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The ocean is getting darker, but it still has the capacity to heal. | Credit: Illustration by Stephen P. Kelly \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
The deep, blue sea is becoming deeper \u2014 in color, that is. Climate change, along with human development, has reduced how much light can filter through the water. Reduced light can significantly disrupt the marine food chain as well as lead to the large-scale worsening of climate change.<\/p>\n
Zoning issues<\/p>\n
Ocean<\/a> darkening occurs when \u201cchanges in the optical properties of the oceans reduce the depth to which sufficient light penetrates to facilitate biological processes guided by sunlight and moonlight,\u201d said a 2025 study published in the journal Global Change Biology<\/a>. The color shift can make the water look more opaque. The part of the ocean that sunlight is able to penetrate is called the photic zone and it is \u201chome to 90% of marine species,\u201d said the World Economic Forum<\/a>. Organisms like phytoplankton also \u201cconvert sunlight and CO2 into energy, producing nearly half the planet\u2019s oxygen and absorbing vast amounts of carbon emissions\u201d in the photic zone.<\/p>\n Rather than just some patches of darkening, the phenomenon has affected \u201clarge, connected regions,\u201d Tim Smyth, a marine scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory and co-author of the study, said to New Scientist<\/a>. \u201cRoughly one\u2011fifth of the world\u2019s oceans have darkened in some way.\u201d Already, the depth of the photic zone has reduced by more than 10% \u201cacross 9% of the global ocean,\u201d said the study.<\/p>\n In coastal areas, darkening is \u201cclosely linked to changes in the rivers that flow into the sea,\u201d Smyth said. \u201cShifts in land use affect what becomes dissolved or suspended in the water, which, in turn, alters the optical quality of the water entering the ocean.\u201d In addition, \u201cfertilizers used in industrial agriculture are washed into rivers, stimulating phytoplankton growth,\u201d which reduces \u201chow deeply light can penetrate the water column.\u201d<\/p>\n However, darkening is not limited to the coast. The open ocean has also increased in opacity, which \u201cmay be linked to shifts in phytoplankton blooms driven by climate change.\u201d There have been \u201crising ocean temperatures, more frequent marine heatwaves and changes in salinity in some regions.\u201d Such changes \u201cinfluence large\u2011scale ocean circulation patterns.\u201d<\/p>\n Light direction<\/p>\n Dark oceans are bad news and the consequences have already begun to appear. As the photic zone shrinks, \u201cmany marine species are forced to move closer to the surface in order to survive,\u201d said Diario AS<\/a>. This \u201cpushes large numbers of organisms into a much smaller space, increasing competition for food, raising biological stress and leaving them far more exposed to predators, including human fishing vessels.\u201d<\/p>\n Along with disrupting the marine food chain<\/a>, ocean darkening hinders the ocean\u2019s ability to perform photosynthesis, weakening the \u201cocean\u2019s role as a carbon sink, its natural capacity to capture and store the carbon dioxide that warms the planet.\u201d If the ocean is helping to sequester carbon from the atmosphere, climate change<\/a> will worsen at a faster rate.<\/p>\n Some of the main culprits of ocean darkening are \u201csediment runoff from agriculture, deforestation and development,\u201d especially in coastal regions, said the World Economic Forum. Improved land management can play a large role in reducing the level of darkening. This includes reducing fertilizer use as well as encouraging conservation efforts. In the open ocean, the problem is much more difficult to tackle as \u201ceven if global emissions dropped to net zero tomorrow, the ocean would take decades, if not centuries, to respond,\u201d said Smyth. The good news is that the ocean \u201cstill has a remarkable capacity to heal itself. Give marine ecosystems a little room to recover and they often respond with surprising speed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1477,85,46,106896,117928,33229,17999,183524,141,183525,45131],"class_list":["post-384615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-climate-change","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-marine-food-chain","tag-marine-heatwaves","tag-marine-species","tag-ocean-temperatures","tag-photic-zone","tag-science","tag-tim-smyth","tag-world-economic-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}