Beneath the waves, oxygen disappears: As plastic waste pollutes the oceans and fish stocks decline, unseen below the surface another problem grows: deoxygenation. Breitburg et al. review the evidence for the downward trajectory of oxygen levels in increasing areas of the open ocean and coastal waters. Rising nutrient loads coupled with climate change—each resulting from human activities—are changing ocean biogeochemistry and increasing oxygen consumption. This results in destabilization of sediments and fundamental shifts in the availability of key nutrients. In the short term, some compensatory effects may result in improvements in local fisheries, such as in cases where stocks are squeezed between the surface and elevated oxygen minimum zones. In the longer term, these conditions are unsustainable and may result in ecosystem collapses, which ultimately will cause societal and economic harm. Science , this issue p. eaam7240

Double trouble: It is well known that climate change will warm ocean waters, but dissolved oxygen levels also decrease as water warms. Deutsch et al. combined data on metabolism, temperature, and demographics to determine the impact of marine deoxygenation on a variety of fish and crustacean species (see the Perspective by Kleypas). Predicted climate and oxygen conditions can be expected to contract the distribution of marine fish poleward, as equatorward waters become too low in oxygen to support their energy needs. Furthermore, even the more-poleward waters will have reduced oxygen levels. Science , this issue p. 1132 ; see also p. 1086

Summary: The survival of oceanic organisms in oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) depends on their total oxygen demand and the capacities for oxygen extraction and transport, anaerobic ATP production and metabolic suppression. Anaerobic metabolism and metabolic suppression are required for daytime forays into the most extreme OMZs. Critical oxygen partial pressures are, within a range, evolved to match the minimum oxygen level to which a species is exposed. This fact demands that low oxygen habitats be defined by the biological response to low oxygen rather than by some arbitrary oxygen concentration. A broad comparative analysis of oxygen tolerance facilitates the identification of two oxygen thresholds that may prove useful for policy makers as OMZs expand due to climate change. Between these thresholds, specific physiological adaptations to low oxygen are required of virtually all species. The lower threshold represents a limit to evolved oxygen extraction capacity. Climate change that pushes oxygen concentrations below the lower threshold (∼0.8 kPa) will certainly result in a transition from an ecosystem dominated by a diverse midwater fauna to one dominated by diel migrant biota that must return to surface waters at night. Animal physiology and, in particular, the response of animals to expanding hypoxia, is a critical, but understudied, component of biogeochemical cycles and oceanic ecology. Here, I discuss the definition of hypoxia and critical oxygen levels, review adaptations of animals to OMZs and discuss the capacity for, and prevalence of, metabolic suppression as a response to temporary residence in OMZs and the possible consequences of climate change on OMZ ecology.

The rates of metabolism in animals vary tremendously throughout the biosphere. The origins of this variation are a matter of active debate with some scientists highlighting the importance of anatomical or environmental constraints, while others emphasize the diversity of ecological roles that organisms play and the associated energy demands. Here, we analyse metabolic rates in diverse marine taxa, with special emphasis on patterns of metabolic rate across a depth gradient, in an effort to understand the extent and underlying causes of variation. The conclusion from this analysis is that low rates of metabolism, in the deep sea and elsewhere, do not result from resource (e.g. food or oxygen) limitation or from temperature or pressure constraint. While metabolic rates do decline strongly with depth in several important animal groups, for others metabolism in abyssal species proceeds as fast as in ecologically similar shallow-water species at equivalent temperatures. Rather, high metabolic demand follows strong selection for locomotory capacity among visual predators inhabiting well-lit oceanic waters. Relaxation of this selection where visual predation is limited provides an opportunity for reduced energy expenditure. Large-scale metabolic variation in the ocean results from interspecific differences in ecological energy demand.

Novel midwater ocean sampling shows that physiology dictates zooplankton distributions in submesoscale low oxygen features.

In the last few decades, numerous studies have investigated the impacts of simulated ocean acidification on marine species and communities, particularly those inhabiting dynamic coastal systems. Despite these research efforts, there are many gaps in our understanding, particularly with respect to physiological mechanisms that lead to pathologies. In this review, we trace how carbonate system disturbances propagate from the coastal environment into marine invertebrates and highlight mechanistic links between these disturbances and organism function. We also point toward several processes related to basic invertebrate biology that are severely understudied and prevent an accurate understanding of how carbonate system dynamics influence organismic homeostasis and fitness-related traits. We recommend that significant research effort be directed to studying cellular phenotypes of invertebrates acclimated or adapted to elevated seawater pCO₂using biochemical and physiological methods.