Ocean Acidification

The NOAA West Coast Ocean Acidification (WCOA) cruise is part of a decades-long program that monitors chemical parameters all along the west coast of the United States, from Canada to Mexico. The major goal is to understand trends in the Pacific Ocean, with a specific focus on environmental parameters that influence ocean acidification – a major threat to ocean health, food security, economies, and more. The cruise departs for another trek this summer, along with three CMS students on board. Macarena Martín Mayor, Katelyn Schockman, and Kalla Fleger from Bob Byrnes’ lab study chemical oceanography and will be joining the action aboard the R/V Ronald H. Brown.

The team will sample the same 145 stations that have been sampled for decades. Of the 26 scientists on the cruise representing labs from all across the world, each group is tasked with a specific parameter to measure. These range from total alkalinity to inorganic carbon to nutrients. Like a puzzle, each group will piece together their speciality to create a broader picture of the chemical conditions in the Pacific Ocean.

SOCAT wants to highlight the work by the regional and global groups – further information about these groups can be found here. We further thank all data contributors, quality controllers and other contributors for version 2021. 

The Surface Ocean CO₂ Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis activity for quality-controlled, surface ocean fCO₂ (fugacity of carbon dioxide) observations by the international marine carbon research community (>100 contributors). SOCAT data is publicly available, discoverable and citable. SOCAT enables quantification of the ocean carbon sink and ocean acidification and evaluation of ocean biogeochemical models. SOCAT, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2017, represents a milestone in biogeochemical and climate research and in informing policy.

SOCAT data are released in versions. Each succeeding version contains new data sets as well as updates of older ones. The first version of SOCAT was released in 2011, the second and third version followed biennially. Automation allowed annual public releases since version 4. The latest SOCAT version (version 2021) has 30.6 million observations from 1957 to 2020 for the global oceans and coastal seas. Calibrated sensor data are also available.

SOCAT version 2021 was released on the 15th of June 2021, containing data submitted on or before 15th of January 2021. Data submissions for the next version are welcome at any time, and will be included in the next SOCAT release in 2022.

SOCAT is a core Global Ocean Observing System data product for biogeochemistry endorsed by the Global Ocean Observing System GOOS.

Many of us have spent time alongside the rocky shore, bucket and net in hand, wading through the rockpools as we turn over clumps of seaweed and large rocks in the hopes of finding tiny marine creatures. Shrimps and fish, iridescent periwinkles, anemones, and all sorts of oddities to fascinate us. Then, we glimpse something scuttling across the sandy floor – we reach out, submerging our arms up to our elbows as we try and grasp the beast. Fingers frozen from the cold; we fumble around for a grip as we carefully bring it out from its hidey hole. 

A beautiful shore crab, shining green with its claws raised in annoyance. A dweller of the coast, a scavenger with an attitude. These animals are common finds along the UK shoreline, and are always a delight to discover lurking beneath a rock or buried under seaweed. Finding these stunning creatures is always a great joy, one that has brought many smiles to the faces of avid rock poolers. 

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Of course, it is unlikely that we will ever see crabs of such size (though over 80% of the ocean remains unexplored, so who knows) yet the unfortunate reality is that crab shells are disintegrating, though not due to a Herculean force. 

Human-induced climate change is one of the most prevalent threats we are facing as a species, and to combat this, we must change our way of living and innovate new solutions to temper the damage that has already been done.

For instance, carbon emissions in the atmosphere need to be reduced at a much faster rate than nature allows. For every ton of carbon dioxide, we pump into the air, approximately a quarter of it gets absorbed by the ocean like a sponge. The excess carbon dioxide present in these bodies of water acidifies it and threatens biodiversity.

Most of the efforts to pull carbon dioxide from the environment focus on pulling the gas directly from the atmosphere, which has proven to be challenging and expensive. In contrast, Gaurav Sant, a civil and environmental engineering professor and director of the Institute for Carbon Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, is leading a team that is researching new, innovative ways to more efficiently extract CO2 from the environment.

Large bodies of water, like oceans, hold more than 150 times more carbon dioxide than the air. Instead of focusing on extracting gas from the air, Sant and his colleagues propose removing carbon from the ocean, allowing the ocean to absorb more gas from the atmosphere to maintain the balance. How do they want to do this? By turning the carbon extracted from the ocean into rock.

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The proposed facility for this process would look like a water treatment plant, but instead of sifting impurities out of the water, the systems would use electricity to force carbon, calcium, and magnesium to react and become solids. The carbon-free water would then get put back into the ocean.

A wonderful side effect of returning the water to the ocean is that what gets returned is actually a bit more alkaline than what was extracted. This more alkaline water may mitigate the effects of ocean acidification in its immediate vicinity.

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The Optimist Daily, 14 June 2021. Full article.

On May 26, members of the Bering Sea crabbing industry met with researchers to discuss the latest science on ocean acidification and climate as it relates to crab in the region.  Nearly 50 people joined the conversation that was hosted by the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, the Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation, and the Alaska Ocean Acidification Network.

Some of the take homes included:

In his News Feature “Sea of doubts” (7 May, p. 560), M. Enserink reports on fraud allegations in about one-fourth of the studies analyzing the impact of ocean acidification on fish behavior. As institutions work to determine whether there is truth to the allegations, which have not yet been independently verified, the public and policy-makers should remember that the outcome will not change the current scientific consensus: Ocean acidification is a major threat to marine species, ecosystems, and associated services.

No single article, research team, or approach can explain the complexity of the consequences of ocean acidification (1). Over the past two decades, thousands of scientific articles have been published in this field, combining a wide range of approaches and methods from monitoring, paleo investigations, and modeling to laboratory, natural, and field experiments (2). The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (3, 4) concluded with high confidence that both positive and negative impacts on marine organisms and ocean processes occur and that responses can be influenced, and often exacerbated, by other drivers such as warming and hypoxia. The effect on fish behavior is mentioned in the report, but it only marginally contributed to the IPCC conclusions and was assigned a medium to low confidence level in light of uncertainty about the long-term persistence of behavioral disturbances.

The science of ocean acidification stands strong whatever the outcome of the investigations of potential misconduct in the area of effects on fish behavior. Failure to quickly mitigate ocean acidification through ambitious reduction of CO₂ emissions would have substantial consequences for the ocean and human societies.

Dupont S., Gattuso J.-P., Pörtner H.-O. & Widdicombe S., 2021. Ocean acidification science stands strong. Science 372(6547): 1160-1161. Article.