Ocean Acidification
Disoriented fish are getting lost at sea!
Young fish rely on sound cues to navigate the vast ocean, but as our oceans acidify, the journey home to safely settle becomes much more difficult. Disoriented and slow, these fish are getting lost at sea Valeska UphamFor my fisheries and aquatic science PhD I am working on how to tank raise urchins and transplant […]
Are marine “nuisance” species expected to increase under ocean acidification?
Most studies that look at how animals respond to climate change look at species we like – oysters, corals, and whales are just a few examples. The authors of this review looked at something else – how are the species we hate going to respond to climate change, specifically ocean acidification? Read on to find […]
Rapid changes in the Southern Ocean threaten ecosystems
Rapid acidification of the Southern Ocean could occur in the next 30 years with potentially huge impacts to local ecosystems. Veronica TamsittI’m a PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla California. My research is focused on the Southern Ocean circulation and it’s role in climate. For my research I sometimes spend months […]
How a whole reef community’s response to OA is impacted by the individual responses of different players
Researchers from California used a unique ex situ experiment to monitor two near identical reef communities in different concentrations of dissolved carbon dioxide to observe the unique responses of community members and their roles in the whole community response. Anne M. HartwellHello, welcome to Oceanbites! My name is Annie, I’m a marine research scientist who […]
Tiny lobsters, big problems.
Larval lobsters face potentially dangerous situations, find out how they fare against a couple important environmental stressors (salinity and pH changes). Sarah GiltzI am a doctoral candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Tulane University. My research focuses on the larval dispersal and development of the blue crab in the Gulf of Mexico. When not […]
Ocean acidification may make “peekaboo” harder for shrimp
What happens to a shrimp’s shell when exposed to more acidic conditions? Read more to find out! Megan ChenI graduated with a Masters of Coastal & Marine Management from the University of Akureyri in Iceland, and am currently working at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Ocean Education. I am interested in […]
Giant Clams Catch a Giant Break
Most of today’s research into the effects of climate change and ocean acidification is all doom and gloom: this animal and that ecosystem are developmentally challenged as a result of warming temperatures and lowered pH. This new study out of Australia is a rare bit of good news in the field, finding that giant clams […]
Path of Corrosion: How Scientists Modeled Ancient Sea-Floor Acidity
Today, we see a rapid release of CO2 to the atmosphere associated with climate change. The same was true 55 million years ago during the PETM, a time when – sediment records show – there was pervasive carbonate dissolution along the sea floor. But it was not the same pattern everywhere. Scientists attempt to model […]
Can sperm cells make it in an acidified ocean?
Researchers in Australia investigated whether sea urchin sperm are going to make it through an acidified ocean or if they’ve reached their tipping point. Read on to learn more! Erin McLeanHi and welcome to oceanbites! I recently finished my master’s degree at URI, focusing on lobsters and how they respond metabolically to ocean acidification projections. […]
Like father, like son? Is survival under ocean acidification heritable?
Can marine life adapt to ocean acidification? Well, first we need to understand if these favourable characteristics (survival under elevated CO2 conditions) are genetically determined and can be passed on to the offspring! Catarina SilvaHi! I am a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington. I study the genetic structure of organisms and how the […]
Catfish sharks on catnip? Nope, just ocean acidification
Researchers from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that ocean acidification may cause hyperactivity in catfish sharks. Lis HendersonI am studying for my doctoral degree at the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. My research addresses fisheries and climate change in the Northwest Atlantic. In my free time, I like to […]
Deep Blue Reads: The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert
As a novelist writing about oceanography, I spend a decent amount of time parsing scientific studies. Over the past several years my vocabulary has expanded to include terms like band saturation, turbidity currents, and foraminifera—phrases and words that had not existed in my wildest dreams when I first started writing. I’ve relied on studies and […]
Too much acid in the mahi: Ocean acidification and larval dolphinfish
How will increased atmospheric carbon dioxide affect your dinner? Larval dolphinfish (or, ‘mahi mahi’) are apparently very sensitive to increased ocean acidification, a product of rising atmospheric CO2. This is one of the first studies of the effects of ocean acidification on the early life stage of a pelagic fish species. Lis HendersonI am studying […]
The Seventh Sense: Catfish Sense pH Changes
Some catfish aren’t just limited to the traditional five senses – instead, they have a unique adaptation to sense pH changes in the water to help them find their prey. Erin McLeanHi and welcome to oceanbites! I recently finished my master’s degree at URI, focusing on lobsters and how they respond metabolically to ocean acidification […]
Fight of the Century: CO2 vs. Calcifying Phytoplankton
From the very first sentence of the abstract, these scientists make clear they are not messing around, “Ocean acidification is a result of the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere into the ocean and has been identified as a major environmental and economic threat.” In other words, humans are causing ocean acidification and the […]
The pH of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre has been dropping since 1981
Has the pH of our oceans decreased significantly? Lauvset and Gruber say yes, for the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre. Cathleen TurnerCat Turner is a Masters Candidate at the University of Rhode Island. Her research topic is on pH and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) fluctuations of Narragansett Bay, R.I. In her spare time she draws cartoons, […]
Is Aragonite Saturation State (Ωa) the Best Way to Describe Calcification Rate?
Nearly every scientific report concerning the effects of ocean acidification on coral reefs describes changes in calcification as a function of the aragonite saturation state (Ωa). Is this the best parameter that we can use to represent calcification condition? Are there any other options? Caoxin SunCaoxin is a graduate student in the Graduate School of […]
Growing Like a Seaweed: How ocean acidification is aiding the growth and expansion of macroalgae.
