Ocean acidification, caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, is a major threat to marine life beyond the well-known problem of coral bleaching.

The resulting drop in ocean pH makes it more difficult for many marine creatures to thrive, especially those that rely on calcium carbonate to form shells or internal structures.

These impacts can disrupt food webs, threaten biodiversity, and ultimately put entire ocean ecosystems at risk.

Cephalopods—such as cuttlefish, squids, and octopuses—are particularly relevant due to your school’s mascot.

Modern cephalopods have internal structures made of calcium carbonate, like the cuttlebone in cuttlefish.

Ocean acidification can make it harder for these animals to build or maintain these crucial structures, especially in their eggs and young, which are most sensitive to acidic conditions.

Studies show that acidification can reduce survival rates and affect development in cephalopod hatchlings.

When acidification combines with warming and lower oxygen levels, cephalopods face even greater challenges adapting, potentially affecting their population size and long-term survival.

History warns us that, during past periods of rapid acidification, ancient externally-shelled cephalopods suffered mass extinction, highlighting the group’s long-term vulnerability.

Shell-building animals like clams, oysters, and mussels are some of the hardest hit by acidification.

Acidic waters make shell formation and maintenance much more difficult, especially for young animals, leading to higher mortality and sometimes causing shells to dissolve.

This has implications for natural populations and aquaculture industries that rely on them.

Fish are also vulnerable.

Acidification can alter their growth, behavior, and immune systems.

Early life stages—such as eggs and larvae of species like Pacific cod—are particularly sensitive, with lowered survival rates meaning fewer adults in the future.

While some fish can rapidly adapt to changing conditions, species that evolve more slowly may struggle to survive as ocean chemistry changes.

At the base of the marine food web, plankton communities—including zooplankton like copepods—also suffer.

Acidification and warming together can increase metabolic stress in young plankton, threatening their survival and population stability.

While some plankton have shown short-term adaptation, overall sensitivity varies widely.

Marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, are indirectly affected.

They do not suffer directly from acidification but depend on plankton, fish, and shellfish as food.

Declines in these prey make it harder for marine mammals to find enough to eat and threaten their overall health and populations.

On an ecosystem scale, ocean acidification reduces biodiversity and can destabilize food webs.

Once essential species like corals or shellfish are lost, rapid ecosystem collapse can follow, affecting countless creatures that depend on these habitats and services.

In summary, ocean acidification threatens cephalopods like cuttlefish by making it harder for them to develop and survive, especially as juveniles.

It also damages shellfish, undermines fish populations, stresses plankton, and disrupts marine mammals by breaking links in the food chain.

These combined effects endanger the rich biodiversity of ocean life and the stability of the ecosystems upon which all marine creatures, including your mascot, depend.

Ocean acidification, caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, is a major threat to marine life beyond the well-known problem of coral bleaching.

Title:

Content: Carbon Dioxide Makes Ocean Acidification Study Suggests Rapid Evolution Could Make Fish Easier to Deal With
March 03, 2022 17: 00
Eastern Network Television
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Some fish can evolve rapidly to cope with ocean acidification.
(courtesy of Shutterstock)
In addition to causing climate warming, global emissions of large amounts of carbon dioxide will also cause sea water to become acidic, and marine life may be affected.
The study found that volcanic infiltration of high CO2 partial pressure, that is, high concentrations of CO2 dissolved in water, changes in the genetic transcription of fish, predict the response of wild fish to the continuous acidification of the marine environment.
The results show that some fish with faster rates of evolution may be more flexible in coping with ocean acidification, maintaining population size and diversity. One species of fish may be able to acidify the marine environment with its rapid evolution of gene molecular transcription regulation, but the population size and diversity of fish with slower rates of evolution are difficult to maintain in acidified environments.
As carbon dioxide emissions from human activities increase year by year, and the CO2 absorbed by the ocean continues to rise, causing the pH of seawater to decline and become acidic, scientists expect “ocean acidification ” on the surface of the world ’ s oceans, which may affect the physiology, growth and survival of some fish, and change some key behaviors that affect survival chances.
A team led by Celia SCHUNTER from the Faculty of Biosciences of the University of Hong Kong and the Swire Institute of Marine Science, along with foreign researchers, travelled to Papua New Guinea, the Pacific island nation, to extract the brains of six species of coral fish, including five species of finch and one species of celestial bream, from a carbon dioxide spill at the bottom of a volcano and about 500 m nearby coral reef. The organization conducts gene transcription group sequencing to understand the changes in fish gene transcription in the ocean acidification environment.
The results show that high CO2 partial pressure can cause transcription changes in genes related to circadian clock and immune function in several species, demonstrating that fish function is important in coping with acidifying environments, and that the core genes of circadian rhythms determine the 24-hour cycle of most species.
Immune-related regulation has been found in many species of fish in acidified environments, so regulation of the immune response may also be an important response to acidification, especially in nocturnal fish, which exhibit a greater proportion of immune regulation and are modulated in the opposite direction to diurnal fish.
In contrast to the fish body ’ s ability to regulate the pH value of the cells, the researchers found that the brain of the spinosus is used to maintain a large number of changes in potassium, sodium, chlorine and calcium ions that transmit signals in the carbon dioxide ooze. Corresponding changes are needed to cope with the acidification environment, but differences in the expression of related genes disappear when stress is reduced, and genes return to normal levels of expression.
Further research by the team found that this finch has evolved significantly faster than other fish over the past 15 million years, potentially giving it greater potential to adapt to environmental changes.
It is speculated that this species may have evolved molecular mechanisms to cope with future ocean acidification.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

What factors lead to damage of coral reefs?

What is the main cause of ocean acidification?

water absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

The resulting drop in ocean pH makes it more difficult for many marine creatures to thrive, especially those that rely on calcium carbonate to form shells or internal structures.

Title:

Content: There were 1,862 press releases posted in the last 24 hours and 393,697 in the last 365 days.

Utilizing biogeochemical and genetic tools to understand and support clam populations in a changing ocean

Marine bivalves are at risk due to anthropogenic climate change. This poses a threat to commercial aquaculture, and the communities that depend on bivalves for food security. Ocean acidification, the lowering of seawater pH, is of particular concern for marine calcifiers, including bivalves. Ocean acidification occurs as carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere at a rate faster than natural geologic processes can buffer. It is energetically costly for marine calcifiers like clams, mussels, and oysters, to mineralize under acidic conditions, and low pH leads to the dissolution of calcium carbonate shells and skeletons. This problem warrants research on acidification adaptation strategies that will keep coastal populations healthy. Adding calcium carbonate shell hash to coastal sediments may mitigate negative effects of acidification on infaunal shellfish by altering the chemistry of pore fluids, thus providing a potential mitigation strategy for local populations, including species like the Pacific littleneck clam (Leukoma staminea).

Here, I present the first in-depth description of the shell mineralogy, microstructure, body size variability, and geochemical properties of modern L. staminea, a common eastern Pacific, shallow, infaunal bivalve. Additionally, I document the impact of ocean acidification on the shell growth and gene expression of L. staminea, and test whether adding shell hash to its infaunal environement can promote growth under acidified conditions. Juvenile clams were raised in four experimental conditions for 90 days: control seawater, acidified seawater, control seawater with shell hash, and acidified seawater with shell hash. Clam shell weight, soft tissue weight, and new shell growth were measured. The presence of shell hash increased the pH, alkalinity and aragonite saturation state of pore fluids across all treatments, and increased shell growth on average, although growth metrics were variable across and within treatments. Lastly, RNA-sequencing revealed the impacts of experimental acidification on juvenile clam gene expression. Clams grown in the presence of shell hash had gene expression profiles more similar to those grown in control (non-acidified) conditions. In all, this research suggests that adding shell hash to coastal sediments alters the chemistry of pore fluids and buffers against acidic conditions that deleteriously affects clam mineralization.

Kempf H., 2024. Utilizing biogeochemical and genetic tools to understand and support clam populations in a changing ocean. PhD Thesis, University of California, Davis. 33 p. Thesis (restricted access).

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How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

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What factors lead to damage of coral reefs?

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These impacts can disrupt food webs, threaten biodiversity, and ultimately put entire ocean ecosystems at risk.

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Study warns of 'triple threat' facing Earth's oceans
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A new study has found that Earth ’ s oceans are becoming hotter not only as a result of climate change, but also due to loss of oxygen, extreme heat, and acidification.
The study, published in the journal AGU Advances, found that about a fifth of the world ’ s ocean surface is exposed to this “triple threat ” at the same time.
The triple threat of extreme heat, deoxygenation and acidification could last up to 30 days.
The study also found that these extreme events, which tend to occur in high latitudes and tropical regions, can reduce habitable space by up to 75%.
“The global ocean has become warmer and more acidic, losing oxygen due to climate change, and on top of this trend, sudden increases in temperature, or decreases in pH or oxygen, negatively affect marine organisms when they can ’ t adapt quickly to these extreme conditions. ”
“Extreme marine events, such as marine heatwaves, extreme ocean acidity and extreme low oxygen, can pose a significant threat to marine organisms and ecosystems, and such extreme events may be particularly damaging when exacerbated by more than one stressor. ”
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The study suggests that human-induced climate change, such as the burning of fossil fuels, is the cause of this “triple threat. ”
The effects of these phenomena are not only serious, but are currently three times longer and three times more intense than they were in the early 1960s.
Andrea Dutton, a geologist and climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study, said: "When our oceans are exposed to excessive amounts of carbon dioxide, this carbon increases the level of ocean acidity while also exhausting oxygen levels, and this creates a catastrophic impact on marine life, and in some cases this may cause the shells of marine organisms to melt."
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Cephalopods—such as cuttlefish, squids, and octopuses—are particularly relevant due to your school’s mascot.

