Ph Levels Affecting Coral Reefs

Scientific Validity of “Study links altered brain chemistry, behavioral impairments in fish exposed to elevated CO2”
Coral reefs are having a problem with pH levels and they are dying some places around the world right now, because of it. This is not only affecting the coral reefs, but the animals that live in them and survive with them. There is a Scientific Study called “Study links altered brain chemistry, behavioral impairments in fish exposed to elevated CO2” which discusses the behavior and neurological impairments of coral reef fish due to more CO2 and acidic levels of pH. More CO2 causes lower levels of pH and makes it more acidic and very dangerous for fish. Overall this is a poor scientific article, because it has only one good source …show more content…
They never stated the size groups of the spiny damselfish so we have no idea how many they even collected for the study. This is flawed, because if they used a small amount of fish then that wouldn’t prove that CO2 levels affect the behavior of most of these fish. If they used a large amount then it may prove that this can happen, but we won’t know, because they never stated how many fish were collected. Another flawed thing in this study is that they only have one species of coral reef fish so we only know that lower pH levels affect that one species of fish. They should have used more than one species of coral reef fish to state that higher levels of CO2 affect their brain chemistry. With more species added to the study we would have more proof to say that this type of fish has behavior problems, but right now we only know spiny damselfish …show more content…
This group stayed somewhat the same throughout the experiment. Because they were in the first tank in the normal amounts of CO2 they stayed in this water in the second tank where they could pick which water to be in. The only thing altered and weird about this control group is that in the second tank they put both the control group and the experimental group together to see what would happen. There could be many problems with this, because they could have gotten the fish mixed up and gotten wrong information for which fish went in the water with a chemical alarm and which didn’t. If they messed up any of their information, because they didn’t know which fish was in which group, then their results weren’t valid. They said that they got accurate results, but they might not of, because there aren’t any charts or graphs to look at the information they