oysters and ocean acidity

[Old Rocks]

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2012/04/12/ocean-acidification-killing-farmed-oysters/

Marine researchers have definitively linked the collapse of oyster seed production at a commercial oyster hatchery in Oregon to an increase in ocean acidification.

Larval growth at the hatchery declined to a level considered by the owners to be “non-economically viable.”

A study by the scientists found that increased seawater carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, resulting in more corrosive ocean water, inhibited the larval oysters from developing their shells and growing at a pace that would make commercial production cost-effective.

As atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, this may serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for other ocean acidification impacts on shellfish.

Results of the research are published this week in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, published by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).

The research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Ocean Acidification solicitation.

“Studies funded by NSF’s SEES Ocean Acidification solicitation are well-positioned to determine the specific mechanisms responsible for larval mortality in Pacific Northwest oyster hatcheries,” said David Garrison, program director in NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.

“This is one of the first times that we have been able to show how ocean acidification affects oyster larval development at a critical life stage,” said Burke Hales, an Oregon State University (OSU) chemical oceanographer and co-author of the paper.

 

[Old Rocks]

http://www.sightline.org/research/e...n/northwest-ocean-acidification/OA-primer.pdf

 

[Old Rocks]

Local News | Acidification threatens wide swath of sea life | Seattle Times Newspaper

DABOB BAY, Hood Canal — Inside the burbling tubs of the Taylor Shellfish hatchery here, oysters are incubating once again. But no one believes things are really back to normal.
Several years after oyster larvae around the Northwest began dying by the billions, hatcheries like this one are again ramping up production.

But that's just because they've learned to avoid pumping in problem seawater.

Few know better than Northwest oyster growers that ecological upheaval is still rattling their industry — and that it may be a sign of greater marine-world shifts to come.

Pacific oysters in the wild on Washington's coast haven't reproduced in six seasons. Scientists suspect ocean-chemistry changes linked to the fossil-fuel emissions that cause global warming are helping kill these juvenile shellfish.

 

[Peach]

http://www.sightline.org/research/e...n/northwest-ocean-acidification/OA-primer.pdf

Areas of the Apalachicola area are affected, I have read and heard.

 

[IanC]

letter sent to NOAA, but misleading statements still on their website-

Dear Dr. Feely:

I exchanged e-mails with you a while back over a story that ran in the Oregonian on April 12, 2012. It was about “ocean acidification” that was supposedly killing off what would otherwise be healthy oyster harvests here in the Northwest, The story can be found here:

Oregon State research traces oyster larvae die-off to increasing ocean acidity | OregonLive.com

An OSU researcher who gave the story to the Oregonian, Alan Barton, had incorrectly asserted that the ocean pH had risen 30% because of human CO2 emissions and gave that as the reason the oyster harvests had been suffering. And he qualified that statement by stating that the ocean pH had moved .1 unit towards acidity over the last century.


But as you know, the equation for the pH of an aqueous solution is logarithmic and defined as pH = -log[ H+ ] . As you also know, there are 14 orders of magnitude that define the pH scale from zero to fourteen units as per this equation. So a movement of .1 units towards acidity cannot equal a 30% increase in acidity as claimed in this article. It is actually .1/14 or only 7/10ths of 1%. In order for there to be the increase cited, the researchers solved it for the hydrogen ion concentration and computed that change instead and called it the change in acidity. So if we moved .1 units towards acidity from the alkaline 8.2 to 8.1 oceans and compared the change, we have [delta H+] = 8 E-9/6 E-9 = 1.33 or a 33% increase in the hydrogen ion concentration, not an increase of 33% in the pH. None the less, that is how the story was reported and it is wrong.

Since the natural variation of ocean pH can be up to 5% in either direction, I am speculating that in order to make the story seem legitimate, a gross exaggeration of fact was needed to sell it and hence the switch and bait tactic was used with the pH equation.

You agreed with me in my premise that hydrogen ion concentration makes up the pH but it is not defined by that number because the number of ions in an aqueous solution of water are very large. That was the whole idea behind creating a logarithmic scale with the 14 orders of magnitude to define it. I reported this to the Oregonian readership and thought the issue was settled. But then I found this:

What is Ocean Acidification?