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Content: People 's Network > > Education
Extraordinary Buried Fossil Bank "On the New"
Guiyang biota or solve the mystery of life recovery after the mass extinction
February 21, 2023 08: 30 | Source: Science and Technology Daily
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Original title: Guiyang biota or solve the mystery of life recovery after the mass extinction
On February 11, the reporter learned from the China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) that the Song naval professor team led by the school, and a number of domestic and international scientific research institutions conducted joint research with new results, the paper "Mesozoic a new specific buried fossil reservoir - Guiyang biota, revealing the modern type of marine ecosystem" was published in the journal Science.
The study reveals another special buried fossil reservoir in China: Guiyang biota.
According to Song, the Guiyang biota discovered by the research team in and around Guiyang City, Guizhou Province, the buried period is 250.8 million years ago, which is the oldest special buried fossil reservoir in the Mesozoic period in the world, and only about one million years after the largest mass extinction event in Earth's history.
This major discovery provides new insights into the speed and patterns of life recovery after the largest mass extinction event.
Uncover the tip of the Guiyang biome
In the past 500 million years, there have been five mass extinctions on Earth, the most serious of which occurred at the end of the Permian-Triassic period 250 million years ago, resulting in the extinction of more than 80% of marine species, and promoting the transformation of marine ecosystems from Paleozoic types to modern types.
In order to reveal the synergistic evolution of biology and environment at the turn of the Permian-Triassic period, Song Navy led the Triassic geobiology team to carry out field work in many provinces in South China for nearly 15 years.
“The discovery of the Guiyang biota originated from a field survey in 2015. ”
Song said that at that time, his student and the first author of the above research paper, Dr. Dai Xu, discovered a very strange fossil fragment, which has been identified as a lobster fossil fragment, which is very rare in the Early Triassic marine strata.
Since then, Dai Xu and others have carried out field work in the area every year, and have discovered a large number of multi-family fossils, uncovering the tip of the iceberg of Guiyang biota.
At present, more than a dozen species have been found in Guiyang's biota, including bony fish, cartilaginous fish, toothed animals, sponges, bivalves, chrysanthemum, gastropods, shrimps, crabs, radiosomes and foraminifera.
From an ecological point of view, the nutritional pyramid of Guiyang biota has been very complete, from the top predator coelacanth, which is nearly 1 meter long, to the primary consumer foraminifera, which is as small as 100 microns.
In addition, the researchers also found a large number of excrement fossils, indicating that the food web at that time was relatively complex and the ecological structure was perfect.
Song said that the Guiyang biota is older than other Mesozoic biota that have been discovered around the world, and is closer to the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, and there are no obvious differences and may even be more complex in terms of biodiversity or ecological structure.
In order to understand the precise age and biological features of the Guiyang biota, the team members have carried out a lot of geological work in the area, starting from the aspects of paleontology, biological stratigraphy, chronology, sedimentology, sedimentary geochemistry and so on.
New knowledge brings more surprises to the study
In the early Triassic after the mass extinction (251.9 million to 247.6 million years ago), the marine environment was unusually harsh, and there were many hypoxia and acidification events; the global climate was abnormal, and extreme high temperatures occurred, and the average annual temperature in the equatorial region may exceed 35 ° C.
Thus, under abnormal climatic and environmental conditions, biological recovery is generally considered to be very slow, a view confirmed by much of the Early Triassic marine fossil record.
According to Song, previous people believe that ecosystem recovery is a gradual process of gradual improvement from primary consumers to top predators, and complete marine ecosystems did not appear until the Middle Triassic (about 8 million years after the mass extinction).
However, this view remains controversial.
At present, the world has discovered a number of Triassic fossils, including Parisian biota, Chaohu biota, Nanzhang Yuanan biota, Luoping biota, Xingyi biota, Guanling biota and so on.
These biota appeared in the Triassic Orenic period and later epochs, while Guiyang biota appeared in the Early Triassic Indian period.
A large number of fish and shrimp fossils have appeared in the Guiyang biota, and some of them, such as lobsters, are the oldest known fossil record.
These two main groups are the most abundant and important in the modern ocean and play an important role as predators in the Mesozoic marine revolution.
Thus, the discovery of the Guiyang biota suggests that modern types of marine ecosystems took shape about a million years after the mass extinction, and that the Mesozoic marine revolution may have occurred much earlier than previously thought.
Reviewers of the article in the journal Science believe that the Guiyang biome is a rapidly emerging, beautifully preserved repository of exotic fossils that emerged after the end of the Permian mass extinction, a finding that fundamentally corrects our previous view of the recovery of organisms from the largest extinctions of the Pleistocene.
Song believes that in the foreseeable future, the Guiyang biota will bring us more surprises and provide more evidence for the origin of modern types of marine ecosystems. (Wu Chunxin, Wei Haiyong, Wang Junfang)
(Editor: Li Yihuan, Hao Mengjia)
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Modern cephalopods have internal structures made of calcium carbonate, like the cuttlebone in cuttlefish.

