Some Coral Should Produce Shells In Acid Ocean

This is Scientific American 60-Second Earth. I'm David Biello. Your minute begins now.
The oceans are turning acidic.
Surface waters absorb carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
And those CO2 molecules react with the seawater to make carbonic acid.
Voilà,a more acidic ocean.
That's big trouble for tiny plants and animals in the sea that make shells.
Because acidic water makes it harder to produce those shells.
And once the shells do form, the acidic water also corrodes the shells.
Many marine biologists have thus been anxious that climate change may mean an end to coral reefs.
But a set of experiments undertaken in Hawaii, Moorea and Okinawa give new hope, at least in the Pacific.
Four common corals and algae were subjected to conditions that mimic oceans if CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere reached 1000 ppm, more than double the levels today.
And three out of the four could still easily form their hard calcium shells even in such an acid ocean.
That doesn't mean ocean acidification won't be bad for corals and algae.
But it does mean that across the Pacific some of these organisms can tough it out.
Whether other organisms, including us humans, could thrive in such a 1000 ppm CO2 world is whole another question.
Your minute is up, for Scientific American 60-Second Earth. I'm David Biello.