In this explanation offered by NOAA, of which you are a senior scientist, we are back to the trickery of claiming the ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Are you aware of this NOAA information page? It needs an immediate correction. The ocean pH has been changing everywhere within natural variations. There is no provable decrease that can be identified with atmospheric CO2 that is related to human activity. Does Jane Lubchenco understand this? She has made numerous and completely false assertions that the up welling ocean water off of the Northwest coasts ( that will be on the rise because of the switch to cold phase PDO in 2007 that will run thirty years and likely decrease the pH additionally ) is attributable to human caused climate change. There is absolutely no proof of this and as far as meteorologists can tell, the mid and north Pacific Hadley cell summer circulation has intensified on schedule and is behaving perfectly normally in the cold phase of this ocean cycle. Either you or Lubchenco need to correct this page. It is misleading the public.

Sincerely,

Chuck F. Wiese

Meteorologist

NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory Carbon Program goes overboard on ocean acidification – leaves uncorrected error | Watts Up With That?

 

[IanC]

as usual the AGW catastrophists make misleading claims and weak minded sycophants like Old Rocks grovel in the excrement.

 

[Old Rocks]

More nonsense from an undegreed ex-TV weatherman. And you accept it over the expertise of real scientists. Here is an excerpt from a Royal Society report.

http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf

The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and this is causing chemical changes by making them more acidic (that is, decreasing the pH of the oceans). In the past 200 years the oceans have absorbed approximately half of the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning and cement production. Calculations based on measurements of the surface oceans and our knowledge of ocean chemistry indicate that this uptake of CO2 has led to a reduction of the pH of surface seawater of 0.1 units, equivalent to a 30% increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions.

Of course these are real scientist with decades of experiance in their fields, therefore not to be trusted. Ian, you are going off the deep end.

 

[idb]

http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2012/04/12/ocean-acidification-killing-farmed-oysters/

Marine researchers have definitively linked the collapse of oyster seed production at a commercial oyster hatchery in Oregon to an increase in ocean acidification.

Larval growth at the hatchery declined to a level considered by the owners to be “non-economically viable.”

A study by the scientists found that increased seawater carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, resulting in more corrosive ocean water, inhibited the larval oysters from developing their shells and growing at a pace that would make commercial production cost-effective.

As atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, this may serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for other ocean acidification impacts on shellfish.

Results of the research are published this week in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, published by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO).

The research was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Ocean Acidification solicitation.

“Studies funded by NSF’s SEES Ocean Acidification solicitation are well-positioned to determine the specific mechanisms responsible for larval mortality in Pacific Northwest oyster hatcheries,” said David Garrison, program director in NSF’s Division of Ocean Sciences.

“This is one of the first times that we have been able to show how ocean acidification affects oyster larval development at a critical life stage,” said Burke Hales, an Oregon State University (OSU) chemical oceanographer and co-author of the paper.

What do scientists know?
Only commercial interests and crony politicians can really know what the causes are.

 

[editec]

If the average PH of the oceans really change dramtically and rapidly this world truly is in serious trouble.

 

[flacaltenn]

I'll go with that "dissent" memo that IanC posted. That in areas of huge upwelling effects, it's IMPOSSIBLE to separate alledged man-made contributions to PH change from the NON - OA effect of bringing deeper more CO2 saturated colder waters to the surface.. And those that claim that they CAN TELL this -- are demented..

PLoS ONE: High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison

The effect of Ocean Acidification (OA) on marine biota is quasi-predictable at best. While perturbation studies, in the form of incubations under elevated pCO2, reveal sensitivities and responses of individual species, one missing link in the OA story results from a chronic lack of pH data specific to a given species' natural habitat. Here, we present a compilation of continuous, high-resolution time series of upper ocean pH, collected using autonomous sensors, over a variety of ecosystems ranging from polar to tropical, open-ocean to coastal, kelp forest to coral reef. These observations reveal a continuum of month-long pH variability with standard deviations from 0.004 to 0.277 and ranges spanning 0.024 to 1.430 pH units. The nature of the observed variability was also highly site-dependent, with characteristic diel, semi-diurnal, and stochastic patterns of varying amplitudes. These biome-specific pH signatures disclose current levels of exposure to both high and low dissolved CO2, often demonstrating that resident organisms are already experiencing pH regimes that are not predicted until 2100.