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Content: If we continue to live the way we are, I am worried for the people who will see the next 90 years.
The latest scientific explanation suggests that the biological world is on the verge of destruction.
The collapse has indeed begun, and it is bound to accelerate, leading to an increase in the scale of the collapse and its impact.
Everything that we depend on for our survival — what our environment has always given us — may begin to falter or disappear altogether.
The predicted disaster will be more devastating than Chernobyl or any event to date, not only causing floods, powerful hurricanes and summer wildfires, but also reducing the quality of life for each victim and their descendants, with irreparable consequences.
When the global ecological collapse is finally resolved and a balance is reached, humanity will live forever on a barren planet if it still exists on Earth.
2030s
Decades of large-scale deforestation and illegal burning in the Amazon basin by people who want to develop more land for agricultural purposes will reduce the area of the Amazon rainforest to 75% of the original forest by the 2030s.
Although still massive, this could be a tipping point in the Amazon rainforest, triggering a phenomenon known as forest dieback.
Forests suddenly become unable to generate enough water from the shrinking canopy to nourish rain clouds, and the most vulnerable areas of the Amazon rainforest degenerate first into seasonal drylands and later into savannahs.
The phenomenon of this decline is self-propelled — the more cases of blight occur, the more trees will die; as a result, drought will quickly sweep across the Amazon basin, causing severe damage.
The loss of biodiversity is devastating, with one in 10 known species in the world inhabiting the Amazon basin, representing innumerable local extinctions that create a domino effect across the ecosystem.
All wild populations will be severely damaged, and it will become increasingly difficult for each individual to feed and find a mate.
Perhaps some of the species used in medicine, new food, and industry disappeared before we even knew it existed, and the human cost was even more profound and heavy.
As the forests wither, the Amazon basin floods frequently, flushing the soil from tree roots into rivers; 30 million people may have to leave the watershed, including nearly 3 million native inhabitants; changes in moisture in the air could show signs of reduced rainfall across much of South America, leading to water shortages in many large cities, ironically because, As a result, the farmland developed in the forest is also dry.
Food production in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay will be significantly affected.
For the Holocene, the Amazon rainforest ’ s best environmental service is absorbing more than 100 billion tons of carbon.
Forest wildfires that occur in each new dry season release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, while the reduced capacity of forest photosynthesis means less carbon is absorbed by the region each year.
The extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will undoubtedly accelerate the rate of global warming.
On the other side of the globe, the Arctic Sea is expected to experience its first completely ice-free summer in the 2030s, making the Arctic open water.
Even if the sea ice that has been in the safe haven for many years, the thick ice layer freezes over and over again, it cannot avoid warming and may start to disappear.
The seaweed forests that lie beneath the ice fall to the ocean floor, affecting the entire Arctic food chain.
As the Earth's ice layer decreases, the white area will gradually shrink each year, which means that the solar energy reflected back into space will also decrease, and the pace of global warming will accelerate again.
The Arctic began to lose its ability to cool the Earth.
The 1950s
Forest wildfires and melting ice over the next three decades will dramatically increase carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
As always, the surface of the sea absorbs too much carbon, and carbon dioxide will form carbonic acid after it is dissolved in the water, first at the shallow beach, then into the ocean circulation, and finally throughout the water body.
By the 2050s, the entire ocean could reach enough acid levels to cause a catastrophic decline.
Coral reefs are the most abundant of all marine ecosystems and are particularly vulnerable to acidification.
Due to years of coral bleaching, rising ocean acidity makes it harder for coral reefs to repair their calcium carbonate structure.
In this era of warmer air and intense storms, coral reefs may collapse as a result.
It is predicted that 90% of the world ’ s coral reefs will be destroyed within a few years.
The oceans are also vulnerable to acidification.
Various plankton species at the bottom of the food chain also have calcium carbonate shells. An increasingly acidified ocean will inhibit its flourishing, and fish populations throughout the food chain will suffer from it, and the harvest of oysters and mussels will begin to decline.
The rest of commercial fishing and fish farming may begin to come to an end in the 1950s, with the lives of more than half a billion people directly affected, and some source of protein that humans have been consuming will disappear from our diets.
The 1980s
By the 1980s, global food production on land may be in crisis.
In the cool and affluent regions of the world, intensive agriculture has used too much fertilizer for a century, resulting in depletion of land forces, no vitality and no harvest; while in warm and poor regions, global warming will cause temperature rise, monsoon, storm and dry season changes, making farming doomed to failure.
Millions of tons of topsoil lost around the world could enter rivers, bringing flooding to downstream towns.
If current levels of pesticide use remain high, habitat loss continues, and pollinator diseases such as bees continue to spread, the disappearance of insect species will affect three-quarters of our food crops by the 1980s.
Harvests of nuts, fruits, vegetables, and oilseeds will be greatly affected if you can ’ t rely on the diligent pollination of insects.
At some stage, the condition may worsen while another disease is endemic.
We just learned that there is a link between the emergence of new viruses and the survival of the planet, with an estimated 1.7 million potentially human viruses hiding in mammalian and bird populations.
The more we cut down forests, expand farmland, and illegally trade wildlife to destroy nature, the more likely we are to cause another outbreak of infectious diseases.
2100s
The 20th century could set off a massive global humanitarian crisis, which would be the largest forced migration in history.
In the 21st century, coastal cities around the world are expected to face a sea level rise of 0.9 meters due to the slow melting of the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and the increasing warming of the oceans.
Over five decades, more than a billion of the 500 coastal cities may have been affected by storm surges, but by the 20th century, sea levels will rise enough to inundate ports and flood hinterlands.
Ports in Rotterdam, Ho Chi Minh City, Miami and other countries will not be able to withstand flooding, so they cannot take risks and become uninhabitable.
Those who were displaced had to move inland.
But there is a more serious problem.
If all of the above had happened, the Earth would be 4 degrees warmer by 2010 than it is today.
More than a quarter of the population may live in places where the average temperature exceeds 29 degrees Celsius, and today only the Sahara Desert can reach this daily high temperature.
It is impossible to farm in these areas, and a billion rural people may be forced to find a better way out.
Areas where the global climate is still milder will be under enormous pressure from population migration, where borders between countries will inevitably disappear, and conflicts may erupt around the world.
In this context, the arrival of the sixth great extinction will become overwhelming.
(Excerpt from Living on Our Planet)
【 Introduction 】
Netflix documentary of the same name
Forest fires, Arctic ice melting, torrential rain, floods, high temperatures to jump electric connection...
Is the Sixth Great Extinction Coming?
The human mind!
A 100-year-old man who wants to save young people ’ s lives tomorrow.
This is the planet we live on, and we can only protect our future on our own.
★ British National Treasure Nature Science Moderator, Historian, Witness of Earth History
★ Awarded the Order of the Lord by the Queen of England
★ IMDb top ten films, four of which are his works
Breaking the Guinness World Record with 4 Hours of IG Tracking Millions
★ Twice winner of the Emmy Award for Best Narrator
He traveled to 39 countries and photographed 650 species.
There are dozens of animals and plants all over the world named after him.
“I ’ m 95 years old, I ’ ve been making nature documentaries for over 60 years, and I ’ ve been witnessing the change of the planet all my life.
Having witnessed the decline of the earth from its beauty to its present day, and watching the oceans, wastelands, rainforests, and glaciers disappear and destroy their habitats, I will surely feel guilty if I choose to ignore them. "
After 2020, we will experience the following:
By 2030, the Amazon rainforest will be 75% less able to produce water and absorb carbon dioxide, and the Arctic Sea will have its first ice-free summer.
In 2040, the permafrost of the North melts, releasing 1,400 trillion tons of carbon dioxide and accelerating climate change.
By 2050, the oceans will absorb too much carbon leading to acidification, serious ecological damage, and reduced fish populations.
In 2080, the world is plunged into a food crisis due to overuse, exhaustion of land and failure of farming.
By 2100, the Earth's temperature had risen by 4 degrees, most areas were uninhabitable, national borders had disappeared, and wars had broken out.
The sixth great extinction is coming.
This book is the life story of David Attenborough and tells how we committed this terrible disaster, our present predicament, and our vision for the future.
But we ’ re lucky if we act now, make changes, and fix everything.
Live on our planet and make it better.
There is still time and a last chance to restore this beautiful world.
The book will teach you to take action, and what the earth needs is your will.
【 About the Author 】
by David Attenborough
In 1985, he was awarded a knighthood by the Queen of England for his contribution to the filming of natural and historical documentaries. In 2020, he was selected as one of the “Top 100 People in the UK ”.
Born in 1926, he is a natural science broadcaster and historian.
In collaboration with the BBC Natural History Unit, he has written nine comprehensive documentary films on animals and plants on Earth, four of which are ranked in the top 10 of IMBD. He won the Emmy Award for Best Interpreter in 2018 and 2019, and produced Living on Our Planet in 2020, documenting his life ’ s testimony to the Earth and his future. Attention.
> Johnny.
by Jonnie Hughes
A science writer and documentary director, he produces science and natural history films for the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic and Netflix, and has been involved in the BAFTA award-winning BBC series The Hunt and Emmy Award-winning Our Planet.
【 Translator 's Profile 】
＞ CHEN Si-wah
Graduated from the Department of Applied English at Ming Chuan University, he is interested in reading and writing, and is now a freelance translator.
# Earth # 22nd Century # Sea Level Rise # Rainforest # Extinction

Ocean acidification can make it harder for these animals to build or maintain these crucial structures, especially in their eggs and young, which are most sensitive to acidic conditions.

At what stage of life are calcium carbonate-based organisms most vulnerable to changes in water pH?

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

What factors lead to damage of coral reefs?

Studies show that acidification can reduce survival rates and affect development in cephalopod hatchlings.

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Content: Home of the Day
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In cooperation with the Foundation for the Advancement of Science and the Atomic Energy Agency
« Research » conducted a study on the impact of « acidification » on shrimp
The Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), in cooperation with the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), completed a study project to investigate the impact of ocean acidification and ocean surface warming on the growth and abundance of local shrimp.
In turn, the head of the project, researcher Lamia Muslim at the Center for Environmental and Life Sciences Research at the Institute, said that there are many animals that contain in their skeleton or shell calcium carbonate, and changes in the pH of water can negatively affect these organisms, especially in the early stages of their life. The sea and some phytoplankton species, but that does not mean that this is a positive thing because the increased growth of these organisms can disrupt the food chain, biodiversity and ecosystem mechanisms and construction.
She added that the presence of large amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to the occurrence of global warming and the rise of the surface of the oceans by between one and three degrees Celsius, and the rise of the water level to an amount ranging from 0.18 to 0.79 meters, which in turn leads to acidification and warming of the surface of the oceans, and therefore to change the chemistry of the ocean and threaten marine ecosystems.
She pointed out that the shrimp mothers were collected from Kuwaiti territorial waters during the breeding season to obtain eggs and shrimp larvae in sufficient numbers to conduct experiments on all stages of shrimp age, as the study experiments were conducted in the laboratories of the Institute in a controlled system simulating the expected climate changes in the future.
The results of the study confirmed that the warming of the surface of the oceans could have a greater impact than ocean acidification on the early life stages of shrimp larvae, as shrimp larvae exposed to high temperatures showed accelerated growth rates to reach the sizes of older shrimp, but with lower survival rates, it is very likely that lower survival and growth rates under future climate scenarios may lead to the emergence of smaller shrimp larvae. These larvae will undergo multiple molting processes over their life cycle making them vulnerable; furthermore, the study results suggest additional effects of combined exposure to ocean surface warming and acidification on egg-hatching success, survival, and shrimp larval development.
Al-Musallam said: “The study is fully consistent across the entire life cycle of the M Nair shrimp, where high mortality of larvae at low pH and high water temperature indicates a possible collapse of this species of crustacean under conditions of increased ocean acidification and future warming of the ocean surface, which also leads to a significant reduction in shrimp stocks in the Arabian Gulf due to overfishing or reduced larval growth due to climate change. ”
For his part, dr.
Dr. Saifuddin Iqbaluddin, from the Center for Environmental and Life Sciences Research, said experts regularly measure water temperature and pH levels and look at how marine life might respond to these changes in the coming decades.
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At what stage of life are calcium carbonate-based organisms most vulnerable to changes in water pH?

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

When acidification combines with warming and lower oxygen levels, cephalopods face even greater challenges adapting, potentially affecting their population size and long-term survival.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

History warns us that, during past periods of rapid acidification, ancient externally-shelled cephalopods suffered mass extinction, highlighting the group’s long-term vulnerability.

Title:

Content: The Sciences

The Late Permian Mass Extinction Explained

Burning coal caused the largest mass extinction in earth’s history — the Late Permian Mass Extinction, or the Great Dying.

By Gabe AllenJul 22, 2022 10:00 AM
(Credit: Catmando/Shutterstock)

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Mass extinctions are evolutionary turning points — brief moments on a geologic time scale that drastically change the course of life on earth. One moment in particular stands out. The Permian-Triassic extinction, aka the Great Dying, eradicated more than 90 percent of earth’s marine species and 75 percent of terrestrial species 252 million years ago. It was the deadliest mass extinction event in the history of our planet, and its legacy lives on in the flora and fauna of the modern world.

