Top ocean scientists along the West Coast are teaming up to attack one of the planet's most serious threats to sea life: the acidification of ocean water, caused by the same dramatic changes that are driving global warming.
The 20-member task force, announced Wednesday, will span three states and includes two Orange County scientists. It will examine the science and public policy issues surrounding acidification.
The group will also assess the apparently increasing episodes of extremely low oxygen in seawater, known as “hypoxia.”
Both threaten to cause major harm to sea life – acidification by inhibiting formation of shells or corals, hypoxia by starving ocean animals of oxygen and causing die-offs.
Both appear to be powerfully influenced by human-caused changes more commonly associated with alteration of the Earth's climate.
Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere, largely by fossil-fuel burning, is also working its way into the oceans. And a warming ocean can drive down oxygen levels.
“The major difference between now and the geological past is that we're increasing levels of (carbon dioxide) at a rate anywhere from 10 to 100 times faster,” said Richard Feely, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who will serve on the new science panel. “What we're seeing is a rate of change of (carbon dioxide) that is faster than anything we've seen over the past 50 million years.”
The effects so far have been especially profound in the Pacific Northwest, where Feely, who works at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, measures changes in seawater.
Those changes, including increasing acidification over decades, have resulted in significant harm to the oyster industry in the Pacific Northwest, Feely said.
But potential effects on ocean life are far-reaching.
Tests on the shells of pea-size creatures called pteropods, or “sea butterflies,” show that when they are immersed in water with the level of acidification projected for the year 2100, the shells dissolve after 45 days.
Other studies, Feely said, show that the ability of corals to form their skeletons could be reduced from 30 percent to 60 percent during this century.
Such effects have the potential to propagate up the food chain, depriving commercially and recreationally important fish species of food sources.
Since the start of the Industrial Revolution, scientists estimate that the acidity of oceans has increased by 30 percent, an amount expected to increase as carbon dioxide levels rise.
But much remains unknown.
While major effects have been seen in the Pacific Northwest, researchers are just beginning to try to characterize the problem off the California coast, though there are early indications of more frequent acidification and low-oxygen episodes near California shores.
Just how shelled organisms will respond to increasingly acidic conditions also is unclear.