NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program supports research that focuses on economically and ecologically important marine species. Research of survival, growth, and physiology of marine organisms can be used to explore how aquaculture, wild fisheries, and food webs may change as ocean chemistry changes.
A number of NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Science Centers have state-of-the-art experimental facilities to study the response of marine organisms to the chemistry conditions expected with ocean acidification.
The Northeast Fisheries Science Center has facilities at its Sandy Hook, NJ and Milford, CT laboratories; the Alaska Fisheries Science Centers at its Newport, OR and Kodiak, AK laboratories; and the Northwest Fisheries Science Center at its Mukilteo and Manchester, WA laboratories. All facilities can tightly control carbon dioxide and temperature. The Northwest Fisheries Science Center can also control oxygen, and can create variable treatment conditions for carbon dioxide, temperature, and oxygen. These facilities include equipment for seawater carbon chemistry analysis, and all use standard operating procedures for analyzing carbonate chemistry to identify the treatment conditions used in experiments.
Both deep sea and shallow reef-building corals have calcium carbonate skeletons. As our oceans become more acidic, carbonate ions, which are an important part of calcium carbonate structures, such as these coral skeletons, become relatively less abundant. Decreases in seawater carbonate ion concentration can make building and maintaining calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying marine organisms such as coral.
Increased levels of carbon dioxide in our ocean can have a wide variety of impacts on fish, including altering behavior, otolith (a fish's ear bone) formation, and young fish's growth. Find out more about what scientists are learning about ocean acidification impacts on fish like rockfish, scup, summer flounder, and walleye pollock.
Shellfish, such as oyster, clams, crabs and scallop, provide food for marine life and for people, too. Shellfish make their shells or carapaces from calcium carbonate, which contains carbonate ion as a building block. The decreases in seawater carbonate ion concentration expected with ocean acidification can make building and maintaining calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying marine organisms like shellfish. This may impact their survival, growth, and physiology, and, thus, the food webs and economies that depend on them.
Plankton are tiny plants and animals that many marine organisms, ranging from salmon to whales, rely on for nutrition. Some plankton have calcium carbonate structures, which are built from carbonate ions. Carbonate ions become relatively less abundant as the oceans become more acidic. Decreases in seawater carbonate ions can make building and maintaining shells and other calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying marine organisms such as plankton. Changes to the survival, growth, and physiology of plankton can have impacts throughout the food web.
This project will deploy two interdisciplinary moorings (CCE1 and CCE2) in the southern California Current System, a key coastal upwelling ecosystem along the west coast of North America. The study region forms the dominant spawning habitat for most of the biomass of small pelagic fishes in the entire California Current System, is important for wild harvest of diverse marine invertebrates and fishes, plays a significant role in the ocean carbon budget for the west coast, and is in close proximity to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The offshore CCE1 mooring is located in the core flow of the California Current itself, and represents a key source of horizontal transport of nutrients, dissolved gases, and organisms from higher latitudes. It also represents the offshore atmosphere-ocean gas exchange that occurs over a large area and influences the carbon budget of this Eastern Boundary Current. The CCE2 mooring is located near Pt. Conception, one of the major upwelling centers off the west coast. This is a site of strong, episodic upwelling events that lead to marked increases in pCO2, declines in pH and dissolved oxygen, and intrusion of waters unfavorable to precipitation of calcium carbonate by some shell-bearing marine organisms. The proposed work will regularly deploy and service taut line, bottom-anchored moorings at the two mooring sites, with sensors designed to measure all core carbonate system variables specified by the PMEL OA Monitoring Network. The data will be validated with shipboard measurements and rigorous QC procedures, and made freely available via Iridium satellite telemetry. Complementary measurements made by partners in this region include Spray glider-based assessments of calcium carbonate saturation state, CalCOFI shipboard hydrographic and plankton food web measurements, process studies conducted by the CCE-LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) site, and a new experimental Ocean Acidification facility.
PI: Uwe Send