Ocean Oxygenating

Oxygen (0₂) Ozone (0₃) and Dissolved Oxygen (DO)

Oxygen is the second most common component of the earth’s atmosphere (20.947% by volume). It is a major component of air. Oxygen is very important for breathing. We start yawing when there is a lack of oxygen in the room. We try to go at the weekend to the country or to the forest to breathe fresh air rich with oxygen, produced by plants during photosynthesis. One of oxygen derivatives is ozone. Ozone layer protects the earth from harmful UV rays. Protection of ozone layer against depletion is one of the main environmental concerns of the modern mankind.

Oxygen depletion is an urgent question as well as ozone layer depletion. Oxygen depletion is also called hypoxia. Hypoxia occurs in aquatic environments as dissolved oxygen (DO; molecular oxygen dissolved in the water) becomes reduced in concentration to a point detrimental to aquatic organisms living in the system. Dissolved oxygen is typically expressed as a percentage of the oxygen that would dissolve in the water at the prevailing temperature and salinity (both of which affect the solubility of oxygen in water). An aquatic system lacking dissolved oxygen, in other words, system with low DO concentration-in the range between 1 and 30% DO saturation-is called hypoxic. Most fishes cannot live below 30% DO saturation. A “healthy” aquatic environment should seldom experience DO less than 80%.

The lack of oxygen in the water is the number 1 stressor that causes fish death in garden or other fish habitats. Two major factors contributing to fish-pond oxygen loss concern blooming algae. During daylight hours, algae make oxygen; during the night, however, the plants take oxygen. If algae are profusely blooming, the plants deplete all the pond’s oxygen during the night, which in turn, causes fish inhabiting the pond to die. Another way that algae trigger oxygen loss is by dying suddenly.

Oxygen depletion could be the result of a number of factors including natural ones, but is of most concern as a consequence of pollution and as a highly detrimental outcome of a process known as eutrophication. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutrophication — Eutrophication is frequently a result of nutrient pollution such as the release of sewage effluent and run-off from lawn fertilizers into natural waters (rivers or coasts.)

Scientists work under the problems of oxygen and ozone depletion. Some international and national measures are taken to stop ozone depletion. For example, Vienna Convention of Ozone Depletion created a framework for international actions to limit production and uses of substances that might contribute to depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer.

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