The climactic and geochemical triggers for the Great Dying are unsettlingly similar to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Global warming, ocean acidification and ozone layer-depletion caused ecological collapse.

The organisms that did recover from the extinction, did so slowly. Equatorial regions, which had been scorched beyond recognition, did not regain their characteristic biodiversity for five million years. Global ecosystems lacked both diversity and stability for at least eight million years following the event.

Survivors of the extinction event, though few, eventually repopulated the earth. These organisms are the ancestors of every living thing today. To paleontologists, the End-Permian Mass Extinction is the temporal boundary between the ancient paleozoic fauna and the modern fauna — a theoretical border between our world and a barely-recognizable predecessor.

Finding Precision

As recent as the late 2000s, the research community was significantly divided over what caused the Permian extinction. Some suggested that volcanism was at fault, while others suggested a meteor impact, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, caused the extinction.

Those that preferred the volcanic explanation, suspected the Siberian Traps, an expansive region of volcanic rock in present-day Siberia. The formation developed during an unrivaled period of volcanic rock on the ancient supercontinent Pangea.

“It’s the largest continental volcanic event and the largest mass extinction that we’re aware of on earth ever,” says Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist and professor at Arizona State University. “At the time, we didn’t know what caused either one or if they were definitively related to each other.”

In 2014, Chinese and American researchers made a breakthrough. The team extracted ancient volcanic ash from the Global Stratotype Section and Point for the early Triassic period, a site in Meishan, China that contains sediment that dates to the crisis unambiguously. By analyzing the uranium and lead isotopes contained in the ash, they put a relatively precise date on the extinction: 251.9 million years ago, give or take 70,000 years.

The next step was to date the Siberian Traps. Using the same method, the scientists analyzed samples from the site. “The bulk of this diffusive and explosive volcanism led up to the extinction,” says Elkins-Tanton, who was a part of the research team.

From these two dates, a timeline began to emerge. Intense volcanic activity on the ancient supercontinent of Pangea spewed magma through layers of basalt, coal and organic material. The combustion of these layers produced an immense amount of CO2 as well as other greenhouse gasses and chlorofluorocarbons.

Victims and Survivors

On land, both plants and animals perished in equatorial regions. At further latitudes, mosses and other lycopods began to dominate ecosystems that were once forested with conifers. Our ancestors, the tetrapods, died en masse. Survivors fled from the tropics towards the poles.

Like the mass extinctions before it, the End-Permian had an outsized impact on marine organisms. As CO2 from the atmosphere leached into the water, the ocean became more and more acidic. Simultaneously, high temperatures and cyanobacteria blooms consumed dissolved oxygen until there was little left.

Many organisms that had evolved to construct exoskeletons from minerals, found in ambient seawater, did not survive these changes in marine chemistry. The engineers of Permian reef ecosystems, rugose and tabulate corals, went completely extinct. Vast groups of externally-shelled cephalopods, ancestors of the nautilus, succumbed to the same fate. The End-Permian extinguished the last species of Trilobites as well, a group that had been on the decline since the Ordovician Mass Extinction.

Read more: The First Mass Extinction Event Explained: End-Ordovician

As with any mass-extinction, there were survivors of the Great Dying. Before the event, clam-like brachiopods were plentiful and diverse, but the extinction extinguished them in favor of their cousins, the bivalve mollusks. To this day, bivalves are widespread, while only a few orders of brachiopods remain.

Many researchers have speculated that the End-Permian may have catalyzed diversification among tetrapods. Though the extinction wiped many out permanently, the Early Triassic saw the creatures diversify and expand their ranges rapidly. This “radiation” eventually gave rise to archosaurs and later dinosaurs.

Drawing Parallels

The same factors that have driven anthropogenic global warming today drove global ecological collapse at the end of the Permian. An over-abundance of greenhouse gasses made the planet unlivable for most living organisms. Actually, the warming that initiated the End-Permian may have occurred at a much slower rate than anthropogenic global warming.

“It was the same climate change caused by the same greenhouse gasses as what we’re seeing today,” Elkins-Tanton says. “And it was almost the end of multicellular life on earth.”

However, climate scientists project that, if we can lower our emissions quickly enough, we can keep global warming to levels far below the ones that scorched the earth during the earth’s largest extinction event. It’s not too late to avoid total and complete ecological collapse.

“The rate of change might not have been as fast as today, but it changed the temperature so much that it’s really the worst-case scenario of what might happen,” David Bottjer says, paleoecologist and University of Southern California professor of earth sciences. “That’s why we should study it. To understand future scenarios for our climate.”

The future scenario, most-analogous to the End-Permian, would see humans continue to burn fossil fuels until few surviving organisms remained. It’s a scenario that may not represent the end of life on earth, but a fundamental change that would take millions of years to rebound from.

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How does coastal ocean acidification affect shellfish?

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

Shell-building animals like clams, oysters, and mussels are some of the hardest hit by acidification.

How does coastal ocean acidification affect shellfish?

Acidic waters make shell formation and maintenance much more difficult, especially for young animals, leading to higher mortality and sometimes causing shells to dissolve.

At what stage of life are calcium carbonate-based organisms most vulnerable to changes in water pH?

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

How does coastal ocean acidification affect shellfish?

What factors lead to damage of coral reefs?

This has implications for natural populations and aquaculture industries that rely on them.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

Fish are also vulnerable.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

fish becomes easy prey for other predators

Acidification can alter their growth, behavior, and immune systems.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

How does coastal ocean acidification affect shellfish?

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

What factors lead to damage of coral reefs?

Early life stages—such as eggs and larvae of species like Pacific cod—are particularly sensitive, with lowered survival rates meaning fewer adults in the future.

Title:

Content: There were 734 press releases posted in the last 24 hours and 394,615 in the last 365 days.

Study explores combined impacts of ocean warming and acidification on pacific cod

Newly hatched Pacific cod larva. (Image credit: NOAA Fisheries/Emily Slesinger)

As the climate changes, the ocean is simultaneously warming and acidifying. Both have been shown to adversely affect the vulnerable early life stages of Pacific cod. But until now, the interplay of these two environmental stressors was unknown.

new NOAA Fisheries study takes a look into the future by replicating predicted Alaska ocean conditions in the laboratory. The study is the first to look at the interactive effects of ocean warming and acidification on Pacific cod. Researchers evaluated the growth and survival of eggs and larvae at combinations of temperature and acidity representing current and future ocean environments. The findings can help improve predictions to ensure climate-ready Alaska fisheries and communities in the future.

Alaska Fish Face Multiple Climate-Driven Stressors

Ocean warming and acidification are escalating faster in Alaska and other high latitude regions than anywhere else on the planet. Alaska produces more than half of the nation’s wild-caught seafood. Local communities depend on the ecosystem for their livelihoods. Understanding how climate-driven stressors will affect these valuable resources is critical to ensuring resilient Alaska communities and a strong blue economy in the future.

Because fish are cold-blooded, temperature profoundly affects their growth and behavior. The effects of acidification are more nuanced. Fish can buffer acidity in the bloodstream but at an energetic cost.

Very young fish—eggs and larvae—tend to be the most sensitive stages of the fish life cycle to both warming and acidification. Unlike adult fish that can move to cooler waters, these tiny creatures are incapable of migrating to more favorable conditions. Subtle differences in their growth and condition can make a big difference to the number of young fish that make it to the adult population.

Laboratory set up for ocean acidification and ocean warming experiments with early stages of Pacific cod. Large tanks in the background provide chilled and ambient seawater that are mixed to temperature. Small round tanks house eggs and larvae at different temperatures and acidification levels. Acidification is controlled by bubbling carbon dioxide into the seawater: more carbon dioxide causes higher acidity (lower pH). (Image credit: NOAA Fisheries/Emily Slesinger)

Pacific cod is an important subsistence food, a key species in the food web, and the second-largest commercial groundfish catch in Alaska. Understanding how warming and acidification together may affect this ecologically, culturally, and commercially valuable species is key to predicting future climate impacts.

“Knowing how individual species will respond to multiple climate stressors helps us put together this puzzle to figure out what species are more vulnerable than others,” Emily Slesinger said. “And that will help guide ecosystem-based fisheries management to ensure their sustainability.”

Partnerships and Unique Laboratory Capabilities Expand Possibilities for Studying Alaska Species

Finding answers posed some hurdles. “It’s really challenging to study these fish that are found in remote and cold environments,” Slesinger said.

They met those challenges through partnerships and a specially equipped laboratory facility.

Fishermen played a key role. To obtain eggs and larvae for experiments, they first needed live adults, ready to spawn. Commercial fishermen used baited fishing pots to catch adults off Kodiak Island during the spawning season.

Fertilized eggs were shipped to the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center Laboratory in Newport, Oregon. The eggs and larvae were reared at six combinations of temperature (3°C, 6°C, 10°C) and acidification (ambient and high acidity). Scientists measured their hatch success, growth, nutritional condition, and mortality throughout the nine-week experiment.

