January | 2016 | Ocean acidification

Archive for January, 2016

What Is ocean acidification? A cartoon crash course (video)

Published 28 January 2016 Education Leave a Comment

There’s a chemical change under way in our oceans. It’s called ocean acidification. As the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it’s becoming more acidic—eroding the shells of marine life like oysters, clams, and urchins, which are vital to the food web.

Scientists predict that ocean acidification could wipe out most coral reefs by the middle of this century, and it’s affecting other animals, too. The good news is that, if we reverse course, the ocean should regain its chemical balance. If not, well, the truth will be a lot scarier than fiction.

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Responses of seagrass to anthropogenic and natural disturbances do not equally translate to its consumers

Published 28 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: biological response, crustaceans, echinoderms, laboratory, mesocosms, MFcommunity, morphology, multiple factors, North Atlantic, nutrients, performance, phanerogams

Coastal communities are under threat from many and often co-occurring local (e.g., pollution, eutrophication) and global stressors (e.g., climate change), yet understanding the interactive and cumulative impacts of multiple stressors in ecosystem function is far from being accomplished. Ecological redundancy may be key for ecosystem resilience, but there are still many gaps in our understanding of interspecific differences within a functional group, particularly regarding response diversity, that is, whether members of a functional group respond equally or differently to anthropogenic stressors. Herbivores are critical in determining plant community structure and the transfer of energy up the food web. Human disturbances may alter the ecological role of herbivory by modifying the defense strategies of plants and thus the feeding patterns and performance of herbivores. We conducted a suite of experiments to examine the independent and interactive effects of anthropogenic (nutrient and CO2 additions) and natural (simulated herbivory) disturbances on a seagrass and its interaction with two common generalist consumers to understand how multiple disturbances can impact both a foundation species and a key ecological function (herbivory) and to assess the potential existence of response diversity to anthropogenic and natural changes in these systems. While all three disturbances modified seagrass defense traits, there were contrasting responses of herbivores to such plant changes. Both CO2 and nutrient additions influenced herbivore feeding behavior, yet while sea urchins preferred nutrient-enriched seagrass tissue (regardless of other experimental treatments), isopods were deterred by these same plant tissues. In contrast, carbon enrichment deterred sea urchins and attracted isopods, while simulated herbivory only influenced isopod feeding choice. These contrasting responses of herbivores to disturbance-induced changes in seagrass help to better understand the ecological functioning of seagrass ecosystems in the face of human disturbances and may have important implications regarding the resilience and conservation of these threatened ecosystems.

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Recent evidence for a strengthening CO2 sink in the Southern Ocean from carbonate system measurements in the Drake Passage (2002–2015)

Published 28 January 2016 Science 2 Comments
Tags: Antarctic, chemistry, field

We present a 13 year (2002–2015) semimonthly time series of the partial pressure of CO2 in surface water (pCO2surf) and other carbonate system parameters from the Drake Passage. This record shows a clear increase in the magnitude of the sea-air pCO2 gradient, indicating strengthening of the CO2 sink in agreement with recent large-scale analyses of the world oceans. The rate of increase in pCO2surf north of the Antarctic Polar Front (APF) is similar to the atmospheric pCO2 (pCO2atm) trend, whereas the pCO2surf increase south of the APF is slower than the pCO2atm trend. The high-frequency surface observations indicate that an absence of a winter increase in total CO2 (TCO2) and cooling summer sea surface temperatures are largely responsible for increasing CO2 uptake south of the APF. Muted winter trends in surface TCO2 also provide temporary stability to the carbonate system that is already close to undersaturation with respect to aragonite.

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Ocean hypercapnia and the future of ‘intoxicated’ fish

Published 27 January 2016 Media coverage , Web sites and blogs 1 Comment

Today we have published a paper in the journal Nature which has potential global implications for fish and other marine organisms. Click here to see a short 1-minute explainer video on my Thinkable profile and to download the open-access pre-print.

Given our mission at Thinkable is to allow anyone to learn & engage with researchers, I thought it would be timely to also write a more general piece on what we have found and what it means.

What is ‘Ocean Hypercapnia’?

Humans have pumped a staggering amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from energy use: 1.46 trillion tonnes of CO2. Fortunately about 38% of this pollution has been soaked up by the magic of carbonate chemistry (see the reaction below) and vastness of the ocean. The good news is that this CO2 (72ppm equivalent) can’t cause any climate damage — great! The bad news is that CO2 concentrations increase in the ocean.

