea · Acid–base regulation · Chionoecetes tanneri · Cancer magister Full text in pdf format NextExport citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in MEPS Vol. 334. Online publication date: March 26, 2007 Print ISSN: 0171-8630; Online ISSN: 1616-1599 Copyright © 2007 Inter-Research.

The deep-sea environment is a unique, challenging extreme habitat where species have had to adapt to the absence of light, low levels of oxygen, high pressure and little food. In order to survive such harsh conditions, these organisms have evolved different biochemical and physiological features that often have no other equivalent in terrestrial habitats. Recent analyses have highlighted how the deep sea is one of the most diverse and species-rich habitats on the planet but less explored compared to more accessible sites. Because of their adaptation to this extreme environment, deep-sea species have the potential to produce novel secondary metabolites with potent biological activities. Recent advances in sampling and novel techniques in microorganism culturing and chemical isolation have promoted the discovery of bioactive agents from deep-sea organisms. However, reports of natural products derived from deep-sea species are still scarce, probably because of the difficulty in accessing deep-sea samples, sampling costs and the difficulty in culturing deep-sea organisms. In this review, we give an overview of the potential treasure represented by metabolites produced by deep marine species and their bioactivities for the treatment and prevention of various human pathologies.

The deep sea plays a critical role in global climate regulation through uptake and storage of heat and carbon dioxide. However, this regulating service causes warming, acidification and deoxygenation of deep waters, leading to decreased food availability at the seafloor. These changes and their projections are likely to affect productivity, biodiversity and distributions of deep‐sea fauna, thereby compromising key ecosystem services. Understanding how climate change can lead to shifts in deep‐sea species distributions is critically important in developing management measures. We used environmental niche modelling along with the best available species occurrence data and environmental parameters to model habitat suitability for key cold‐water coral and commercially important deep‐sea fish species under present‐day (1951–2000) environmental conditions and to project changes under severe, high emissions future (2081–2100) climate projections (RCP8.5 scenario) for the North Atlantic Ocean. Our models projected a decrease of 28%–100% in suitable habitat for cold‐water corals and a shift in suitable habitat for deep‐sea fishes of 2.0°–9.9° towards higher latitudes. The largest reductions in suitable habitat were projected for the scleractinian coral Lophelia pertusa and the octocoral Paragorgia arborea, with declines of at least 79% and 99% respectively. We projected the expansion of suitable habitat by 2100 only for the fishes Helicolenus dactylopterus and Sebastes mentella (20%–30%), mostly through northern latitudinal range expansion. Our results projected limited climate refugia locations in the North Atlantic by 2100 for scleractinian corals (30%–42% of present‐day suitable habitat), even smaller refugia locations for the octocorals Acanella arbuscula and Acanthogorgia armata (6%–14%), and almost no refugia for P. arborea. Our results emphasize the need to understand how anticipated climate change will affect the distribution of deep‐sea species including commercially important fishes and foundation species, and highlight the importance of identifying and preserving climate refugia for a range of area‐based planning and management tools.

On Iceland, water enriched with carbon dioxide has been injected into the upper ocean crust since 2014 – and successfully. The carbon dioxide mineralises within a short time and is firmly bound for millions of years. However, since ocean crust only rises above sea level in a few places on Earth, researchers are currently investigating the option of injecting carbon dioxide into ocean regions where huge areas of suitable basalt crust lie at medium to great water depths. One possible advantage: In the deep sea subsurface, the carbon dioxide would either be stable as a liquid or dissolve in the seawater circulating in the rock. Due to the high pressure, both the liquid carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide-water mixture would be heavier than seawater, making leakage from the underground unlikely. But would carbon dioxide storage in the deep sea subsurface be technically feasible and ultimately also economically viable? The research mission CDRmare provides answers – with the help of the world's first deep-sea research experiment on carbon dioxide storage on cooled flanks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