“The Newport lab is very special,” Slesinger said. “What is most unique is our seawater system that can chill water to Arctic temperatures. The lab has the capacity to house many fish at all life stages and the expertise to keep them thriving. And it has the facilities to run these complicated experiments on the younger life stages.”

Experiments Reveal a Dominant Stressor

The study found that overall, Pacific cod’s early life stages were more sensitive to warming than to acidification:

  • Temperature affected all measured traits: growth, condition, and mortality
  • Mortality of both eggs and larvae was highest at the warmest temperature
  • 6°C was the optimal temperature for hatching, condition, and survival
  • At the warmest temperature (10°C), Pacific cod grew the fastest but were in poor condition with high mortality rates
  • At the coldest temperature (3°C), mortality rates were lower, but both growth and condition were also low
  • Acidification effects were more modest and inconsistent
  • The single instance of a negative effect of acidification was at the optimal 6°C temperature

“We’re seeing that either temperature or acidification drove the response—they were not additive. At optimal temperatures, Pacific cod may be impaired by acidification. At the warm temperature, they were overwhelmingly negatively impacted, but there was pretty much no effect of acidification,” Slesinger said. “Our findings suggest that temperature is the dominant stressor and ocean warming is likely the greater threat.”

The research highlights the complexity of species- and stage-specific responses to multiple climatic stressors and the importance of understanding them.

“This work is exciting because we are able to provide information about these fish that can be useful for future management. It is really important to me that my research can be directly helpful to societies, economies, and communities,” Slesinger said. “This research contributes to our common goal of ensuring productive, sustainable fishing into the future.”

Ecomagazine, 30 April 2024. Press release.

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At what stage of life are calcium carbonate-based organisms most vulnerable to changes in water pH?

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

While some fish can rapidly adapt to changing conditions, species that evolve more slowly may struggle to survive as ocean chemistry changes.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

At the base of the marine food web, plankton communities—including zooplankton like copepods—also suffer.

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

Acidification and warming together can increase metabolic stress in young plankton, threatening their survival and population stability.

At what stage of life are calcium carbonate-based organisms most vulnerable to changes in water pH?

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

While some plankton have shown short-term adaptation, overall sensitivity varies widely.

Marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, are indirectly affected.

Title:

Content: The Arctic region is currently undergoing rapid and significant changes, with acidification and warming occurring at alarming rates.
These shifts raise concerns about the resilience of marine communities in the face of such environmental shifts.
Marine zooplankton, especially copepods, play a crucial role in the Arctic food web.
However, differences in environmental conditions can disrupt zooplankton populations, leading to adverse consequences for the entire ecosystem.
Recent research has focused on understanding the extent to which copepods in early life are exposed to environmental stressors, as they represent a critical bottleneck in the copepods life cycle.
A study by Espinel Velasco et al.
(2023) Explore the responses of 4-day-old Kalanos Hyperborius Lenobli to acidification (pH 7.5 and 8.1) and warming (0 and 3 ° C), both individually and collectively.
The study revealed that the larvae 'breathing rates increased significantly when exposed to a combination of acidification and warming.
Surprisingly, exposure to these stressors individually did not produce the same effect.
Surprisingly, the researchers did not find any noticeable differences in fat content and fatty acid composition in the larvae across various experimental treatments.
Wax esters, which make up about 75% of the fat reserve, and high amounts of long-chain fatty acids 20: 1 and 22: 1, necessary for copepods to reproduce, have been detected in all treatments.
By highlighting the sensitivity of larvae to the combined effects of acidification and warming, this study aligns with a growing body of evidence from relevant research.
It highlights the potential impacts of global change on Arctic copepod populations and stresses the importance of understanding early life stage responses to environmental stressors.
Questions and Answers:
Q: What are zooplankton?
A: Zooplankton refers to small, often microscopic, organisms that drift into the ocean or other bodies of water and serve as one of the main sources of food for many marine species.
Q: What is the role of copepods in the Arctic food web?
A: Copepods, especially calanotic copepods such as Calanus Hyperboreus, are a critical component of the Arctic food web.
They serve as a vital link between primary producers (such as phytoplankton) and higher trophic levels, serving as a food source for various marine species.
Q: What is acidification?
A: Acidification refers to the process of increasing acidity (lowering pH) in seawater due to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This occurs as a result of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels.
Q: How does global warming affect marine ecosystems?
A: Ocean warming can have various impacts on marine ecosystems, including changes in species distribution, changing reproductive cycles, and potential disruptions to the delicate balance of food webs.
Source: Frontiers in Marine Science, DOI: 10.3389 / fmars.2023.1240673

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

They do not suffer directly from acidification but depend on plankton, fish, and shellfish as food.

Declines in these prey make it harder for marine mammals to find enough to eat and threaten their overall health and populations.

On an ecosystem scale, ocean acidification reduces biodiversity and can destabilize food webs.

Once essential species like corals or shellfish are lost, rapid ecosystem collapse can follow, affecting countless creatures that depend on these habitats and services.

Title:

