The shells of marine snails – known as pteropods – living in the seas around Antarctica are being dissolved by ocean acidification according to a new study published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.  These tiny animals are a valuable food source for fish and birds and play an important role in the oceanic carbon cycle*.

During a science cruise in 2008, researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of East Anglia (UEA), in collaboration with colleagues from the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), discovered severe dissolution of the shells of living pteropods in Southern Ocean waters.

Scientists have known for years that greenhouse gasses are altering the chemical makeup of our oceans.

More and more carbon dioxide is dissolving into salt water, creating carbonic acid. That changes the ocean’s pH, or acid-alkaline balance.

And it’s hitting harder in Alaska.

On Monday, Congress was called on by a leading environmental organization to address the increasing threat to sea life that has been caused by decades of warming ocean temperatures and C02 pollution.

The action by Center for Biological Diversity included submitting a detailed letter to the House of Natural Resources Committee, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee.

HOMER, Alaska — Kris Holderied, who directs the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Kasitsna Bay Laboratory, says the ocean’s increasing acidity is “the reason fishermen stop me in the grocery store.”

“They say, ‘You’re with the NOAA lab, what are you doing on ocean acidification?’ ” Holderied said. “This is a coastal town that depends on this ocean, and this bay.”

Efforts to deal with increasing acidification of the oceans will get a signal of support Sunday with a U.S. announcement that it will provide $1 million over the next three years to launch a global monitoring network.

The creation of the International Coordinating Office for Ocean Acidification, which will be housed within the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Environment Laboratories in Monaco, marks the first worldwide effort to track how increasing carbon emissions are making the world’s oceans more acidic.