Feature

The Next Ocean

Humanity's extra CO2 could brew a new kind of sea

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

Terrie Klinger is starting to wonder about the future of kelp sex. It’s a delicate business in the best of times, and the 21st century is putting marine life to the acid test.

The pink polyps (species in the South China Sea viewed close-up) of corals are likely to have an increasingly hard time constructing a reef as rising carbon emissions change ocean chemistry.