Dear editor,
I enjoy reading Ralph Shaw’s outdoors column and I share his concerns about increasing ocean acidity and its increasing effect on shellfish (and other essential organisms that are too small to be noticed).
All of our chemistry students will know that the pH Mr. Shaw refers to, is measured on what is called a “logarithmic” scale.
That simply means that a change from a pH of 8.2 (normal) to the currently reported 7.2 is a tenfold increase in acidity.
I tried to find some other local data at the University of Victoria’s Venus site (http://venus.uvic.ca/data/data-plots/) but pH data doesn’t appear to be available.
P. Rankin, BSc, MSc,
Comox
