Blog #9 - The Weathermakers

Precis:
Chapter twenty of Tim Flannery's book The Weather Maker's is entitled "Boiling the Abyss", and begins with a very relevant quotation by Thomas Campbell: "Let us think of them that sleep; Full many a fathom deep ... ". The chapter goes on to explain the effects of global warming on the many wonderful and mysterious creatures that dwell in the oceans' depths. The results, needless to say, are not good.
Flannery explains that these creatures are as sensitive to temperature as we are to pressure. Early on, when they were caught and brought to the surface, they died. The cause of death was thought to be the pressure difference between their natural habitat at ours, however, when put in a bucket of icy water, they were fully revitalized within minutes. This proves that although they can survive at surface pressure, they can not survive in warmer temperatures. Even temperatures that would freeze us to death in minutes are fatally warm for these fish. This ability does have its pros and cons - Pro: we can catch them and keep them as ugly, fanged pets in bulletproof goldfish bowls ( ... or in museums). Minus: They all die if the water temperature goes up even a few degrees. Which it will do, as global temperatures continue to rise, and the polar ice caps, which circulate the supply of cold water around the world's oceans, melt.
It won't just be the swimming sea creatures that are harmed either. Shellfish will also get hammered if the ocean waters' CO2 content rises too far, which it is likely to do within the next hundred years or so. If the amount of CO2 in the water gets too high, the oceans will become acid, and the limited supply of carbonate, which acts as the oceans' buffer, will drop below the level at which crustaceans can use it to form their shells. At that point, the carbonate will be leached out of their shells and back into the oceans, making it impossible for these animals to maintain their protective covers. In a hundred years, we could see shell-less shellfish.
However, there is time, Flannery says. These events will take a hundred years or more to occur if we continue on at the pace we're going now. But it will happen. And if we don't do something about it, we may lose species of flora and fauna that are unknown to us at present. We may have already lost some. The oceans are the only place where we can still discover new creatures, and it's a bad idea to go about slowly destroying them just so we can have our human indulgences. We are the dominant species on our planet, and which means we must look after and care for all the other plants and animals, no matter how small. Like they say in the comics, with great power, comes great responsibility.

Questions:
1.) How can the average person help save the lives of stoplight loosejaws and hairy seadevils?

2.) How big a role in the ecosystem (global or local) do these deep sea creatures play?

3.) Is there a way we can undo the damage we've already done to the Earth, or are there only preventative measures that we can take at this point?