increasingly acidified. Under what’s known as a “business as usual”
emissions scenario, surface ocean pH will fall to 8.0 by the middle of this
century, and it will drop to 7.8 by the century’s end. At that point, the
oceans will be 150 percent more acidic than they were at the start of the
industrial revolution.*
Owing to the CO 2 pouring out of the vents, the waters around Castello
Aragonese provide a near-perfect preview of what lies ahead for the
oceans more generally. Which is why I am paddling around the island in
January, gradually growing numb from the cold. Here it is possible to
swim—even, I think in a moment of panic, to drown—in the seas of
tomorrow today.
BY the time we get back to the harbor in Ischia, the wind has come up.
The deck is a clutter of spent air tanks, dripping wet suits, and chests full
of samples. Once unloaded, everything has to be lugged through the
narrow streets and up to the local marine biological station, which
occupies a steep promontory overlooking the sea. The station was
founded by a nineteenth-century German naturalist named Anton Dohrn.
Hanging on the wall in the entrance hall, I notice, is a copy of a letter
Charles Darwin sent to Dohrn in 1874. In it, Darwin expresses dismay at
having heard, through a mutual friend, that Dohrn is overworked.
Castello Aragonese.
Installed in tanks in a basement laboratory, the animals Buia and Hall-