Content: Supplement
The cover.
Fountain sea people: white, with no disappearing color
[Ming Pao News] The coral communities under the water of Qiaozui Island were mostly bleached last year, will they still be bleached this year?
Huang Zhijun still remembers the day he dived into the water last year to see a piece of coral bleaching and losing its color, and he was floating in the high temperature water of 32 and 33 degrees Celsius at daybreak, and he imagined that he would see this piece of coral return to color in the future.
The summer heat is still geothermal this year, and the imagination has not dissipated.
On the day of jumping into this water again, I do not know whether it is wind, rain, or other factors affecting the sea. The water temperature is slightly lower than last year, and some flat brain corals and coastal corals in the shallow water near the shore are covered with grey-green algae like a short straw on the head.
It is a symbol of death.
But why do green algae grow on the top of corals? As he guesses, in addition to the warming of the sea water and the bleaching of corals, if the first snorkeling experience is not good at diving, it is very likely that the coral is regarded as a rock and trampled on the coral. Accelerated coral loss.
He looked carefully, both sides of the coral are well restored to grow, only the top layer seems to be bald green, more confirmed this idea.
As we swam further ahead, he pointed to the deeper part of the water, before the snorkeling mirror rolled a large piece of intact cross-peony coral, that moment looked like overlooking a dark brown ancient city, the city hiding different species of butterflies of different sizes, they swam, briskly, like the yellow body with large black spots of the commonly known as Bean Butterfly, and some people with lettered characters. The butterfly also skipped in front of the eyes.
He dived into the deep water area to record the scene in front of the camera, and a picture flashed in his head at the same time. Didn ’ t the fish come to the camera last year? This time, he thought, it was time for the divers to decrease after the customs clearance, and the fish could no longer remember the feeding of the divers, no longer use the equipment as food, and finally regained their nature.
The strength of the corals.
He took a breath of relief.
He really took a sigh of relief, this underwater coral is still as strong as the recognized Hong Kong coral, and it is in perfect condition.
It is also widely said that Hong Kong corals are unusually resilient, because they have to face cold winter temperatures and low salinity water from the western estuary, and most of them have survived, so they have slowly grown for 10 years.
In Wong ’ s view, this is like the Hong Kong people who live on this land, so strong.
Originally thought that the more fragile corals would recover more slowly than other corals, but after diving again, he found that they recovered more quickly than flatbrain corals and coastal corals after last year's bleaching, at least under this water, and the overall corals gradually regained their appearance, and about 80% of the creatures began to return to their place.
Is everything all right?
I don ’ t know, next year around the time of Huang Zhijun decided to take a look again, to see this childhood has visited with his family, played on the beach in Qiaozuo.
More than 20 years ago, before he began to touch coral in college, he had heard that if he looked back at the surface of the earth from space, the only thing that could be seen by his eyes was coral.
In other words, when astronauts think of Earth, the only thing they can see with the naked eye is the souls of these oceans, the corals on which so many marine life coexist.
Similar claims, and even the simple structure of the coral worms themselves, have always attracted Huang Zhijun.
One end of the opening can meet the needs of eating and excretion, so simple structure, but can extend the complex multi-end network relationship.
When he was a university professor, he followed Professor Wu and planted a coral world that looked quieter than fish, and studied the mutually-symbiotic zooxanthellae of corals, such as whether the number of sediments in the sea would decrease under various pressures.
It may seem like nothing has changed, but if you look closely and keep your senses sharp, you may find tiny interactions between corals and corals, or between corals and other species.
"They can fight, flat-headed corals look silly, but they eat other corals the most."
"In the early years, he said," Corals have spiny cells like jellyfish fingers, and if they are not treated when they are cut, the wound may become swollen, so the strength of the coral should not be underestimated. "」
But what if the coral disappears?
“If corals disappear, the entire marine ecosystem will collapse with them. ” Corals can be cloudy for a while, but when they reach the critical point, they may collapse precipitously.
High Coral Coverage
The disappearance of certain marine habitats is an unforgettable experience he has given him during his 18 years as an environmental consultant before teaching at Koh Kwan (Centre for Nature Education and Astronomy).
At that time, he personally felt the injustice of the EIA system, and the inevitable adulation of the advisory position made him feel aggrieved, frustrated, and disappointed in his young age, and felt that he could not afford the torture of violating his learning day after day, so he quit his job as an environmental consultant.
Later, he was working on the feasibility of a marine park further east than the mouth of the bridge, in a place called White Rabbit. When he dived into the water, he found that the bottom of the sea was covered with layers of texture, and the noise of fish and other creatures made him happy to return to the land. Write a report.
Then came the endless wait, the futile report.
The nearly 20-year wait has not ended yet.
In recent years, what he hates most is that the pictures stored in the memory bank and the photo bank have disappeared into the water, and now only 20% or 30% of them are left.
Remains of photos and memories.
Why is this happening?
Huang Zhijun can no longer be traced.
But he did not forget that there were many yachts in the middle of summer, and there was no area where ships were prohibited from anchoring. Anchors were likely to be dragged along the seabed, and if the sun oil used by the people on the ship was not physically replaced by general sunscreen, when the body jumped into the water, the chemicals would be left behind and gradually destroy the seabed habitat.
As we sat in the kiosk facing the sea, he soon found several light boats on the sea that appeared to be guiding the fish with lights.
Could such a fishing boat have misled the Buchan whale that swam to Sai Kung a month ago into thinking that the food here is abundant?
A lover of the ocean and a bird lover, he recalls that two years ago, he was also found mistakenly in local waters, when the waters were far from the city, and there was no glare.
"Seabirds will tell you where the whales are: where the terns are in the water, they will know where they will be seen."
Watching the birds on the boat, the sea breeze howls, so watching the birds does not rely on hearing, not tracking by ear.
But looking at the birds is different.
"Forest birds often rely on sound and sharp ears to quickly find birds in the dense jungle."
When he first started birdwatching, he was inspired by his mentor Richard Lewthwaite. At the same time, he also studied coral with Professor Wu. At that time, he found that he was slow to hear, and his ears could not hear the sounds of birds with higher frequencies.
However, when he returned to the sea, he did not feel dizzy and vomited, and could stand on the deck for a long time to see the birds, which seemed like a gift from heaven. At that time, on a boat trip to Tung Ping Chau to study coral, when he arrived at the pier, he and his companions met the red-footed bonito, an unusual seabird. There is such a fate. "
Believe in the ability of the ocean to recover: just let her rest and recuperate
It has been more than 20 years since I turned my eyes.
Having been involved in ecological work for many years, one of the most memorable things is guarding the dragon tail.
At that time, the spirit was spent in the dragon tail, from time to time to explore the mud beach to find treasure, and there was almost no scuba diving for four or five years.
In the meantime, he discovered that this seemingly flat muddy beach, mixed with rock banks, estuaries, sand pings, loose stones and other multi-combination patterns, is actually a treasure trove of buried ecological treasures.
At that time, the accumulated experience even overturned the knowledge acquired in books in the past, such as the theory that the ecological value of places other than mangroves was low.
At that time, people began to reach the tail of the dragon, bending together, touching the sea stars like maple leaves, and the flowers like anemones - he always believed in the original intention of ecological popularization - not only to know the scientific name, but also to personally contact.
Without personal contact, there is no way to talk about feelings.
How can one protect others who are unable to relate to one another?
Can people make decisions?
Now that the artificial beach has been built, he admits that he does not want to return to his hometown, nor does he dare to fully devote himself to the next three runs or tomorrow's Lantau operation.
The experience of failure left him in the dark.
"What I put in can still be successful?"
These years, however, Zacharias still believed in action.
He records that the species he observed while diving on the Citizen Science Database will also go diving in the central waters, which are less visited and generally considered to be of poor water quality, and hurry to record it in the Lantau era tomorrow.
It is also preparing to publish a popular ecological science book on invertebrates.
After 20 years of diving, he still believes that every time he dives into Hong Kong waters, there is always something new waiting to be discovered, and he has tried to explore the Hong Kong sea in different ways.
In recent years, he has experimented with a new form of diving called black water. Unlike ordinary diving in the water during the day, black water means that diving into the open sea at night, using the light nature of marine life to attract deep-sea animals that cannot be seen on weekdays, and swimming in front of them.
"Like the full moon, when the light is very bright, some deep-sea animals migrate vertically, from deep to shallow water, which is a natural phenomenon."
This type of light migration causes the animals to swim up like a water column. Sea butterflies, ctenoides, octopus, various miniature and rare creatures bloom in the lens, each small dot, also like a display of life.
“They change color, it ’ s fun. ” The kaleidoscopic colors pop up on his phone screen.
The sea is moving like space.
"In the blackwater of Hong Kong, the fish somehow hit the body like crazy, and then felt that they did not belong here."
He also tried to be crawled by hundreds of krill during the blackwater at Sai Kung East Dam.
“I ’ m always an outsider and can ’ t fit in, but I guess I ’ m not an intruder. ”
Although he is a citizen of the land, only on the bottom of the sea does he feel free to move freely up and down.
On land, we can ’ t touch the sky, but being surrounded by sea water can add another dimension like an astronaut roaming the moon.
Huang Zhijun also likes to see terrestrial creatures, but if you have to choose one from the land and the sea, he will still choose to see marine life first.
Because it can disappear faster.
At present, the temperature is no longer rising by an average of zero point a year, but it is exploding at double speed, warming and acidification, and large-scale coral bleaching, and it will be difficult to turn back. "
But Huang Zhijun still believes in the ability of the ocean to recover, as long as you give her the opportunity to rest and recuperate.
“Look, haven ’ t humpback whales been hunted to a very low number by humans? But now the numbers have returned to a certain level.
“The Four Kings Islands in Indonesia, I thought they were pristine, but they weren ’ t, just the appropriate measures were put in place in the past. ”
"A little closer, a little closer to us, is there not a lot of sea turtles in Taiwan? In fact, ten or twenty years ago, it was difficult to find sea turtles, but then gill nets were banned."
Reborn and reborn.
What if, what if in Hong Kong?
"If the scope of the protected area is expanded not just by a few percentage of the local waters, but by 10%, 20%, preferably by 30%, then there is definitely hope for the future."
"With the ban on trawling, we have seen quite a few small corals under the water in recent years, which means that they are gradually growing."
Under the deep seabed, there are many microbes that we can ’ t see with the naked eye but account for 90% of the seafloor ’ s habitat, and they profoundly control human food and health.
"That hope is not just for the ocean, but for mankind."
(One of them, weekly.)
Man Lam Kai-min
Editor • Wang Cuili
fb: http: / / www.facebook.com / SundayMingpao
Previous / Next News

In summary, ocean acidification threatens cephalopods like cuttlefish by making it harder for them to develop and survive, especially as juveniles.

At what stage of life are calcium carbonate-based organisms most vulnerable to changes in water pH?

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

it will affect their physiology and growth

Which marine organism is vulnerable to increased levels of ocean acidification?

It also damages shellfish, undermines fish populations, stresses plankton, and disrupts marine mammals by breaking links in the food chain.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?

How does coastal ocean acidification affect shellfish?

How does elevated water acidity affect fish ability to survive?

These combined effects endanger the rich biodiversity of ocean life and the stability of the ecosystems upon which all marine creatures, including your mascot, depend.

How do scientists expect ocean acidification to impact specific fish species?


Syria’s traditional glassblowing is an ancient craft with origins tracing back over two millennia, to at least the 1st century BC in regions such as Sidon, Aleppo, Hama, and Palmyra.

The methods first developed by Syrian artisans produced the foundational process of shaping glass by blowing air into molten material—a technique that endures, largely unchanged, in contemporary practice.

Damascus emerged as a historic center for this art, with the Tekkiye Sulaymaniyah functioning as a hub for traditional crafts, including glassblowing, from the mid-1970s.

Over time, Syrian glasswork has incorporated diverse influences, including Phoenician, Islamic, Andalusian, and Persian motifs, and has featured artistic decoration with oxides, thermal paints, and enamels.

Routine objects, such as hookah bottles, vases, and plates, are skillfully crafted from recycled glass, often in distinctive white and brown tones, and finished with hand-applied decorative flourishes.

This craft is deeply interwoven with Syrian identity and culture, forming a vital pillar of the nation’s intangible heritage and linking generations through a legacy of artistry and ingenuity .

However, the continuity of Syrian glassblowing is acutely threatened.

The Syrian conflict devastated established workshops, especially in Aleppo and Damascus, disrupting both material supply and generational knowledge transfer.

The number of traditional craftsmen has dwindled due to war, economic hardship, the scarcity of raw materials, high production costs, and declining markets amid diminished tourism.

With few young apprentices, an aging generation of artisans, and ongoing instability, the transmission of expertise is in jeopardy.

Recognizing these urgent threats, UNESCO added Syrian glassblowing to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in December 2023, reflecting the art form’s cultural importance and its risk of imminent extinction .

Syria’s traditional glassblowing is an ancient craft with origins tracing back over two millennia, to at least the 1st century BC in regions such as Sidon, Aleppo, Hama, and Palmyra.

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Content: Bella Hadid flashes her toned figure in shorts and a cropped sports top while showing off her creative side as she learns the art of glassblowing

It appears Bella Hadid has found a new hobby that showcases her artistic side.

On Sunday, the catwalk queen took to her Instagram page and posted a step-by-step video of herself making her own glass piece, using classic glassblowing technique in a workshop.

Considering the extreme temperatures it takes to make glass from beginning to end, Bella opted to keep her cloths to a minimum and wore skimpy white shorts with a cropped purple sports top.

