British and Canadian scientists produced the estimates by two independent methods, as part of a study of the role played by fish in the marine carbon cycle, which is changing as carbon dioxide, added to the atmosphere by human activities, dissolves in sea water.
The researchers concluded that fish play an important part in counteracting the growing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the oceans.
“By drinking salt water, fish ingest a lot of calcium, which needs to be removed – or they will get renal stones,” says Villy Christensen of the University of British Columbia. They excrete tiny pellets of calcium carbonate which partially neutralise the increasing acidity of the oceans caused by dissolved carbon dioxide.
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