Once seawater CO2 levels reach an excessively high level, known as ocean hypercapnia (generally regarded as >1000ppm), neurological and behavioural effects have been shown to occur in a range of marine species. The majority of research shows ocean hypercapnia to interfere with fish brain function in particular, causing all sorts of detrimental behavioural/sensory problems like an inability to find home or know where predators are. CO2 becomes an ‘intoxicant’, impairing their behaviour and leaving them vulnerable to predation & inability to re-settle/populate.

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Ocean acidification increases cadmium accumulation in marine bivalves: a potential threat to seafood safety

Published 27 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: biological response, laboratory, molecular biology, mollusks, North Pacific, otherprocess

To date, the effects of ocean acidification on toxic metals accumulation and the underlying molecular mechanism remains unknown in marine bivalve species. In the present study, the effects of the realistic future ocean pCO2 levels on the cadmium (Cd) accumulation in the gills, mantle and adductor muscles of three bivalve species, Mytilus edulis, Tegillarca granosa, and Meretrix meretrix, were investigated. The results obtained suggested that all species tested accumulated significantly higher Cd (p < 0.05) in the CO2 acidified seawater during the 30 days experiment and the health risk of Cd (based on the estimated target hazard quotients, THQ) via consumption of M. meretrix at pH 7.8 and 7.4 significantly increased 1.21 and 1.32 times respectively, suggesting a potential threat to seafood safety. The ocean acidification-induced increase in Cd accumulation may have occurred due to (i) the ocean acidification increased the concentration of Cd and the Cd2+/Ca2+ in the seawater, which in turn increased the Cd influx through Ca channel; (ii) the acidified seawater may have brought about epithelia damage, resulting in easier Cd penetration; and (iii) ocean acidification hampered Cd exclusion.

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Climatic modulation of recent trends in ocean acidification in the California Current System

Published 27 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: chemistry, modeling, North Pacific, regionalmodeling

We reconstruct the evolution of ocean acidification in the California Current System (CalCS) from 1979 through 2012 using hindcast simulations with an eddy-resolving ocean biogeochemical model forced with observation-based variations of wind and fluxes of heat and freshwater. We find that domain-wide pH and in the top 60 m of the water column decreased significantly over these three decades by about −0.02 decade−1 and −0.12 decade−1, respectively. In the nearshore areas of northern California and Oregon, ocean acidification is reconstructed to have progressed much more rapidly, with rates up to 30% higher than the domain-wide trends. Furthermore, ocean acidification penetrated substantially into the thermocline, causing a significant domain-wide shoaling of the aragonite saturation depth of on average −33 m decade−1 and up to −50 m decade−1 in the nearshore area of northern California. This resulted in a coast-wide increase in nearly undersaturated waters and the appearance of waters with , leading to a substantial reduction of habitat suitability.

Averaged over the whole domain, the main driver of these trends is the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere. However, recent changes in the climatic forcing have substantially modulated these trends regionally. This is particularly evident in the nearshore regions, where the total trends in pH are up to 50% larger and trends in and in the aragonite saturation depth are even twice to three times larger than the purely atmospheric CO2-driven trends. This modulation in the nearshore regions is a result of the recent marked increase in alongshore wind stress, which brought elevated levels of dissolved inorganic carbon to the surface via upwelling. Our results demonstrate that changes in the climatic forcing need to be taken into consideration in future projections of the progression of ocean acidification in coastal upwelling regions.

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Recruitment and succession in a tropical benthic community in response to in-situ ocean acidification

Published 27 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: abundance, algae, annelids, biological response, BRcommunity, chemistry, community composition, field, mollusks, North Atlantic, otherprocess, protists, reproduction

Ocean acidification is a pervasive threat to coral reef ecosystems, and our understanding of the ecological processes driving patterns in tropical benthic community development in conditions of acidification is limited. We deployed limestone recruitment tiles in low aragonite saturation (Ωarag) waters during an in-situ field experiment at Puerto Morelos, Mexico, and compared them to tiles placed in control zones over a 14-month investigation. The early stages of succession showed relatively little difference in coverage of calcifying organisms between the low Ωarag and control zones. However, after 14 months of development, tiles from the low Ωarag zones had up to 70% less cover of calcifying organisms coincident with 42% more fleshy algae than the controls. The percent cover of biofilm and turf algae was also significantly greater in the low Ωarag zones, while the number of key grazing taxa remained constant. We hypothesize that fleshy algae have a competitive edge over the primary calcified space holders, coralline algae, and that acidification leads to altered competitive dynamics between various taxa. We suggest that as acidification impacts reefs in the future, there will be a shift in community assemblages away from upright and crustose coralline algae toward more fleshy algae and turf, established in the early stages of succession.