Showing her creative side: Bella Hadid, 25, learned the classic art of glassblowing to make her own glass piece and posting a video on her Instagram page on Sunday

Glass is made from the process of heating sand to an extremely high temperature so that it turns into a moldable liquid. When it solidifies, a piece of glass is formed in whatever shape the creator has molded it into.

In the video, viewers will find Bella at the stage where she's working to shape the molten red hot material.

She can be seen sitting down and jabbing a long, sharp wrench-like tool with her scorching hot material, which was attached to a hollow blow pole about three feet long.

She was concerned with safety and wore goggles to protect her eyes.

Shaping: The video shows Bella at the stage where she's working to shape the molten red hot material that is attached to a blow pole

Working it: An instructor can be heard voicing a couple of tips as she spins that object around to the point where a small hole begins to form

Dose of heat: By the end of the first clip, Bella gets up and gives the hot material another dose of intense heat by placing it into a fiery furnace

An instructor can be heard voicing a couple of tips as she spins that object round and round to the point where a small hole begins to form.

By the end of the first clip, Bella gets up and gives the hot material another dose of intense heat by placing it into the fiery furnace.

For the next phase, the instructor assists Bella and slowly spins the blow pole while she sands down the still-molten red piece with two black blocks.

The heat is so intense that you can see steam floating into the air as they continue the sanding-down process.

Honing it: For the next phase, the instructor assists Bella and slowly spins the blow pole while she sands down the still molten red piece with two black blocks

Team work: Bella and the instructor work together to begin molding the molten hot object into shape with those two black blocks

Trippy: Bella gave her 53.7 million Instagram fans and followers a look at how her glass piece is looking at this stage of the process

More intense heat: At one point, the Washington, DC, native can be seen kneeling down using a small propane tank to heat up the object to make a few more changes

At one point, the Washington, DC, native can be seen kneeling down using a small propane tank to heat up the object to make a few more changes.

'Oh yeah, that's the one right there,' a man's voice from behind the camera can be heard saying as they continue to spin the object while jabbing it with that sharp tool.

As the process continues, Bella sits down, spinning the blow pole back and forth as it rests in a round plate that she holds with her right hand.

'It's a perfect shape,' the instructors says in encouragement.

'Here it is, ladies and gentlemen,' the man continues just as Bella gets up to blow into the pole to expand the molten hot material out to form some sort of glassware or vase.

Example: The catwalk queen drew out the shape of her piece she was trying to attain with chalk

Rounding it out: As the process continues, Bella sits down and spins the blow pole back and forth as it rests in a round plate that she holds with her right hand

Major phase: 'Here it is, ladies and gentlemen,' the man from behind the camera continues as Bella starts blowing into the pole

Expanding: Bella then process of blowing into the pole to expand the molten material out to form some sort of glassware

Old technique: Glassblowing is the practice of shaping a mass of glass that has been softened by heat by blowing air into it through a tube, or in this case a pole

The final clips shows a closeup of Bella spinning the glass while adding a few intricate touches to the piece with a prong-like tool.

Glassblowing is the practice of shaping a mass of glass that has been softened by heat by blowing air into it through a tube

It was was invented by Syrian craftsmen in the area of Sidon, Aleppo, Hama and Palmyra in the 1st century BC, according to Britannica.

The technique has remained essentially the same to the present day.

Ancient art form: Glassblowing was was invented by Syrian craftsmen in the area of Sidon, Aleppo, Hama and Palmyra in the 1st century bc, according to Britannica

Lovin' it: The glassblowing technique has remained basically the same to the present day

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Bella Hadid flashes her toned figure in shorts and a crop top while learning the art of glassblowing

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The methods first developed by Syrian artisans produced the foundational process of shaping glass by blowing air into molten material—a technique that endures, largely unchanged, in contemporary practice.

Damascus emerged as a historic center for this art, with the Tekkiye Sulaymaniyah functioning as a hub for traditional crafts, including glassblowing, from the mid-1970s.

Over time, Syrian glasswork has incorporated diverse influences, including Phoenician, Islamic, Andalusian, and Persian motifs, and has featured artistic decoration with oxides, thermal paints, and enamels.

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Content: Samples of the Damascene Literary Heritage Attend an Exhibition and Seminar in the Culture of Infection
Damascus-Sana
In the exhibition “Heritage Crafts are Inherited by the Fragrance of History ” hosted by the Adawi Cultural Center, the artworks varied between glass decoration, Damascene brocade and various handicrafts.
The exhibition was followed by an introductory seminar on these arts for the Sheikhs of Carr and craftsmen specialized in these professions under the supervision of the handicraft trainer Rowaa Yousef.
Youssef Lassana explained that the exhibition was dedicated to traditional professions in general and handicrafts, especially such as brocade, painting on glass, Islamic motifs and handicrafts to maintain their continuity and importance.
Mohammed Bassam Rayhan Sheikh Al-Karar in painting on glass and decoration spoke in his intervention about the history of this craft, its forms, fields of work and materials used in it, pointing out that the glass, which was the first to be invented by the Phoenicians, evolved in Damascus throughout history and was painted on the mishkat and lanterns using oxides and various materials, thermal colors, acrlik and others.
The Damascene brocade craftsman Mohammed Rankous explained in his intervention that this cloth is made of natural silk and golden reed yarns and attributed to Damascus because it took its character, heritage and environment, such as the painting of Omar Khayyam, the Levantine Rose, grape clusters, the lover and the beloved, and the octagonal geometric drawings, pointing out that this craft entered the cultures of different civilizations.
Nasruddin Mohammed is a graduate of applied arts and a drawing teacher who participated in paintings for his students from children and boys. In his intervention, he explained the history of the Damascene plant decoration, its methods, types and schools such as Andalusian, Persian and Damascene, and its differences in decoration, diggings, mirrors and miniatures, indicating that its history dates back to the Andalusian civilization, which was its main creativity in palaces and buildings.
Mohammed Sabha is a bridal craftsman who participated in a group of decorative glass works for brides and explained that he has completed a model of a waterfall flowing from an electric mountain that is operated by hand from cardboard, wood and cork inspired by his ideas.
Rana Ayoub participated in a group of works of three-dimensional models and miniatures of the Levant environment. She explained that she chose this environment because she grew up and lived in it and adored it. It is necessary to inform future generations of their heritage and history, pointing out that she works with cork, wood, natural materials, gypsum, ceramic paste and others.
Bilal Ahmed

Routine objects, such as hookah bottles, vases, and plates, are skillfully crafted from recycled glass, often in distinctive white and brown tones, and finished with hand-applied decorative flourishes.

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Content: Art of glassblowing returns again in Aleppo countryside liberated from terrorism

The town of Urem Al-Kubra in Aleppo province in northern Syria has historically been famous for its skilled glassblowing craftsmen. The war considerably affected this traditional craft inherited from our ancestors, but after the liberation of the city from terrorism, some artisans have brought it back to life. The artisan, Yassin Arab learned the glassblowing craft from his father when he was a child, and after the town was liberated from terrorism, he returned to his small facility, where he worked to restore it and start working again. Arab does not hide his enormous passion for the craft of glassblowing and his belief in the need to preserve this ancient Syrian heritage. Regarding the working mechanism, the artisan explained to SANA that he uses recycled glass, melts it again in the oven at high temperature, and then chooses a specific shape for its manufacture, whether hookah bottles, vases, plates, small jugs, fish houses for decoration, decorated cups and antiques of different sizes. After that, t he piece is blown, rotated and processed by the artisan until it takes its final shape using white and brown colors, and once the manufacturing of the product is finished, it is decorated and colored to give it the required aesthetics. For his part, Hussein Najjar noted that he learned the craft of blowing glass manually since he was young and has been working in this field for 40 years. He added that he is able to make any shape or glass container, using his imagination, and considered that the art of glassblowing is one of the types of plastic arts. Traditional glassblowing is a profession that dates back more than two thousand years (since the time of the Phoenicians) and was included in December 2023 by UNESCO on the list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity that needs urgent preservation. Source: Syrian Arab News Agency

This craft is deeply interwoven with Syrian identity and culture, forming a vital pillar of the nation’s intangible heritage and linking generations through a legacy of artistry and ingenuity .

