Scientists from the 91̽»¨ have found evidence that ocean acidification caused by carbon emissions can prevent mussels attaching themselves to rocks and other substrates, making them easy targets for predators and threatening the mussel farming industry.

“A strong attachment is literally a mussel’s lifeline,” said 91̽»¨biology professor , who presented these findings July 6 at of the .

Mussels attach themselves to hard surfaces so that they can filter plankton from seawater for food. They generally live in tidal zones, where the strong waves and currents protect them from predators such as crabs, fish and sea stars. But if a mussel falls off its perch, it sinks down into calmer waters where it is readily eaten.

Future conditions may make it more difficult for mussels to attach themselves and stay out of harm’s way. This is because the pH level appears to be critical during the attachment process, and our oceans are becoming more acidic from absorbing CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere.

“Our early laboratory studies showed mussels made weaker attachment threads when seawater pH dropped below 7.6,” said Carrington, who is based primarily at UW’s .

These results could have severe implications for aquaculture. In mussel farms, the mussels attach themselves to ropes suspended in the water for six to 12 months while they grow to market size. Currently, weak attachments can cause up to 20 percent of the crop to fall off and be lost on the seafloor.

The researchers have shown that the change in pH specifically affects the adhesive plaque which cements the mussel to the underlying surface.

“We investigated whether lowering seawater pH would affect the curing process of the attachment threads,” said Carrington.

Threads made by mussels in seawater with a “normal” pH of 8 were then kept at either pH 8, 7 or 5 to cure for 12 days. Using a materials testing machine, the team found that threads cured at the lower pH values were 25 percent weaker than the controls.

“We conclude that mussels rely on the high pH of seawater to cure their adhesive effectively and form strong attachments,” said Carrington.

Furthermore, one mussel species, Mytilus trossulus, also made fewer and weaker threads when the temperature of the water was increased above 64°F. In contrast, a closely related non-native species, Mytilus galloprovincialis, made more and stronger threads. This suggests warming oceans will increasingly favor the non-native species, allowing it to expand its distribution polewards and push out native species.

Although the global average ocean pH is only predicted to lower from 8.0 to 7.8 by the end of the century, this could still have a profound effect on mussel communities, says Carrington.

“Due to upwelling and local productivity, our seawater in Washington is already at a baseline of pH 7.8,” said Carrington. “Moreover, mussels live in highly dynamic coastal environments that routinely fluctuate up or down 0.5 pH units.”

This means that mussels are already exposed at times to conditions that weaken attachment and these periods may be longer and more severe in the future.

Carrington’s colleagues on this study include 91̽»¨doctoral student , former 91̽»¨doctoral student and recent graduate , with , 91̽»¨professor of aquatic and fishery sciences and former 91̽»¨researcher , who is now with the University of California.

The research was by .

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For more information, contact Carrington at ecarring@uw.edu.

Adapted from by the .

Researchers from the 91̽»¨ and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have created a seasonal outlook for the Pacific Northwest waters, which would help tell if it’s going to be a great year for sardines or a poor crab season. A evaluating the forecast’s performance was published in June in the interdisciplinary, open-access journal .

“Ocean forecasting is a growing field, and the Pacific Northwest coast is a particularly good place to use this approach,” said lead author , a research scientist at the UW-based . “This paper is doing what the scientific community asks of a new tool, which is assessing how well it performs.”

The tool, called , or J-SCOPE, in summer 2013. The new paper is the first formal evaluation of how well it works. Analysis of the first three years of forecasts confirms that they do have measurable skill on seasonal timescales.

The seasonal for water oxygen, temperature, chlorophyll and pH along the coast of Washington, Oregon, Puget Sound and Canada’s Vancouver Island have been posted for the past three years on the UW-based Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems website. That site now offers a comparison between the forecasted values and the long-term average, and the probability for different scenarios.

“The forecasts have been evolving over the years,” Siedlecki said. “We’re trying now to put the forecast in context — is this better or worse than in recent years?”

Analyses in the new paper show that the tool does especially well at the beginning of the spring upwelling season and matches observations most closely below the surface. This is good, Siedlecki said, because that’s exactly where measurements are scarce.

“Our tool has more skill in the subsurface, for things like bottom temperature and bottom oxygen,” she said. “That’s exciting because it can inform us where and when the low-oxygen and corrosive conditions that can be stressful to marine life would likely develop.”

