I honestly didn't realize this (or else I forgot)

Complete article printed in USA Today available at this link:

Study: Warming water means less oxygen for sea life

By Randolph E. Schmid, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON — Low-oxygen zones where sea life is threatened or cannot survive are growing as the oceans are heated by global warming, a new study warns. Oxygen-depleted zones in the central and eastern equatorial Atlantic and equatorial Pacific oceans appear to have expanded over the last 50 years, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Low-oxygen zones in the Gulf of Mexico and other areas also have been studied in recent years, raising concerns about the threat to sea life.

Continued expansion of these zones could have dramatic consequences for both sea life and coastal economies, said the team led by Lothar Stramma of the University of Kiel in Germany.

The finding was not surprising, Stramma said, because computer climate models had predicted a decline in dissolved oxygen in the oceans under warmer conditions.

Warmer water simply cannot absorb as much oxygen as colder water, explained co-author Gregory C. Johnson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

again, complete article found at the USA TODAY website at this link