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Rising temperature of climate change is already noticeable in the deep layers of the Japan Sea and the shrinking ice of the Sea of Okhotsk, while rising sea levels have been occurring along Sanriku coasts and the Pacific Ocean side for the past 100 years. Southern plankton which have never been seen as northerly as Japan now threatens oysters, shellfish, and sardines, all of which are important to Japan's fishing industry. (Ichikawa, 104-105) The great change afflicted by even a few degrees rise in temperature is evident in the case of bluefin tuna. Able to spawn up to six degrees below its optimal temperature of 26 degrees Celsius, bluefin tuna, however, cannot spawn three degrees above that number. Based on the study and projection of Shingo Kimura, professor of marine environmental science at the University of Tokyo, tuna population, already hurt by overfishing, will be so exacerbated that populations will shrink to 37% its current levels by 2099. As Japan is the biggest supplies of bluefin tuna and given the internationality of the fishing industry, a decline in numbers hurt will also hurt China, South Korean, China, and the US. (Bluefin, 1) In a culture that is based on fishing, Japan faces not just the threat of environmental change but also of cultural change.
The increased carbon dioxide from combustion has in turn increased acidity Over the past two centuries, the pH of the ocean by 30%'s surface has decreased by .1, drastically altering the chemistry of the ocean; this trend is predicted to continue with a decline of .3-.5 by 2100 if carbon dioxide emissions continue at 1,000 parts per million (Samuel Bowring (personal communication, November 24, 2007)). The result of increased acidity is more pronounced in the Pacific because of its cold water, which can dissolve more carbon dioxide. Coral reefs are more likely desintegrate at these levels of acidity. (Brenton, 1) In the Indo-Pacific waters, which hold 75% the world's coral reefs, researchers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill found a decline of coral reefs which threatens tourism, coastal regions that once found safety behind the buffering reefs, and fisheries. (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1)
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