The fall season is more storm-driven, she said, and consequently difficult to predict.

The tool takes long-term NOAA forecasts and combines those with a regional ocean model to produce the outlook. The goal is to eventually combine the ocean forecasts with fisheries management, so that decisions surrounding quotas could take into account the conditions for the species’ habitat during the coming season.

A was recently added and was the focus of a separate NOAA-led published this winter in Fisheries Oceanography. That forecast shows moderate skill in predicting sardine populations five or more months out.

The group now has funding from NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center to work on forecasts for , also known as Pacific whiting, since the widely-fished species lives below the surface and seems sensitive to oxygen concentrations. The researchers are interested in developing similar forecasts for salmon and other species.

Forecasted values include pH and aragonite, a calcium-containing mineral that marine animals use to harden their shells, so the tool can also help predict which months will have good conditions for growing shellfish.

“The oyster industry has already been treating the intake seawater coming into the hatcheries,” Siedlecki said. “If our forecasts can help the growers identify times of year that would be most suitable to set up juvenile oysters out in the open ocean, that would potentially help them get a leg up on changing conditions.”

For this summer, the outlook may be good news for ocean swimmers who like warm water and bottom-dwelling fish that sometimes struggle to breathe in the late summer or early fall.

“The current forecast is showing weak upwelling, warmer temperatures and higher oxygen than we’ve had in the past, so a bit of a relief in some ways for the ecosystem,” Siedlecki said.

Co-authors on the new paper are , , and at the 91̽»¨and , , , and at NOAA.

Development of the tool was funded by NOAA through its Program, , and , and the NOAA-run .

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For more information, contact Siedlecki at 206-616-7328 or siedlesa@uw.edu.

Follow along with the , which is being coordinated from shore by , ocean acidification specialist with UW-based .

The team aboard the Research Vessel Ronald H. Brown includes 36 scientists from the UW, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other institutions in the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Europe. Chief scientists are for the first leg, and for the second leg, both NOAA scientists who hold affiliate faculty appointments in the 91̽»¨School of Oceanography.

“The acidity of West Coast water is anticipated to continue to accelerate in lockstep with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions,” Feely said in a about the cruise.

The voyage will include 16 stops to sample acidity, temperature, oxygen and chlorophyll, an indication of marine plant growth. The researchers will also use nets to sample ocean plants and animals to learn how they are being affected by acidifying seawater.

91̽»¨postdoctoral researcher is collecting samples for her research on sea snails, or pteropods. 91̽»¨graduate student , in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, is aboard for the first leg, and undergraduate student and graduate student , both in the 91̽»¨School of Oceanography, will participate in the second leg.

Also participating are 91̽»¨research scientists , and and lab technician , all with the UW’s Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean.

Washington state observation stations include stops off the Olympic Peninsula at the end of May to collect data at Cape Elizabeth, near Taholah, and Cape Alava, near Lake Ozette. Other nearby sampling locations include the mouth of the Columbia River and Barkley Sound in British Columbia.

The first such NOAA cruise to look at West Coast ocean acidification took place in 2007, and the most recent ones were in 2011 and 2013. This year’s cruise includes more types of biological and chemical sampling, and is billed as the most integrated West Coast ocean acidification cruise to date.

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For more information, contact Chadsey at mchadsey@uw.edu or 206-616-1538.

Global carbon dioxide emissions are triggering troubling changes to ocean chemistry along the West Coast that require immediate, decisive actions to combat through a coordinated regional approach, a panel of scientific experts has unanimously concluded.

A failure to adequately respond to this fundamental change in seawater chemistry, known as ocean acidification, is anticipated to have devastating ecological consequences for the West Coast in the decades to come, the 20-member , which included scientists from the 91̽»¨ and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Seattle office, warned in a unveiled April 4.

“The findings of the West Coast OAH Science Panel build on those of the , extending those findings to the entire West Coast, and incorporating consideration of the growing stressor, hypoxia. The strength of the OAH Panel’s findings lies in the coordinated, regional approach to the problem and opportunities for mitigation and adaptation that are scaled to the West Coast,â€� said , who participated in both panels and co-directs the . Klinger is also director and professor of the UW’s .

“Due to the combined impacts of ocean acidification and seasonal upwelling, the West Coast is exposed to unusually high volumes of seawater at elevated acidity levels,� said Richard Feely of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.

