How did he discover the acidification of our seas?
In 2007, my oceanographic research was funded by the Royal Society of London, which was already studying whether this acidification could be a serious problem.
And you proved it?
I was taking samples off the coast of Italy until a local diver invited me to follow him to Ischia, in front of Mount Vesuvius, to see curtains of silvery carbon dioxide bubbles rising from the seabed in an unforgettable spectacle.
Was it much more?
It was, because I thought that if the bubbles were carbon dioxide, they might become an empirical sample of the ecosystem’s reaction to the acidification of the oceans that also causes our CO2 pollution of the atmosphere .
Don’t these bubbles from sea volcanoes also have a lot of sulfur?
On the edge of Vesuvius I had a stroke of luck, because those bubbles were very pure – 96% CO2 – instead of the usual smelly mixture of other volcanic seabeds of sulfur and other toxic gases.
How did he know they were so pure?
Because they didn’t smell. The sense of smell is very sensitive to sulphur, because it is what warns us that something is rotting in the fridge. But I was very naive then and I almost got poisoned, because, even if it doesn’t smell, CO2 is also a deadly toxin.
What did you do to measure the acidification of the sea?
The most important thing is to measure CO2 and not the other gases, because it is the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels that comes into contact with the sea, and not the others, which causes the acidification that threatens marine ecosystems.
How did the CO2 get to the Vesuvius bubbles?
The tectonic plates of Africa push the continental ones and make the Alps emerge by adding lime to the subsoil magma and causing the CO2 to come out through the cracks in the seabed. So I went back to the Ischia seabed and with a bottle I collected samples of the gas that was gushing out and took it to Plymouth University.
And were the bottles of any use?
At Plymouth I formed a multidisciplinary team of scientists and we analyzed them, interpreted them, described them and produced a scientific paper that had a huge impact when it was published in Science.
And today are you the king of ocean acidification?
The publication changed my life, it’s true, and right now I’m working for several Japanese entities that want to measure the impact of acidification on their fishing grounds; like others in the Mediterranean Sea.
And each time you consider it more or less dangerous for the oceans?
The first answer is that it is indisputable and completely proven. We have also proven that it is increasing due to the increase, due to human action, of CO2 in the atmosphere, which, when it reacts with water, decreases its pH.
How is it harming us now?
The answer is complex. To begin with, CO2 is a gas that plants need and some even benefit from this increase, like some species of algae, from the acidification of the sea.
Aren’t they undesirable imbalances?
These imbalances are more undesirable for some species than for others and for humans of course. To begin with, the corrosive capacity of the waters increases, which in turn affects navigation.
In the Mediterranean more or less than in other seas?
They are complex ecosystems in which the effects of acidification are difficult to anticipate and measure. We know that in the Baltic for now they are bigger. But there is also more plankton with which many species will resist them better. Others, worse.
Is the Mediterranean becoming tropical?
And in England we now have summers of 40 degrees in the shade. And it is not easy to determine all these effects added to those of sea acidification: they are caused by the CO2 we emit with fossil fuels, but they trigger processes that are difficult to anticipate: we know they cause imbalances but not which ones.
Are you optimistic? Is there a solution?
In Spain they are doing well: their energy is already largely renewable and I kept seeing windmills and solar panels while traveling around the country. We Brits rely on offshore wind mills, because we have oceanic shelves where the sea is not very deep.
