A kelp forest sways near the Channel Islands National Park in California.

As the brewing El Niño cooks the Pacific Ocean this summer, California scientists warn that the global seas are losing a vital resource due to climate change: oxygen. 

In a recent study published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, scientists from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and several partners argue that the rate of oxygen loss in the ocean and freshwater is approaching an “unsafe space” with irreversible impacts. 

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“The loss of dissolved oxygen could impact nearly every aspect of aquatic ecosystems, from the food they provide us to the sense of place and meaning that we draw from them,” paper co-author Erica Ferrer, a Scripps Oceanography alumna and postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, told SFGATE by phone Thursday. “It also seems likely that widespread changes in dissolved oxygen could impact our........

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