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Ocean acidification and marine aquaculture in North America: potential impacts and mitigation strategies

Published 27 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: fisheries, mitigation, North Pacific, review

Shifting environmental conditions resulting from anthropogenic climate change have recently garnered much attention in the aquaculture industry; however, ocean acidification has received relatively little attention. Here, we provide an overview of ocean acidification in the context of North American aquaculture with respect to potential impacts and mitigation strategies. North American shellfish farms should make ocean acidification an immediate priority, as shellfish and other calcifying organisms are of highest concern in an increasingly acidifying ocean and negative effects have already been felt on the Pacific coast. While implications for various finfish have been documented, our current understanding of how acidification will impact North American finfish aquaculture is limited and requires more research. Although likely to benefit from increases in seawater CO2, some seaweeds may also be at risk under more acidic conditions, particularly calcifying species, as well as non-calcifying ones residing in areas where CO2 is not the primary driver of acidification. Strategies to mitigate and adapt to the effects of acidification exist on the regional scale and can aid in identifying areas of concern, detecting changes in seawater carbonate chemistry early enough to avoid catastrophic outcomes, and adapting to long-term shifts in oceanic pH. Ultimately, ocean acidification has already imposed negative impacts on the aquaculture industry, but can be addressed with sufficient monitoring and the establishment of regional mitigation plans.

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The effect of ocean acidification on organic and inorganic speciation of trace metals

Published 27 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: chemistry, modeling

Rising concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide are causing acidification of the oceans. This results in changes to the concentrations of key chemical species such as hydroxide, carbonate and bicarbonate ions. These changes will affect the distribution of different forms of trace metals. Using IPCC data for pCO2 and pH under four future emissions scenarios (to the year 2100) we use a chemical speciation model to predict changes in the distribution of organic and inorganic forms of trace metals. Under a scenario where emissions peak after the year 2100, predicted free ion Al, Fe, Cu and Pb concentrations increase by factors of up to approximately 21, 2.4, 1.5 and 2.0 respectively. Concentrations of organically complexed metal typically have a lower sensitivity to ocean acidification induced changes. Concentrations of organically-complexed Mn, Cu, Zn and Cd fall by up to 10%, while those of organically-complexed Fe, Co and Ni rise by up to 14%. Although modest, these changes may have significance for the biological availability of metals given the close adaptation of marine microorganisms to their environment.

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Earth system commitments due to delayed mitigation

Published 27 January 2016 Science Leave a Comment
Tags: chemistry, globalmodeling, mitigation, modeling

As long as global CO2 emissions continue to increase annually, long-term committed Earth system changes grow much faster than current observations. A novel metric linking this future growth to policy decisions today is the mitigation delay sensitivity (MDS), but MDS estimates for Earth system variables other than peak temperature (ΔT max) are missing. Using an Earth System Model of Intermediate Complexity, we show that the current emission increase rate causes a ΔT max increase roughly 3–7.5 times as fast as observed warming, and a millenial steric sea level rise (SSLR) 7–25 times as fast as observed SSLR, depending on the achievable rate of emission reductions after the peak of emissions. These ranges are only slightly affected by the uncertainty range in equilibrium climate sensitivity, which is included in the above values. The extent of ocean acidification at the end of the century is also strongly dependent on the starting time and rate of emission reductions. The preservable surface ocean area with sufficient aragonite supersaturation for coral reef growth is diminished globally at an MDS of roughly 25%–80% per decade. A near-complete loss of this area becomes unavoidable if mitigation is delayed for a few years to decades. Also with respect to aragonite, 12%–18% of the Southern Ocean surface become undersaturated per decade, if emission reductions are delayed beyond 2015–2040. We conclude that the consequences of delaying global emission reductions are much better captured if the MDS of relevant Earth system variables is communicated in addition to current trends and total projected future changes.

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