The Acid Test Today

Having looked at the ocean’s past, now it’s time for us to review the ocean’s acid test today. I would like to begin with a recent news headline on the Alaska Public. 

Alaska, situated at the northwest edge of North America, is the largest state of the U.S.A. which possess plentiful of natural resources. Fishery is one of the very important industries in Alaska, not only as an important food source for the population, but also for the regional economy via exports.  With today’s critical acid test challenge, it is expected to hit Alaska’s fisheries and the economy severely! However, this conclusion was based on discrete data collected by university researchers and fishermen from time to time when they sample on their boats. It is therefore difficult to construct a continuous seawater pH trend based on those measurements.

Assistant Professor of Chemical Oceanography at the UAF School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, Dr. Jeremy Mathis proposed the use of buoy network can help getting instantaneous ocean pH data all the time to fill in the missing data due to human constraints. It also provides important data source for us to understand seasonal and inter-annual pH trends over a longer timescale, which is vital for determining the overall acidic trend and future predictions.

Currently, only two buoys are at work in Alaska, one at the Resurrection Bay and another one to the west of Bristol Bay. The monitoring network will be able to expand with $2.7 million of budget allocation.  These buoys are projected to provide important data for quantifying the cost of ocean acidification and subsequent budgets allocate to prevent a catastrophe on Alaska’s fisheries.

Since ocean acidification is a global problem, monitoring pH of the Alaska region only is insufficient to provide significant data and insights to help prevent and mitigate this acid test crisis on Alaska’s fisheries and other marine resources. In addition, as seen from my previous posts, ocean acidification exhibits great latitudinal variability across the world’s ocean. With the interconnected ocean currents, the scale of influence of this ocean acid test on Alaska’s fisheries is certainly beyond its own state. In order to effectively mitigate the situation in Alaska, the buoy monitoring network should expand beyond the Alaska region and across the world’s major oceans to monitor the effects of this global change.