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Acute toxicity of temporally varying seawater CO(2) conditions on juveniles of Japanese sillago (Sillago japonica).

Kikkawa T, Sato T, Kita J, Ishimatsu A

Central Laboratory, Marine Ecology Research Institute, 300 Iwawada, Onjuku, Chiba 299-5105, Japan.

CO(2) ocean storage by which liquefied CO(2) is injected into the deep-sea to mitigate the climate change would increase the CO(2) concentrations of the surrounding seawater. The biological impacts of such dynamic CO(2) environments are, however, unknown. We examined the acute toxicity of temporally changing seawater CO(2) concentrations on juveniles of Sillago japonica. Step-wise increases in ambient CO(2) to fCO(2) (fractional CO(2) concentration of the gas mixture bubbled into seawater) levels of 7% and 9% resulted in mortalities of 0.15 and 0.40-0.67 after 18h, respectively. In contrast, one-step increases to these CO(2) levels killed all fish within 15min. Further, a sudden drop of fCO(2) from 9-10% CO(2) to normocapnia (0.038%) killed all the surviving fish within a few minutes. These results demonstrate that impacts of ocean CO(2) storage need to be examined under conditions mimicking the dynamic changes in CO(2) levels expected to occur by the CO(2) injection procedure.

Published 14 June 2006 in Mar Pollut Bull, 52(6): 621-5.
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