Twenty Pier2Peer mentee graduates, representing 17 countries, join the global professional community for ocean acidification monitoring and research. After successfully completing two years of one-on-one mentorship with experts in the field of ocean acidification, this cohort pursued capacity building projects with the guidance of their mentors, advancing their regions’ ability to measure and address ocean acidification. Half of the mentors of this year’s graduating class are U.S. based ocean acidification experts, demonstrating the strong international leadership the United States offers to ocean acidification science. Projects ranged from revitalizing a carbonate chemistry laboratory in the Galapagos Islands to understanding the impact of ocean acidification on coral reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mannar.
Building capacity for ocean acidification tracking and forecasting means going beyond U.S. waters. As ocean acidification poses a threat to fisheries, aquaculture, and coastal communities in the U.S. and beyond, it is imperative that countries work together to train the next generation of experts to improve our global capacity to measure and address changing ocean chemistry. The mentorships often forge long-lasting relationships.
“What is more exciting is that I keep gaining other skills from my mentor as we implement the project, such as how to identify and understand the research gaps through a literature search and review.” -Anonymous Pier2Peer Mentee
The Pier2Peer program, coordinated through the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network and administered by The Ocean Foundation, meets this need by pairing experienced researchers with scientists new to the field of ocean acidification. Mentorship pairing facilitates the transfer of knowledge, skills, and data, and ultimately expands the community of professionals working toward addressing impacts of changing ocean chemistry. As an international mentorship program, Pier2Peer facilitates international collaboration and capacity building to better prepare the United States and its neighbors to respond to ocean acidification. Pier2Peer also builds capacity through training and scholarships.
Historically, some program mentees also have access to ‘GOA-ON in a Box,’ a low-cost kit used for collecting weather-quality ocean acidification measurements.
“The mentorship provides the support I need to carry out a monitoring program in terms of guidance with using a GOA-ON in a box kit equipment and sensors.” -Anonymous Pier2Peer Mentee
Scholarships support capacity building in ocean acidification hotspots
Pier2Peer offers scholarships in partnership with The Ocean Foundation to facilitate collaborative projects between mentor-mentee pairs. Scholarships aim to enable mentees to design and implement high-quality ocean acidification monitoring and research projects with their mentors. Two recent Pier2Peer graduates received scholarships to continue their work with their mentors.
Dr. Luana Queiroz Pinho was awarded a 2025 Pier2Peer Scholarship to pursue training in ocean acidification instrumentation with her mentor, Dr. Denis Pierrot of NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meterological Laboratory (AOML). Pinho, a tenured associate professor of Oceanography at Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, researches carbon biogeochemistry in aquatic environments. Through the Pier2Peer Scholarship, she collaborated with her mentor to undergo training in the use and maintenance of CO2 sensors. This partnership enabled the deployment of newly acquired shipboard equipment, expanding capacity to produce high-resolution seawater carbonate chemistry monitoring in the tropical South Atlantic. Brazil’s reef tourism economies are vital to coastal areas and provide up to $175M for some areas that is at risk from changing ocean conditions.
Dr. Muthusamy Anand at Madurai Kamaraj University received the Pier2Peer Scholarship in 2024 to collaborate with his mentor, Dr. Aileen Tan Shau Hwai from the Universiti Sains Malaysia. Anand collaborated with his mentor to monitor the ecological impacts of ocean acidification on coral reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mannar using low-cost Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS). Their research paired carbonate chemistry measurements with observations of cryptofauna diversity and assessments of Calcification Accretion Units (CAUs), which show how a reef is accreting or eroding over time. In March 2025, Anand organized a one day workshop on to train other experts in India on incorporating ARMS and CAUs into their research. Coral reefs in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, fisheries and tourism economies of at least $12B annually in the region, experience low concentrations of important coral building blocks (carbonate saturation) that largely occurs from rainfall and runoff, but is exacerbated by ocean acidification.
OAP supports Pier2Peer Scholarships through The Ocean Foundation and provides program coordination, currently through a NOAA Sea Grant Knauss Fellow.
