Paris, (APP – UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 15th Oct, 2024) European scientists have teamed up with two startups in a pioneering experiment to tackle one of the major problems facing sea life — the depletion of oxygen in the ocean, causing the disappearance of fish and marine biodiversity.
Ocean deoxygenation is one of the issues on the agenda at the UN COP summit on biodiversity, opening on October 21 in Columbia.
Researchers from Stockholm University in Sweden, the French industrial company Lhyfe, and a Finnish startup Flexens are working on a pilot experiment to reoxygenate the Baltic Sea by producing hydrogen at sea.
The BOxHy project is seeking an overall solution to the asphyxiation that threatens a sea bordering nine northern European countries.
The oxygen dissolved in the oceans is essential to sustaining sea life as underwater organisms have no chance of surviving without it, scientists say.
“But for more than 50 years, its concentrations have been decreasing,” said Christophe Rabouille, a scientist at France’s CNRS scientific research centre.
The loss of oxygen has two main causes, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The warming of oceans due to climate change is one — warmer oceans contain less oxygen, while organisms require more oxygen in hotter waters.
The other is eutrophication, the process in which fertiliser runoff, sewage, animal waste, aqua culture and the deposits of nitrogen from burning fossil fuels creates excessive algae blooms.
When this seaweed decomposes it produces vast amounts of CO2, removing oxygen from the water.
