BIOLOGICAL RESPONSE APPROACH

Laboratories at three NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Science Centers conduct experiments to determine how economically and ecologically important species respond to ocean acidification. State of the art experimental facilities were recently completed at the Northwest, Northeast, and Alaska Fisheries Science Centers.  All facilities can tightly control carbon dioxide and temperature. The Northwest Fisheries Science Center can also control oxygen, and can create variable treatment conditions for all three parameters. These facilities maintain chemistry analytical laboratories and use standard operating procedures for carbon chemistry analysis to characterize the treatment conditions used in experiments.

Experiments that explore how species survival, growth, and physiology are impacted by ocean acidification give scientists an understanding of how free-living species may respond to ocean acidification. NOAA researchers use these data to explore how aquaculture, wild fisheries, and food webs may change as ocean chemistry changes.

NOAA scientists conduct experiments on a wide variety of species, ranging from phytoplankton to fish.

CURRENT EFFORTS

The biological response of a variety of economically and ecologically important organisms to changes in carbonate chemistry are being looked at in laboratories around the nation.  Key to these experiments are reliable systems to expose these organisms to changes in pH and CO₂.  At the James J. Howard Laboratory in the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) there is an experimental system that allows for both pCO₂ and temperature manipulation.  Currently this system is able to mimic predicted increased pCO₂ concentrations seen in estuaries and is now being modified to mimic higher oceanic CO₂ concentrations predicted.  Additionally steps are being taken to be an analytical laboratory that meets the standards of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program so that measurements of carbonate parameters  can meet Ocean Acidification standards set by the OA program.