Climate change will wreak havoc on marine life and its effects will last for thousands of years to come.
Researchers from the University of California, Davis studied a section of fossilized fauna from California's seafloor that is possibly aged at 16,000 years old.
The sediment was sliced and its contents were compared to the last major ice age melt, when the ocean was flooded with low oxygen zones, according to Discovery News.
Over 5,400 invertebrate fossils were studied by the researchers, including clams, sea horses and oysters. They discovered that certain aquatic species almost disappeared during the last major polar ice cap melt.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the ocean's oxygen levels have dropped by up to 1.5 milliliters per liter in just less than 100 years due to climate change. It significantly and negatively affected the marine ecology despite the small number.
The researchers said that today's climate change can also affect the environment similarly as the study has found.
"It's a gritty reality we need to face as scientists and people who care about the natural world and who make decisions about the natural world," said scientist and lead author Sarah Moffitt from the Marine Sciences Institute at UC, Davis.
Moffitt added that the past events indicate how climate change can negatively affect Earth and that it would take up to thousands of years before the ecology and environment can at least recover, according to CBS Local.
Climate change has been a problem for both scientists and environmentalist for years, and now they are hoping to raise awareness from the public.