• Question: If the sea level changed dramatically, how would sea life cope?

    Asked by melbluetoffee to Clare, Dave, Glo, Ozge, Sean on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Clare Woulds

      Clare Woulds answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      If it changes fast then some corals will not be able to grow fast enough to stay near the surface. Otherwise the main problems might be due to changes in temperature, saltiness, and amount of dissolved oxygen in the ocean (which would also change). Many species would not cope well, and the types of plants and animals in many places may change.

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      Most sea life probably wouldn’t even notice that the sea level had increased! But as Clare says, some shelf sea creatures, such as corals, only like to live in a certain depth range, so an increase in sea level could cause a problem for them.

    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      In some ways, sea level rise will open up new habitats for animals, allowing them to expand their ranges. However, like both Clare and Dave said, for animals that are stuck, literally, to the ground, a sea rise could result in them being starved of sunlight (if they are moved into a less sunlit zone), or placed in the wrong temperature ranges! With time, evolution would play its role and the animals that survived would be able to reproduce and pass on their surviving traits onto their young. What that world will look like though, who’s to say?

    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Damn getting into these questions after everyone else! Corals and other shallow-sea creatures would inevitably be the ones to suffer the most. Still, as the old saying goes, Nature abhors a vacuum and all of the areas that were previously on land but now under water would be populated pretty quickly. It’s even possible that those shallow sea organisms would experience a population increase through having a greater area of seabed to colonise!

      Sea level rise is a really interesting topic and one that will have implications for nearly every living creature on the planet. I think a better question to ask would be how would WE cope?

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