Already, marine shelled organisms in Washington are having difficulty forming their protective outer shells, and the local shellfish industry is seeing high mortality rates in early life stages of some commercially important shellfish species when shell formation is critical.

“The acidity of West Coast waters is anticipated to continue to accelerate in lockstep with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions,� Feely added.

The panel’s final report, titled “,� summarizes the state of the science around the anticipated impacts of these multiple stressors on our marine resources. It outlines a series of potential management actions that the governments of Washington, Oregon, California and British Columbia can immediately begin implementing to offset and mitigate the economic and ecological impacts of ocean acidification.

The panel is urging ocean management and natural resource agencies to develop highly coordinated, comprehensive multiagency solutions, including:

• Reducing carbon emissions is critical to addressing the root cause
• Exploring approaches that involve the use of seagrass to remove carbon dioxide from seawater
• Supporting wholesale revisions to water-quality criteria that are used as benchmarks for improving water quality, as existing water-quality criteria were not written to protect marine organisms from the damaging effects of ocean acidification
• Identifying strategies for reducing the amounts of land-based pollution entering coastal waters, especially in bays, estuaries and sounds, as this pollution can exacerbate the intensity of acidification in some locations
• Enhancing a West Coast-wide monitoring network that provides information toward development of coastal ecosystem management plans
• Supporting approaches that enhance the adaptive capacity of marine organisms to cope with ocean acidification

The report emphasized that global carbon emissions are the dominant cause of ocean acidification and that the West Coast states should advance regional carbon management strategies. The panel deliberately focused its recommendations around actions West Coast ocean management and natural resource agencies can take in each jurisdiction to combat the challenge at the regional level.

For example, the (MRAC) — formed after the Blue Ribbon Panel on Ocean Acidification — is advancing the Blue Ribbon Panel’s ocean acidification strategies, helping Washington adapt and respond to ocean acidification. Its members plan to go to the state legislature in 2017 for more funding for research, monitoring, modeling and outreach.

The Washington Ocean Acidification Center is providing funds from the state legislature to shellfish growers to continue monitoring at five key sites in Puget Sound and Willapa Bay. The water-quality monitoring alerts growers to periods where conditions are not conducive for hatchery production so that they can maximize production and avoid losses due to ocean acidification.

The center is also partnering with NOAA Fisheries to perform experimental studies on Dungeness crab, and is collaborating with Washington Sea Grant to fund innovative, new experimental studies on the state’s salmon and sablefish.

“The Washington OA Center plays a role in coordinating science and monitoring, in collaboration with many partners, and then consistently communicating results to the MRAC, providing a critical link to policymakers and the legislature in Washington state. We find this structure to be an effective means of connecting science with policy and recommend that this type of coordination could be implemented along the West Coast,â€� said , a 91̽»¨oceanographer who co-directs the Washington Ocean Acidification Center and participated in both panels.

West Coast policymakers will use the panel’s recommendations to continue to advance management actions aimed at combating ocean acidification and hypoxia. This work will be coordinated through the Pacific Coast Collaborative, a coalition of the offices of the governors of Washington, Oregon, California, and the premier of British Columbia, which have been working together on ocean acidification since 2013.

The West Coast OAH Science Panel, which convened for a three-year period that ended in February, also has recommended the formation of a task force to continue to advance the scientific foundation for comprehensive, managerially relevant solutions to West Coast ocean acidification.

This was adapted from a release by the California Ocean Science Trust. .

Now, a panel of scientists from California, Oregon and Washington has examined the dual impacts of and low-oxygen conditions, or , on the physiology of fish and invertebrates. The , published in the January edition of the journal , takes an in-depth look at how the effects of these stressors can impact organisms such as shellfish and their larvae, as well as organisms that have received less attention so far, including commercially valuable fish and squid.

The results show that ocean acidification and hypoxia combine with other factors, such as rising ocean temperatures, to create serious challenges for marine life. These multiple-stressor effects will likely only increase as ocean conditions worldwide begin resembling those off the West Coast, which naturally expose marine life to stronger low-oxygen and acidification stressors than most other regions of the seas.

“Our research recognizes that these climate change stressors will co-occur, essentially piling on top of one another,” said co-author , professor and director of the 91̽»¨’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs.

“We know that along the West Coast temperature and acidity are increasing, and at the same time, hypoxia is spreading. Many organisms will be challenged to tolerate these simultaneous stressors, even though they might be able to tolerate individual stressors when they occur on their own.”