For example, recent data on the heterogeneity of pH in coastal waters of the Northeastern Pacific [31], [32] that are characterized by episodic upwelling has caused biologists to re-examine the physiological tolerances of organisms that live there. Specifically, resident calcifying marine invertebrates and algae are acclimatized to existing spatial and temporal heterogeneity [17], [18], and further, populations are likely adapted to local to regional differences in upwelling patterns

[33].


Similar underestimates of CO2 variability were observed at nine other open ocean locations, where the Takahashi pCO2 climatology overlaps PMEL moorings with pCO2 sensors (not shown). Thus, on both a monthly (Fig. 2) and annual scale (Fig. 4), even the most stable open ocean sites see pH changes many times larger than the annual rate of acidification. This natural variability has prompted the suggestion that “an appropriate null hypothesis may be, until evidence is obtained to the contrary, that major biogeochemical processes in the oceans other than calcification will not be fundamentally different under future higher CO2/lower pH conditions” [24].

In distinct contrast to the stability of the open ocean and Antarctic sites, sensors at the other five site classifications (upwelling, estuarine/near-shore, coral reef, kelp forest, and extreme) captured much greater variability (pH fluctuations ranging between 0.121 to 1.430) and may provide insight towards ecosystem-specific patterns. The sites in upwelling regions (Pt. Conception and Pt. Ano Nuevo, Figure 2C), the two locations in Monterey Bay, CA (Figure 2D), and the kelp forest sites (La Jolla and Santa Barbara Mohawk Reef, Figure 2F) all exhibited large fluctuations in pH conditions (pH changes>0.25). Additionally, at these 6 sites, pH oscillated in semi-diurnal patterns, the most apparent at the estuarine sites. The pH recorded in coral reef ecosystems exhibited a distinct diel pattern characterized by relatively consistent, moderate fluctuations (0.1<pH change<0.25; Figure 2E). At the Palmyra fore reef site, pH maxima occurred in the early evening (~5:00 pm), and pH minima were recorded immediately pre-dawn (~6:30 am). On a fringing reef site in Moorea, French Polynesia, a similar diel pattern was observed, with pH maxima occurring shortly after sunset (~7:30 pm) and pH minima several hours after dawn (~10:00 am).

[/IMG]

Note the min/max for PT conception and Pt Ano Nuevo.. Places where coastal upwelling is intense and HIGHLY NATURALLY variable.. Upwelling IS NOT related to man-caused OA except that it serves as a mixer with deep cold and surface waters.
At any rate -- another example of LEAPING to conclusions and declaring the debate is over...

 

[flacaltenn]

If the average PH of the oceans really change dramtically and rapidly this world truly is in serious trouble.

Yes -- this IS my largest concern about the man-made CO2 contributions. If adaption rates don't keep up with the changes in Ocean PH -- bad stuff can happen.. But this should serve RIGHT NOW as a warning.. And we shouldn't be pressing the alarm button and pointing to current damages as CAUSED by the .14 change in GLOBAL ocean PH -- until we understand the NATURAL PH variability in the eco-systems affected..

If we confirm a HIGH RATE of OA --- then we should all worry..

 

[CrusaderFrank]

letter sent to NOAA, but misleading statements still on their website-

Dear Dr. Feely:

I exchanged e-mails with you a while back over a story that ran in the Oregonian on April 12, 2012. It was about “ocean acidification” that was supposedly killing off what would otherwise be healthy oyster harvests here in the Northwest, The story can be found here:

Oregon State research traces oyster larvae die-off to increasing ocean acidity | OregonLive.com

An OSU researcher who gave the story to the Oregonian, Alan Barton, had incorrectly asserted that the ocean pH had risen 30% because of human CO2 emissions and gave that as the reason the oyster harvests had been suffering. And he qualified that statement by stating that the ocean pH had moved .1 unit towards acidity over the last century.


