Alien species in the Med. What will Copenhagen to do help?

Climate change means warmer seas and  in the Mediterranean means tropical fish are now able to survive, so they are taking over by swimming up through the Suez canal and coming in in ship ballast water.

At the climate change talks there will be a lot on the destruction of forests and air, about carbon trading and clean energy, but very little about the impact of our oceans and climate change.

The oceans make up 80% of the surface of our planet and provide 70% of the oxygen we breathe. All around the world, our oceans and seas are getting warmer and more acidic, but because we can't always see what is happening under the surface,  researchers and scientists are worried that the risks to our oceans will be forgotten in Copenhagen.

In our oceans, climate goes well beyond melting ice caps and endangered polar bears in the North Pole. Our seas are acidifying at unprecedented levels and the Mediterranean is being invaded by tropical, alien species.

To find out what these warmer, more acidic seas mean for our planet,  I Reporter, Samantha Bolton heads south to Sicily, in Italy, where scientists are looking to the future by studying the affects of hot vulcanic gases on underwater fish and plant life.

Warmer seas and oceans also means changes in bio diversity, with more and more tropical fish (including large species of voracious barracuda) and jellyfish arriving in the Mediterranean and pushing out the local Italian fish.  At the ISPRA institute for marine research in Messina, marine biologists monitors and tracks all the alien species arriving in Italy. Researchers show samples of frozen and preserved fish which the fishermen catch in their nets, but can't identify.

Experts from the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and from the research team on board the Changing Oceans Expedition are worried about our changin oceans and that they are being forgotten in Copenhagen. They call for urgent action before it is too late.

For more information on this report please contact i reporter samanthabolton123@yahoo.co.uk , for more information on oceans and climate change please go to: http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/marine/ for global marine policy;  to: www.changingoceans.org for more on the ten years, 100 marine sites research expedition and to http://www.icram.org/ for more on the Italian research centre and the Southern Mediterranean alien species list.
Images and underwater photography: cameramans Ronald Menzel & Leo Leibovici, Changing Ocean Expedition. Production: Oceanica Prod.