Oceans around the world are increasing in acidity as they absorb about a quarter of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere each year. This changes the chemistry of the seawater and causes physiological stress to organisms, especially those with calcium carbonate shells or skeletons, such as oysters, mussels and corals.

Hypoxia, on the other hand, is a condition in which ocean waters have very low oxygen levels. At the extreme, hypoxia can result in “dead zones” where mass die-offs of fish and shellfish occur. The waters along the West Coast sometimes experience both ocean acidification and hypoxia simultaneously.

“Along this coast, we have relatively intensified conditions of ocean acidification compared with other places. And at the same time we have hypoxic events that can further stress marine organisms,” Klinger said. “Conditions observed along our coast now are forecast for the global ocean decades in the future. Along the West Coast, it’s as if the future is here now.”

Klinger is co-director of the based at the 91̽»¨and served on the , which was convened two years ago to promote coast-wide collaboration and cooperation on science and policy related to these issues.

For this paper, the authors examined dozens of scientific publications that reported physiological responses among marine animals exposed to lower oxygen levels, elevated acidity and other stressors. The studies revealed how physiological changes in marine organisms can lead to changes in animal behavior, biogeography and ecosystem structure, all of which can contribute to broader-scale effects on the marine environment.

The tri-state panel has completed this phase of its work and will wrap things up in the coming months. Among the products already published or planned are a number of scientific publications — including this synthesis piece — as well as resources for policymakers and the general public describing ocean research priorities, monitoring needs and management strategies to sustain marine ecosystems in the face of ocean acidification and hypoxia.

The group’s other papers and findings related to ocean acidification and hypoxia will soon be available on its .

Co-authors of this paper include George Somero, Jody Beers and Steve Litvin at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station; Francis Chan of Oregon State University; and Tessa Hill of the University of California, Davis.

The research was funded by the California Ocean Protection Council, the California Ocean Science Trust, the Institute for Natural Resources at Oregon State University and the National Science Foundation.

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For more information, contact Klinger at tklinger@uw.edu or 206-685-2499.

NSF grant number: OCE-1220338

Now, as the oceans are undergoing a historic shift in chemistry, the lab is establishing itself as a place to study what that will mean for marine life. And the 91̽»¨ laboratory is uniquely placed in naturally acidic waters that may be some of the first pushed over the edge by human-generated carbon emissions.

A published last month in Limnology and Oceanography tracks about two years of weekly pH data in Puget Sound, collected since the 91̽»¨established a facility there to study the effects of ocean acidification.

Researchers found typical values of dissolved carbon dioxide, or CO2, in Puget Sound are more than 650 parts per million, higher than even the threshold that Earth’s atmosphere crossed last year for the first time in modern humans’ existence. In other words, Puget Sound’s water is already higher in the gas than our CO2-choked atmosphere.

Measurements off the dock show that the water surrounding the lab has an average pH of about 7.8, which is acidic for seawater. Worldwide, average ocean pH is thought to have dropped from about 8.2 to 8.1 due to climate change.

“People have being going to Friday Harbor Labs to study the biology for 100 years, and they didn’t really realize until we started doing these analyses that it would be a good place to try to study adaptation,” said lead author , a professor in the 91̽»¨School of Oceanography. “The CO2 levels have been high for a long time, so everything that lives up there must be extremely well adapted.”

Increased carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels can be blamed for 13 to 22 percent of the unusual acidity in Puget Sound, the new paper concludes. The rest is because of ocean currents that have made our waters naturally rich in nutrients, low in oxygen, and low in pH since long before the era of climate change.

The Friday Harbor Labs’ was established in 2011 and includes facilities where undergraduates, graduate students and researchers from the 91̽»¨and elsewhere can monitor pH levels and mimic future changes in ocean chemistry.

Murray, a chemical oceanographer, did calculations to trace the origin of water properties measured at the facility. He found that most water in the Sound is from the , a subsurface current that originates below a productive fishing area off the coast of Mexico and brings water that is high in nutrients and CO2, but low in oxygen and pH, north along the coast. When winds blow from the north off Washington’s coast, the water near the surface gets blown offshore, and this deeper water gushes up and into Puget Sound.

Murray looked at different dates for when components of that water were last at the surface – 25 years ago, 50 years ago or 100 years ago – and what atmospheric CO2 would have been at that time. Those helped give the 13 to 22 percent range for the fingerprint of human-driven acidification.

