Ocean oxygen depletion could happen again
15 Aug 2017

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Plankton blooms in the Sea of Marmara, Turkey, caused by oxygen depletion | Nasa |
By TIM RADFORD | It is possible to trigger ocean oxygen depletion, choking the world’s seas. The suffocation zone – the region of the deep sea floor that is now oxygen-depleted – could double in a century, because of human-triggered climate change and other actions.
But don’t panic: the last time the oceans lost oxygen on such a scale was 94 million years ago. Up to half of the oceans became oxygen-depleted and stayed so for around 500,000 years. There were mass extinctions of marine animals.
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