While biking along the Caribbean coast, Tom and I stopped in a small town of Santa Fe to relax and enjoy some snorkeling. Below the surface, we found an amazing variety of fish and marine life — blue fish, yellow-striped fish, long and skinny fish, ugly fish, many many tiny fish, a school of squids, an octopus, strange flower-like underwater plants, sea urchins, and many others (such as the large fish with the white shirt in the bottom right photo).

   The basis of this underwater ecosystem are the coral reefs. As I explained in an earlier post, these coral reefs are in great danger from climate change. Higher carbon dioxide concentrations will make the oceans more acidic, damaging reefs, and higher temperatures will likely kill many reefs. The reef on the left below is ‘bleached’ or dead, something that happens when water temperatures get too high. The reef on the right below is healthy. Unchecked global warming will turn more and more reefs into the dead bleached reef shown on the left.

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