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.
No comments:
Post a Comment