On Iceland, water enriched with carbon dioxide has been injected into the upper ocean crust since 2014 – and successfully. The carbon dioxide mineralises within a short time and is firmly bound for millions of years. However, since ocean crust only rises above sea level in a few places on Earth, researchers currently investigate the option of injecting carbon dioxide into ocean regions where huge areas of suitable basalt crust lie at medium to great water depths. One possible advantage: In the deep sea subsurface, the carbon dioxide would either be stable as a liquid or dissolve in the seawater circulating in the rock. Due to the high pressure, both the liquid carbon dioxide and the carbon dioxide-water mixture would be heavier than seawater, making leakage from the underground unlikely. But would carbon dioxide storage in the deep sea subsurface be technically feasible and ultimately also economically viable? The research mission CDRmare provides answers – with the help of the world's first deep-sea research experiment on carbon dioxide storage on cooled flanks of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Towering 650 feet over the sea surface and spouting an impressive burning flare, it would be easy to mistake the Sleipner West gas platform for an environmental nightmare. Its eight-story upper deck houses 200 workers and supports drilling equipment weighing 40,000 tons. Located off the Norwegian coast, it ranks among Europe’s largest natural gas producers, delivering more than 12 billion cubic feet of the fuel annually to onshore terminals by pipeline. Roughly 9% of the natural gas extracted here is carbon dioxide (CO2), the main culprit behind global warming. But far from a nightmare, Sleipner West is actually a bellwether for environmental innovation. Since 1996, the plant’s operators have stripped CO2 out of the gas on-site and buried it 3,000 feet below the sea floor, where they anticipate it will remain for at least 10,000 years. We believe [CCS] is a viable way to cut global warming pollution. . . . We have the knowledge we need to start moving forward. –David Hawkins, Natural Resources Defense Council Operated by StatoilHydro, Norway’s largest company, Sleipner is among the few commercial-scale facilities in the world today that capture and bury CO2 underground. Many experts believe this practice, dubbed carbon capture and storage (sometimes known as carbon capture and sequestration, but in either case abbreviated CCS), could be crucial for keeping industrial CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere. Sleipner injects 1 million tons of CO2 annually into the Utsira Formation, a saline aquifer big enough to store 600 years’ worth of emissions from all European power plants, company representatives say. With mounting evidence of climate change—and predictions that fossil fuels could supply 80% of global energy needs indefinitely—the spotlight on CCS is shining as brightly as the Sleipner flare. A panel of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently concluded that CCS is “the critical enabling technology to reduce CO2 emissions significantly while allowing fossil fuels to meet growing energy needs.” The panel’s views were presented in The Future of Coal, a report issued by MIT on 14 March 2007. Environmental groups are split on the issue. Speaking for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), David Hawkins, director of the council’s Climate Center and a member of the MIT panel’s external advisory committee, says, “We believe [CCS] is a viable way to cut global warming pollution. . . . We have the knowledge we need to start moving forward.” Other environmental groups, including the World Resources Institute, Environmental Defense, and the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, have also come out in support of CCS. These groups view CCS as one among many alternatives (including renewable energy) for reducing CO2 emissions. Greenpeace is perhaps the most vocal critic of CCS. Truls Gulowsen, Greenpeace’s Nordic climate campaigner, stresses that CCS deflects attention from renewable energy and efficiency improvements, which, he says, offer the best solutions to the problem of global warming. “Companies are doing a lot of talking about CCS, but they’re doing little to actually put it into place,” he says. “So, they’re talking about a possible solution that they don’t really want to implement now, and at the same time, they’re trying to push for more coal, oil, and gas development instead of renewables, which we already know can deliver climate benefits.”

Methane hydrate exists in huge amounts in certain locations, in sea sediments and the geological structures below them, at low temperature and high pressure. Production methods are in development to produce the methane to a floating platform. There it can be reformed to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide, in an endothermic process. Some of the methane can be burned to provide heat energy to develop all needed power on the platform and to support the reforming process. After separation, the hydrogen is the valuable and transportable product. All carbon dioxide produced on the platform can be separated from other gases and then sequestered in the sea as carbon dioxide hydrate. In this way, hydrogen is made available without the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and the hydrogen could be an enabling step toward a world hydrogen economy.

