How did you 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 was going to be a serious problem.
And you demonstrated it?
I was taking samples off the coast of Italy until a local diver invited me to follow him to Ischia, in front of the Vesuvius volcano, to see curtains of silver carbon dioxide bubbles erupt from the seabed in an unforgettable spectacle.
Did it turn out to be much more?
It was, because I thought that if the bubbles were carbon dioxide, they could become an empirical sample of the ecosystem's reaction to the acidification of the oceans that is also caused by our pollution of the atmosphere by CO2.
Don't those bubbles from marine volcanoes also have a lot of sulfur?
Near Vesuvius I had a stroke of luck, because those bubbles were very pure – 96% CO2 – instead of the usual stinking mixture of other volcanic seabeds of sulfur and other toxic gases.
How did he know she was so pure?
Because it didn't smell. The sense of smell is very sensitive to sulfur, because it is what warns us that something is rotting in the refrigerator. But I was very naive then and I almost got poisoned, because, although it doesn't smell, CO2 is also a deadly toxin.
What did you do to measure sea acidification, then?
The important thing is to measure CO2 and not the other gases, because it is the CO2 that we emit into the atmosphere, when burning fossil fuels that come into contact with the sea, and not the others, that causes the acidification that threatens our marine ecosystems.
How had CO2 reached those bubbles on Vesuvius?
The African tectonic plates push the continental plates and make the Alps emerge, putting lime into the subsoil magma and causing CO2 to come out through the cracks in the seabed. So I returned to the seabed of Ischia and with a bottle I collected samples of the gushing gas and took it to the University of Plymouth, where I teach and research.
And were the little bottles of any use?
Upon arrival, I formed a multidisciplinary team of scientists in Plymouth and we analyzed, interpreted, described and wrote a scientific article that achieved enormous impact after being published by Science.
And today you are the king of ocean acidification?
The publication changed my life, right, and right now I am working for several Japanese entities that want to measure the impact of acidification on their fisheries; just like others in the Mediterranean Sea.
And do you increasingly judge it to be more or less dangerous for the oceans?
The first answer is that it is incontestable and completely demonstrated. We have also proven that it is being increased by the increase, due to human action, of CO2 in the atmosphere, which, when reacting 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, as do some species of algae from sea acidification.
Aren't these imbalances undesirable?
They are imbalances that are more undesirable for some species than for others and for humans of course. To begin with, it increases the corrosive capacity of the waters, which in turn affects navigation.
To the Mediterranean more or less than to the other seas?
They are complex ecosystems in which the effects of acidification are difficult to anticipate and measure. We know that in the Baltic they are larger for now. But there is also more plankton, so many species will resist them better. Others, worse.
Is the Mediterranean becoming tropical?
And in England we now have 40 degree summers 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 that we emit with fossil fuels, but they trigger processes that are difficult to anticipate: we know which cause imbalances but not which ones.
Are you optimistic? There's a solution?
In Spain they are doing it well: their energy is already largely renewable and I have not stopped seeing windmills and solar panels when traveling in this country. We Brits rely on marine windmills, because we have ocean platforms where the sea is not very deep.