But as you know, the equation for the pH of an aqueous solution is logarithmic and defined as pH = -log[ H+ ] . As you also know, there are 14 orders of magnitude that define the pH scale from zero to fourteen units as per this equation. So a movement of .1 units towards acidity cannot equal a 30% increase in acidity as claimed in this article. It is actually .1/14 or only 7/10ths of 1%. In order for there to be the increase cited, the researchers solved it for the hydrogen ion concentration and computed that change instead and called it the change in acidity. So if we moved .1 units towards acidity from the alkaline 8.2 to 8.1 oceans and compared the change, we have [delta H+] = 8 E-9/6 E-9 = 1.33 or a 33% increase in the hydrogen ion concentration, not an increase of 33% in the pH. None the less, that is how the story was reported and it is wrong.

Since the natural variation of ocean pH can be up to 5% in either direction, I am speculating that in order to make the story seem legitimate, a gross exaggeration of fact was needed to sell it and hence the switch and bait tactic was used with the pH equation.

You agreed with me in my premise that hydrogen ion concentration makes up the pH but it is not defined by that number because the number of ions in an aqueous solution of water are very large. That was the whole idea behind creating a logarithmic scale with the 14 orders of magnitude to define it. I reported this to the Oregonian readership and thought the issue was settled. But then I found this:

What is Ocean Acidification?

In this explanation offered by NOAA, of which you are a senior scientist, we are back to the trickery of claiming the ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Are you aware of this NOAA information page? It needs an immediate correction. The ocean pH has been changing everywhere within natural variations. There is no provable decrease that can be identified with atmospheric CO2 that is related to human activity. Does Jane Lubchenco understand this? She has made numerous and completely false assertions that the up welling ocean water off of the Northwest coasts ( that will be on the rise because of the switch to cold phase PDO in 2007 that will run thirty years and likely decrease the pH additionally ) is attributable to human caused climate change. There is absolutely no proof of this and as far as meteorologists can tell, the mid and north Pacific Hadley cell summer circulation has intensified on schedule and is behaving perfectly normally in the cold phase of this ocean cycle. Either you or Lubchenco need to correct this page. It is misleading the public.

Sincerely,

Chuck F. Wiese

Meteorologist

NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory Carbon Program goes overboard on ocean acidification – leaves uncorrected error | Watts Up With That?

Warmers continue to lie in broad daylight about everything

 

[CrusaderFrank]

More nonsense from an undegreed ex-TV weatherman. And you accept it over the expertise of real scientists. Here is an excerpt from a Royal Society report.

http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf

The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and this is causing chemical changes by making them more acidic (that is, decreasing the pH of the oceans). In the past 200 years the oceans have absorbed approximately half of the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning and cement production. Calculations based on measurements of the surface oceans and our knowledge of ocean chemistry indicate that this uptake of CO2 has led to a reduction of the pH of surface seawater of 0.1 units, equivalent to a 30% increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions.

Of course these are real scientist with decades of experiance in their fields, therefore not to be trusted. Ian, you are going off the deep end.

The math is indisputable.

Your side go caught lying again

 

[PredFan]

Man-made global warming is a scam, has been shown to be so many times over. Thus I tend to believe the scientists who deny it over the scientists who belong to the religion.

 

[PredFan]

More nonsense from an undegreed ex-TV weatherman. And you accept it over the expertise of real scientists. Here is an excerpt from a Royal Society report.

http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/policy/publications/2005/9634.pdf

The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and this is causing chemical changes by making them more acidic (that is, decreasing the pH of the oceans). In the past 200 years the oceans have absorbed approximately half of the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning and cement production. Calculations based on measurements of the surface oceans and our knowledge of ocean chemistry indicate that this uptake of CO2 has led to a reduction of the pH of surface seawater of 0.1 units, equivalent to a 30% increase in the concentration of hydrogen ions.

Of course these are real scientist with decades of experiance in their fields, therefore not to be trusted. Ian, you are going off the deep end.

The math is indisputable.

Your side go caught lying again

Math doesn't lie, scientists with a political agenda do.

 

[flacaltenn]

I actually tried to find the paper referenced BY THE BLOG cited in OP (don't let OopyDoo see you quoting from a blog!!!) but I couldn't.. But I remember reading an article about the collapse of the shellfish industry in Chesapeake Bay... The problem there was that in oyster/clam FARMING -- the shells are removed from the water WITH THE PRODUCT. THis is guaranteed to kill off the native populations over time which depend on a thick stock of carbonate shells in the water to breed on, build shell mass from the carbonate and counteract ACIDIFICATION..

