Ocean Acidification
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 […]
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