Pollution of the marine environment by large and microscopic plastic fragments and their potential impacts on organisms has stimulated considerable research interest and has received widespread publicity. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the fate and effects of microplastic particles that are fibrous in shape, also referred as microfibres, which are mostly shed from synthetic textiles during production or washing. Here we assess composition and abundance of microfibres in seafloor sediments in southern European seas, filling gaps in the limited understanding of the long-range transport and magnitude of this type of microplastic pollution. We report abundances of 10–70 microfibres in 50 ml of sediment, including both natural and regenerated cellulose, and synthetic plastic (polyester, acrylic, polyamide, polyethylene, and polypropylene) fibres. Following a shelf-slope-deep basin continuum approach, based on the relative abundance of fibres it would appear that coastal seas retain around 33% of the sea floor microfibres, but greater quantities of the fibres are exported to the open sea, where they accumulate in sediments. Submarine canyons act as preferential conduits for downslope transport of microfibres, with 29% of the seafloor microfibres compared to 18% found on the open slope. Around 20% of the microfibres found had accumulated in the deep open sea beyond 2000m of water depth. The remoteness of the deep sea does not prevent the accumulation of microfibres, being available to become integrated into deep sea organisms.

Population Genetics of Bathyal and Abyssal Organisms

CO2 capture and sequestration is inevitable. The concentration of the CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing continuously which will cause global warming among other consequences. Among storage options, the underground storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs and unminable coals are considered the most economical storage options. On the other hand, natural gas consumption, which is considered to be a clean fuel, has increased significantly during the past years. Therefore seeking for new unconventional energy resources, especially gas seems to be inevitable. This goal is followed not only because of economical benefits but also because of environmental issues we are encountering these days. The purpose of this study is to develop an Artificial Neural network (ANN) tool to predict the important performance indicators such as methane recovered and CO2 injected, which are critical in CO2 storage projects in coal seams. We have combined the simulation method with artificial intelligence tools to predict the complex behavior of coal bed methane (CBM) reservoirs. In the first step a simulation is done using CMG software. A dual porosity model, which accounts for the optimum conditions during CO2 sequestration and consequently the optimum methane recovery from coal bed reservoirs was developed. Then the data extracted from the simulated CBM reservoir was employed to train the ANN model. Different parameters related to the coal seam such as porosity, permeability, initial pressure, thickness, temperature and initial water saturation are considered as the input for the network. The outputs are the CO2 injected and the recovered methane, which show the performance of the CO2 injection project. The Back-Propagation learning algorithm was used and different transfer functions and numbers of hidden layers were tried to find the best model with the least error. The tested neural network predictions were plotted versus the real data available and also different error analyses were carried out to prove the accuracy of the model. The R-Squared for the predicted values for the CO2 injected and the recovered methane were 0.92 and 0.94; the average percent arithmetic deviations were 4.8% and 4.5% respectively. INTRODUCTION In the carbon dioxide enhanced coal bed methane production/sequestration process, CO2 is injected into a coal seam to drive methane out of the bulk matrix. Because coal seams have proven to store large quantities of sorbed gases for geologic time, they exhibit significant potential for sequestration of carbon dioxide for the indefinite future. [1] There are two important parameters to consider when evaluating future CO2 sequestration in CBM reservoirs: the amount of gas that the reservoir can store, and, the potential to transport large quantities throughout the reservoir. [2] The increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is one of the most important environmental issues, which leads into global warming. Increasing the efficiency of power plants or switching from coal to much more environmentally friendly fossil fuels such as natural gas are among the ways to reduce the carbon dioxide emission. [3] However, sequestration of CO2 in geological formations for an extended period of time can be one of the most promising technologies for mitigating the atmospheric CO2 concentration. Since CO2 can be naturally stored on coal surfaces, so the coal seams can be used as safe and reliable geological repositories. Coal seams are widespread and exist in many areas within the close proximity of power plants, so they are good choices for storing CO2. In recent years the attention given to the use of unmineable coal seams for sequestration purposes has progressively increased because the simultaneous recovery of natural gas helps to decrease the cost of the CO2 sequestration project. [4]