Sure enough, I DID find the lead author of the OP study saying that EXACT THING about the West Coast problems that he has investigated..

OSU scientist: Coastal communities can fight ocean acidification

One such example, Waldbusser says, is in Puget Sound, where nutrient-loading from sewage treatment plants has created large plankton blooms that eventually die and contribute to greater acidification."

When these blooms die and sink to the bottom, they suck the oxygen out of the water," Waldbusser said. "Low oxygen is the flip side of high CO2. People in the Northwest are starting to become aware of hypoxia and its impacts, but there hasn't been the same awareness of ocean acidification on a local level."

Awareness of acidification may be growing. Waldbusser points to work at Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Oregon's Netarts Bay, which monitors ocean water daily for acidification. The northwest oyster industry has been plagued by larval die-offs and ocean acidification may be to blame. The hatchery now takes water from the bay only at certain times of the day when acidification levels are lowest.

The OSU ecologist is also studying naturally occurring counter-balances to acidification, including the role of oyster and clam shells. Commercial oyster shells are typically removed from the water and native oyster populations have plummeted, so there are may be fewer shells in Oregon estuaries than ever before.

"Calcium carbonate shells help neutralize the effects of acidification," Waldbusser said. "In essence, they are akin to giving the estuary a dose of Tums. We're trying to determine how much of an impact shells may have and when conditions are corrosive enough to release the alkalinity from those shells back into the water."

Don't need to study it.. Just ask the folks in Maryland/Virginia who figured out this FARMING PROBLEM years ago.. Didn't stop NSF from giving him a grant to tell them what they wanted to hear about OA.. That it's all caused by SUVs..

 

[Old Rocks]

In the Hood Canal, they have also had oyster larvea dieoffs. There, many of the oyster beds are in state parks, where you have to schuck the oyster, and return the shell to the aproximate location you took it from. So the problem you outlined is not the problem there.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I actually tried to find the paper referenced BY THE BLOG cited in OP (don't let OopyDoo see you quoting from a blog!!!) but I couldn't.. But I remember reading an article about the collapse of the shellfish industry in Chesapeake Bay... The problem there was that in oyster/clam FARMING -- the shells are removed from the water WITH THE PRODUCT. THis is guaranteed to kill off the native populations over time which depend on a thick stock of carbonate shells in the water to breed on, build shell mass from the carbonate and counteract ACIDIFICATION..

Sure enough, I DID find the lead author of the OP study saying that EXACT THING about the West Coast problems that he has investigated..

OSU scientist: Coastal communities can fight ocean acidification

One such example, Waldbusser says, is in Puget Sound, where nutrient-loading from sewage treatment plants has created large plankton blooms that eventually die and contribute to greater acidification."

When these blooms die and sink to the bottom, they suck the oxygen out of the water," Waldbusser said. "Low oxygen is the flip side of high CO2. People in the Northwest are starting to become aware of hypoxia and its impacts, but there hasn't been the same awareness of ocean acidification on a local level."

Awareness of acidification may be growing. Waldbusser points to work at Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Oregon's Netarts Bay, which monitors ocean water daily for acidification. The northwest oyster industry has been plagued by larval die-offs and ocean acidification may be to blame. The hatchery now takes water from the bay only at certain times of the day when acidification levels are lowest.

The OSU ecologist is also studying naturally occurring counter-balances to acidification, including the role of oyster and clam shells. Commercial oyster shells are typically removed from the water and native oyster populations have plummeted, so there are may be fewer shells in Oregon estuaries than ever before.

"Calcium carbonate shells help neutralize the effects of acidification," Waldbusser said. "In essence, they are akin to giving the estuary a dose of Tums. We're trying to determine how much of an impact shells may have and when conditions are corrosive enough to release the alkalinity from those shells back into the water."

Don't need to study it.. Just ask the folks in Maryland/Virginia who figured out this FARMING PROBLEM years ago.. Didn't stop NSF from giving him a grant to tell them what they wanted to hear about OA.. That it's all caused by SUVs..

Thank you for posting real science

 

[Mr. H.]

Does this mean the world is no longer my oyster?

 

[flacaltenn]

Does this mean the world is no longer my oyster?

I never really understood that phrase at all.. But just recycle the shells when you're done.