Commercial fisherpeople weigh the threats to their livelihood from corrosive seas.

Not every commercial fisherman is convinced that curbing carbon emissions is necessary to stop global warming. But the evidence that fossil fuel pollution is making the oceans more corrosive—and removing basic building blocks of the marine world—starts to get their attention.

In Alaska, commercial fishing supports one-sixth of the state’s economy and employs 70,000 people in high season, more than any other basic industry. Mark Vinsel, the executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest commercial fishing organization, last year ranked his concerns about ocean acidification this way:

I’d say probably on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be 20 or 30.

If you sliced open the bellies of our most popular eating fish, at one point in their life cycle you would probably find krill, plankton, oceanic snails or other shelled creatures—the kinds of species likely to run into trouble as the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes.

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