While calcifying organisms like corals and bivalves are projected to struggle under future levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), non-calcifying seaweeds that use CO2 for photosynthesis are going to exhibit normal, or increased, growth and productivity. Here, researchers show that increases in CO2 result in faster growth rates and increased photosynthetic activity in the invasive red […]
Emissions from International Shipping Vessels Contribute to Ocean Acidification
Ship emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides (SOx, NOx) can be deposited and form sulfuric and nitric acid in surface water. Do heavily-trafficked trade routes result in “hotspots” of ocean acidification? Hassellöv and her team show “hotspots” that coincide with areas of heavy shipping traffic and seasonal stratification. Cathleen TurnerCat Turner is a Masters Candidate […]
Coral Reefs Suffering from Ocean Acidification
Researchers investigated natural trends in carbonate chemistry of the Davies Reef flat in the central Great Barrier Reef on diel and seasonal timescales. They found the reef flat is below a calcification threshold, which implies that a transition in the reef may occur from a state of net calcification to dissolution, around 26.9% of the […]
by oceanbites 2 days ago
Being on a research cruise is a unique experience with the open water, 12-hour working shifts, and close quarters, but there are some familiar practices too. Here Diana is filtering seawater to gather chlorophyll for analysis, the same process on- by oceanbites 1 month ago
This week for #WriterWednesday on #oceanbites we are featuring Hannah Collins @hannahh_irene Hannah works with marine suspension feeding bivalves and microplastics, investigating whether ingesting microplastics causes changes to the gut microbial community or gut tissues. She hopes to keep working - by oceanbites 1 month ago
Leveling up - did you know that crabs have a larval phase? These are both porcelain crabs, but the one on the right is the earlier stage. It’s massive spine makes it both difficult to eat and quite conspicuous in - by oceanbites 2 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday on #Oceanbites we are featuring Cierra Braga. Cierra works ultraviolet c (UVC) to discover how this light can be used to combat biofouling, or the growth of living things, on the hulls of ships. Here, you - by oceanbites 2 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday at #Oceanbites we are featuring Elena Gadoutsis @haysailor These photos feature her “favorite marine research so far: From surveying tropical coral reefs, photographing dolphins and whales, and growing my own algae to expose it to different - by oceanbites 3 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday on Oceanbites we are featuring Eliza Oldach. According to Ellie, “I study coastal communities, and try to understand the policies and decisions and interactions and adaptations that communities use to navigate an ever-changing world. Most of - by oceanbites 3 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday at #Oceanbites we are featuring Jiwoon Park with a little photographic help from Ryan Tabata at the University of Hawaii. When asked about her research, Jiwoon wrote “Just like we need vitamins and minerals to stay - by oceanbites 3 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday on #Oceanbites we are featuring @riley_henning According to Riley, ”I am interested in studying small things that make a big impact in the ocean. Right now for my master's research at the University of San Diego, - by oceanbites 3 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday at #Oceanbites we are featuring Gabby Stedman. Gabby is interested in interested in understanding how many species of small-bodied animals there are in the deep-sea and where they live so we can better protect them from - by oceanbites 4 months ago
This week for #WriterWednesday at #Oceanbites we are featuring Shawn Wang! Shawn is “an oceanographer that studies ocean conditions of the past. I use everything from microfossils to complex computer models to understand how climate has changed in the past - by oceanbites 4 months ago
Today we are highlighting some of our awesome new authors for #WriterWednesday Today we have Daniel Speer! He says, “I am driven to investigate the interface of biology, chemistry, and physics, asking questions about how organisms or biological systems respond - by oceanbites 5 months ago
Here at Oceanbites we love long-term datasets. So much happens in the ocean that sometimes it can be hard to tell if a trend is a part of a natural cycle or actually an anomaly, but as we gather more - by oceanbites 5 months ago
Have you ever seen a lobster molt? Because lobsters have exoskeletons, every time they grow they have to climb out of their old shell, leaving them soft and vulnerable for a few days until their new shell hardens. Young, small - by oceanbites 6 months ago
A lot of zooplankton are translucent, making it much easier to hide from predators. This juvenile mantis shrimp was almost impossible to spot floating in the water, but under a dissecting scope it’s features really come into view. See the - by oceanbites 6 months ago
This is a clump of Dead Man’s Fingers, scientific name Codium fragile. It’s native to the Pacific Ocean and is invasive where I found it on the east coast of the US. It’s a bit velvety, and the coolest thing - by oceanbites 7 months ago
You’ve probably heard of jellyfish, but have you heard of salps? These gelatinous sea creatures band together to form long chains, but they can also fall apart and will wash up onshore like tiny gemstones that squish. Have you seen - by oceanbites 7 months ago
Check out what’s happening on a cool summer research cruise! On the #neslter summer transect cruise, we deployed a tow sled called the In Situ Icthyoplankton Imaging System. This can take pictures of gelatinous zooplankton (like jellyfish) that would be - by oceanbites 8 months ago
Did you know horseshoe crabs have more than just two eyes? In these juveniles you can see another set in the middle of the shell. Check out our website to learn about some awesome horseshoe crab research. #oceanbites #plankton #horseshoecrabs - by oceanbites 8 months ago
Feeling a bit flattened by the week? So are these summer flounder larvae. Fun fact: flounder larvae start out with their eyes set like normal fish, but as they grow one of their eyes migrates to meet the other and - by oceanbites 8 months ago
Have you seen a remote working setup like this? This is a photo from one of our Oceanbites team members Anne Hartwell. “A view from inside the control can of an underwater robot we used to explore the deep parts
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