Corals in deep-water : will the unseen hand of ocean acidification destroy cold-water ecosystems?

Scleractinian cold-water corals, sometimes referred to as deep-water or deep-sea corals, form perhaps the most vulnerable marine ecosystems to the human dependence on burning fossil fuels. Increased greenhouse gases are causing the oceans to warm and become more acidic at unprecedented rates. The paleo record tells us that scleractinians have survived several mass extinction events, but in all cases took several millions of years to recover. It now seems likely that perturbations in the carbon cycle, most likely resulting in ocean acidification, has played a fundamental role in all major mass extinctions of the Scleractinia. However, the extremely rapid release of anthropogenic CO sub(2) from fossil fuel deposits is unprecedented in geological history and risks fundamentally perturbing deep-water coral ecosystems before the scientific community has begun to map and understand them.