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Content: Or Elias...
Embraced the traditional crafts in its small museum Baharat Hanania Damascene
Damascus-Sana
You cannot pass through the Damascene neighborhood of Hanania in Bab Sharqi without being stopped by the time at the gallery of Mrs. Sophia Al-Ashqar “Um Elias ”. The smell of the place leads you voluntarily to stand at the heritage of nearly a hundred years old, looking at the cloth, moving your eyes to the copper and mosaic, and drowning in the place to come the laugh of Umm Elias and take you back to its small museum.
As her sons and residents of Haret Hananiya describe it as a “fortress ”, it is a fortress that stands as the steadfastness of Syrian women through time. Umm Elias does not only tell visitors to her heritage museum about the concept and value of the work, but she sees it embodied in her spirit and in every piece she weaved with her management of the gallery for nearly 70 years, including during the war on Syria. The development of the Syrian kaftan.
The love of the homeland and the authenticity of Umm Elias overshadowed her work many times, and she acted as a guide to the foreign tourist about the history of Syria and the age of each piece she acquired, reminding them that Damascus is the oldest inhabited city in history, and stressing that she did not tire and did not tire of that task, especially when visiting tourist delegations to Haret Hanania and their acquisition of the heritage craft in the gallery.
Mrs. Al-Ashqar talked about how she developed the Damascene kaftan from a traditional folk costume to a modern one that has been mixed for centuries until the present day. Umm Elias, 83, manipulated velvet, silk, agbani and brocade fabrics with her fingers as if she were manipulating her grandchildren, to come up with a piece of kaftan that mimics the fashion of our times and the new taste.
The icon of Haret Hanania moves around the gallery, continuing to talk, and with her warm voice narrates her beginning with the needle and thread since she was ten years old, and like any girl, the first dress she knitted was for her little doll, and developed her passion for cloth and sewing, considering that her father and grandfather have been professionals for a long time. Qar received the third prize in the mosaic industry at the Damascus Exhibition in 1936.
Umm Elias did not spare us time, and despite her fatigue, which seemed clear on the features of her face, love and determination had a stronger presence appeared in the explanation and give the most accurate information. She talked about the visit of senior guests to the gallery of artists, intellectuals and prominent personalities. However, she did not think to move to another area outside Bab Sharqi. Glass, as well as icons, begins to live from 45 years to almost 100 years.
Umm Elias goes back to an ancient time whose effects were evident on a copper table occupied by Damascene hands, through the technique of downloading silver on copper, and is more than eighty years old, in addition to the types of wood such as mosaic, which is famous for her father 's craftsman Haneen Ashqar. With her hands she opens a wooden piece of art created by her father, a mosaic table that includes several levels of toys. Sometimes chess, sometimes Elias's mother turns it into a dice game.
It then moves on to Damascene ornaments, icons and small brides made of cloth to stained glass, which gives the place the spirit of life and confirms that each piece and masterpiece has a cultural significance rooted in the culture of Syria.
So that Umm Elias remains one of the many Syrian women who went through the war, and their heads are nostalgic like the ears of wheat, but they did not break them, and they remain tender and shameless, raising their muses to them whenever their names are mentioned.
Najwa Aida Mariam Hajir
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Look, too.
Umm Elias Museum of Traditional Crafts in the Damascus neighborhood of Hanania

However, the continuity of Syrian glassblowing is acutely threatened.

The Syrian conflict devastated established workshops, especially in Aleppo and Damascus, disrupting both material supply and generational knowledge transfer.

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Content: Sulaymaniyah in Damascus.
Do you want to throw out your guards?
While the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent saw in his dream that he was in a grove in the center of the capital Damascus, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) appeared to him and instructed him to build a mosque in that land. The Ottoman Sultan awoke from his sleep pleased with what he saw and heard. He immediately ordered to cut off a side of that grove and build a large kiosk in the middle of it. He was in a dream and pointed out.
This is the story conveyed by a number of writers and historians, the latest of which was Sheikh Najmuddin al-Ghazi in his book "The Walking Planets in the Eyes of the Tenth Hundred", about the decision of the legal sultan to build the Tekke Sulaymaniyah (west of Damascus) in the 16th century, one of the most prominent Ottoman tekaya and the most modern style and the most beautiful architecture, according to specialists.
Historically, the Tkiyet Sulaymaniyah was a place to perform religious duties and a resting place for pilgrims and a refuge for the maqtada and poor people of Damascus, Muslims and others, and remained so until the French colonizer entered the country in 1920; where General Guru and his forces took from the Tkiyet as a residence.
With the departure of colonialism and the advent of 1948, the Shari ’ ah school in Tkiyet returned to hold educational seminars and memorization of the Quran, and since the mid-seventies of the last century began to embrace dozens of shops of ancient Damascene handicrafts, and expanded this part to be known later as the market of handicrafts.
Recently, this complex cultural and religious identity of the heritage teacher has become threatened, after the Ministry of Tourism (in the government of the Syrian regime) notified professionals to vacate their shops before the end of the year under the pretext of restoration.
From Al-Ablaq Palace to Al-Tkiyet Sulaymaniyah
The site of Tkiyet Sulaymaniyah, west of Damascus, was known for the construction of a number of royal residences, the last of which was the palace of the owner of the Mamluk Sultan Baqiris (1228-1277 AD), which was named after the colors of the stones of its construction black and yellow brought from Aleppo and Daraa.
However, large parts of the palace were burned during the conquest of Damascus by the Mongol commander Tamerlane in 803 A.D. (1402 A.D.), and it was not until the Ottoman Sultan Selim I entered Damascus in 923 A.D. (1517 A.D.) that the Ablaq palace was restored and rehabilitated.
By 959 A.D. (1502 A.D.), Sultan Selim the Magnificent commissioned the famous Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan to develop a modern architectural plan for a hospice on the site of the Al-Ablaq Palace. In 960 A.D. (1553 A.D.), a large number of workers began building the hospice under the supervision of the Damascene engineer Shahabuddin ibn Al-Attar.
Then rest on the banks of the Barada River "a luxurious architectural group that captivates the hearts of the hearts with its regular domes like knots around a large main dome, surrounded by two minarets, and interspersed with gardens and trees whose beauty blends with the beauty of architecture makes this spot in Damascus one of the most beautiful and beautiful spots", the Tkiyet Sulaymaniyah, as described by Abdul Qader Rihawi in his book "Architecture in Arabic".
Ottoman architecture and Damascene motifs
The building of the Sulaymaniyah Tekke consists of two similar architectural blocks, one large and includes the mosque and the other small and includes the school, and linked between these two blocks was a market dedicated to the caravans of pilgrims, and the Ottoman engineering effects on the planning and construction, while the Damascene artistic touch overshadows the designs of doors and windows and decorations that decorate the walls and rooms of the place.
The two architectural blocks are surrounded by relatively low walls, while the middle of them are two rectangular pools fed by water vertical fountains used for ablution, and the mosque with its narrow minarets tops the southern block, while the school mosque with its smooth dome tops the eastern block, and on the sides of the blocks spread buildings are shops and narrow rooms covered with low domes interspersed with low The chimneys are shaped like minarets and are led by shady arcades with ornate arches.
The Sulaymaniyah Tikkiye market extends from its easternmost to its westernmost, and is lined with dozens of shops that were previously commercial shops, and have since the 1970s turned into handicrafts shops.
In addition to its traditional role as a place for the betters, the poor and the needy, the Sulaymaniyah Tekke was designed to be a stop for pilgrims on the pilgrimage route to Mecca, where the place was equipped with spacious kitchens, bakeries, rest rooms, several prayer rooms, a sea for ablution and other necessary services for pilgrims.
When it became a teachers ’ house in 1923, it stopped hosting guests and sheltering arrivals for the first time since its establishment four centuries ago, but soon regained its identity as a hospitable place when it hosted a number of Palestinian families displaced to Damascus following the 1948 Nakba.
While the Sulaymaniyah school was famous for receiving students of Sharia sciences from all parts of the world, before turning, with the opening of the Syrian University in Damascus in 1934, into a place to teach dentistry, and then into an archaeological landmark that includes a war museum with the continuation of religious activities in the chapels and mosque to this day.
From an incubator to a bounty hunter.
In mid-October, the Ministry of Tourism in the government of the regime warned the Karar sheikhs of craftsmen in the handicrafts market to evacuate their shops before the new year 2023 for the purpose of restoration.
Despite the appeals of the craftsmen to the concerned authorities through the local newspapers and media, and the intervention of the Damascus Chamber of Tourism to promise the craftsmen their return after the completion of the restoration operations, Nidal Mashfej, Assistant Minister of Tourism, stressed that there is no legal provision obliging the ministry to renew the contracts of craftsmen after the end of each year. Shopkeepers have the right to claim any malfunction, damage, injustice or the like, the official told the official Tishreen newspaper.
A member of the Damascus Chamber of Tourism, Arafat Oza Bashi, points out that all the shopkeepers in the Sulaymaniyah Tkiyet hope to return to their shops after the completion of the restoration, to continue their work and preserve the intangible heritage threatened with extinction.
Haj Abu Mohammed, 57 years old, owner of a shop in Tkiyet, told Al Jazeera Net, "Years ago they evacuated the glass market of Tkiyet under the pretext of restoring it, and it is still a wreck and it is not clear if it will return to a glass market, and I do not exclude that our shop has a similar fate."
"As if they were not satisfied with the stagnation of the market in the last 10 years and the absence of tourists and visitors from our shops, which the simple citizen can not buy goods from them because of their high cost, and all the losses we suffered to continue to revive these crafts during the war."
The Sulaymaniyah Tikkiye has been undergoing restoration since 2019, and the first phase aimed to restore part of the Tikkiye and what is known as the glass market, while the second phase is dedicated to the handicrafts market and some parts of the interior of the Tikkiye “to preserve the archaeological site from landings and structural cracks, ” according to Nidal Mashfaj.
Source: The Island

The number of traditional craftsmen has dwindled due to war, economic hardship, the scarcity of raw materials, high production costs, and declining markets amid diminished tourism.

With few young apprentices, an aging generation of artisans, and ongoing instability, the transmission of expertise is in jeopardy.

Recognizing these urgent threats, UNESCO added Syrian glassblowing to its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in December 2023, reflecting the art form’s cultural importance and its risk of imminent extinction .