Deep end: What rapid change means for our seas
IN the great halls of La Boqueria, Barcelona’s central market, tourists, foodies and cooks gather every day to marvel at the fresh food, like pilgrims at the site of a miracle. The chief shrines are the fish counters, where thousands of sea creatures, making up dozens of species, gleam pink and gray on mounds of ice. But to many ocean scientists this is not a display of the ocean’s bounty — it is a museum. By the end of this century, many of these animals may be history, due to man’s reckless abuse of the planet. As we keep dumping greenhouse gases into the air, the oceans keep sucking them up, making the waters deadly to their inhabitants.
On the Boqueria’s fish stands, I count 10 types of bivalves — creatures like clams, oysters and mussels, which use calcium carbonate to make their endlessly varied shells.