So far, the climate on the Earth, from beginning to end, has been changing, making in circle and not stopping. About this point, the specialists seemly have no disagreement. However, About causes of climate change, they indeed have divergence, and as for whether carbon dioxide is or not main cause of global climate warming, their divergence is much more large. Some specialists considered that natural factors are main causes led to climate change, and influence of anthropological factors on climate change is very very small. However, the other specialists considered that anthropological factors are important cause led to climate change, and also emission of greenhouse gases is main causes led to climate warming and at which, emission of carbon dioxide is the most main cause led to global climate warming. Still also some specialists consisted that carbon dioxide emitted by human activities is a chief culprit led to global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated that the climate on the Earth is warming. Emission of greenhouse gases led to climate warming, and carbon dioxide is main cause led to climate warming, and especially the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities is the most main cause led to global warming. Now, the climate on the earth is getting more and more warming. If the people did not control emission of carbon dioxide, the global climate warming would bring ecological cataclysm to the mankind. The climate change theory described by IPCC is called “Global warming” theory, or “Greenhouse effect” theory. The global warming theory, or greenhouse effect theory, has had very large influence on the all over the world. In China, also there are a lot of people who believe that “global warming” is true, is right and is scientific. Especially in Chinese academic circles, there are many specialists who especially believe “global warming”, and they forcefully trumpeted that the global climate is getting more and more warming. The carbon dioxide was considered as a chief culprit resulted led to global warming. Still also there are some people who placed “ global warming” theory on the god altar, and accepted some people to prostrate themselves in worship. The “Global warming” theory put forward by IPCC, at home and abroad, all has received a lot of serious criticism. According to basic theory of classical physics and basic fact of climate observation, we can prove that emission of greenhouse gases is not main cause led to climate change, and also carbon dioxide is not most main cause led to climate warming, and still also carbon dioxide emitted by human activities was not a chief culprit led to global warming. Thus, large decrease of emission of carbon dioxide cannot control the greenhouse effect, and also cannot prevent climate warming, and still also cannot stop happening of climate cataclysm.

Lethal Effect of Elevated pCO2 on Planktons Collected from Deep Sea in North Pacific

The greenhouse effect is caused by CO2 released from various industrial and agricultural sources. Now assumed that, If we treat about 50% of the global greenhouse emission gases, global warming is considered to be remedied, while half of the total greenhouse gas emissions are nearly equal to the total emissions of greenhouse gases. From all thermal power plants. So if we treat all the exhaust gases from all thermal plants, global warming is considered to be remedied. So far, the greenhouse effects have not been treated yet. In our opinion, There are four reasons for this situation, that is: 1- We do not have a new generation of suitable industrial equipment and no suitable technologies 2- .We cannot remove the dust thoroughly before CO2 separation from the exhaust gases. 3- We have used ethanolamine to CO2 separation from industrial emissions, 4-We do not have the suitable solution to bury CO2 on the ocean floor. The authors of this project have overcome all the disadvantages mentioned above by proposing new generation of suitable new equipment as well as proposing new no-waste technologies suitable for treatment and reusing industrial exhaust gas as well as CO2 separation out of it, proposed using a cheap solvent called soda instead of ethanolamine to remove carbon dioxide from industrial emissions, suggests two inexpensive solutions to bury carbon dioxide in the ocean floor. The author has designed some major industrial equipment with a sufficiently large scale to handle industrial emissions of 3.4 million m3 per hour from a fossil fuel-fired 1,000MW plant. Industrial processes from very costly processes have many unreasonable steps have turned into less expensive industrial processes, even profitable. Content of the project is represented by 27 exclusive patents VN, 23 of these inventions were participated in the international invention innovation competition in Toronto Canada in 2017, and all 23 proposals are awarded with 15 gold medals and 8 silver medals. The project concludes with the following conclusions: 1. Conclusion on the generation of the suitable new equipment. 2. Conclusion on the suitable new technologies. 3. Conclusion on the two stages for the treatment of industrial exhaust gases. 4. Conclusion on the CO2 separation from the industrial emissions and CO2 transportation storage. 5. Conclusion on the CO2 storing on the deep ocean. 6. Conclusion on the economic efficiency. 7. General conclusion.