“This tells the story of ocean acidification in Puget Sound, where we have a complex set of processes making naturally acidic water even more so over time,” Murray said.

The pH levels off Friday Harbor’s dock spiked in May and June 2012. That was likely due to the third factor influencing ocean water acidity: a plankton bloom, when tiny marine plants’ photosynthesis used up CO2 and shifted the water toward higher, or more normal, pH.

Because pH is hard to measure and has only recently become a concern, little is known about the historic values, Murray said.

The 91̽»¨is also working in a separate project with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do along the entire West Coast and its protected bays. Those observations show that the low values in Puget Sound are widespread, and provide more detail about the seasonal and spatial patterns that cause pH values here to dip and spike.

“This series of data from a location in the San Juan Islands helps us interpret the oceanographic processes that are responsible for conditions in our region,” said , a 91̽»¨professor of marine and environmental affairs and co-director of the UW-based .

Co-authors are Cory Bantam, Mike Foy, Barbara Paul and Amanda Fay at the UW; and Emily Roberts at UW’s Friday Harbor Labs; Evan Howard at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; and at the California Ocean Science Trust.

The research was funded by the Educational Foundation of America and the National Science Foundation.

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For more information, contact Murray at 206-543-4730 or jmurray@uw.edu. Murray will be on travel from March 18 to 30.

For information about the UW’s Ocean Acidification Environmental Laboratory at Friday Harbor Labs, contact manager Connie Sullivan at casull@uw.edu.

A new tool doesn’t alter that reality, but it does allow scientists to better understand what’s happening and provide data to help the shellfish industry adapt to these changes.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week the launch of the IOOS (Integrated Ocean Observing System) , a go-to source for ocean acidification data along the West Coast. A 91̽»¨ researcher led the collaborative effort.

“This makes valuable data more easily accessible, and it will increase our scientific understanding of how similar or different conditions are throughout the Pacific,” said , an oceanographer at the 91̽»¨Applied Physics Laboratory.

The tool offers real-time ocean chemistry data for the coast and some Pacific islands, and in protected bays at shellfish hatcheries in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and California.

Shellfish growers can use the data to decide when to grow larvae, when to set baby oysters out into the field, and when to draw the thousands of gallons of seawater they need to fill their tanks. They can also see when they might want to manipulate the chemistry of intake waters.

“For shellfish growers, having access to the data off their local site is important, but the oceanic data is an advanced warning system,” Newton said.

The interactive portal is adapted from a tool launched in 2009 by the , or NANOOS. Newton directs the NOAA-funded center that acts as a clearinghouse for Washington and Oregon coastal observations on everything from boating conditions to toxic algal blooms.

In addition to compiling data from NANOOS and four other regional centers, the tool adds new sensors developed by 91̽»¨alumnus , now a professor at Oregon State University. His device, nicknamed “the ,” can detect the suitability of ocean waters to form aragonite – the specific form of calcium carbonate mineral that clams, mussels and oysters use to form their protective shells. Aragonite is one of the most soluble forms of calcium carbonate, and is particularly sensitive to changes in ocean chemistry.

The portal includes readings from Burke-O-Lators along the West Coast. The Oregon Legislature funded the first deployment at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery. In the past year, the UW-based was funded by the Washington Legislature to install Burke-O-Lators at a hatchery operated by Taylor Shellfish Farms in Puget Sound’s Hood Canal and at a shellfish in Willapa Bay. The federal government funded sensors this year at Alutiiq Pride Shellfish Hatchery in Alaska, Hog Island Oyster Co. in central California and Carlsbad Aquafarm in Southern California.

Other incorporated in the data portal are at commercial shellfish beds, the Seattle Aquarium, big offshore buoys that record weather and ocean conditions, and deployed by the 91̽»¨in Hood Canal and other locations in Puget Sound. Also included are several moorings deployed by NOAA’s Seattle-based to measure ocean acidification in Hawaii, Alaska and California waters.

“All of us will continue to serve our data on our own regional portals, because that’s very important to connect to your local communities,” Newton said. “But in some cases you want to take a wider look at things.”

Scientists at the 91̽»¨and elsewhere will use the data to understand changes in the water chemistry. Three new postdoctoral research positions with the Washington Ocean Acidification Center will interpret the data and look for trends.

A new three-year will allow NANOOS and the 91̽»¨center to maintain and expand the project. The data portal was created by 91̽»¨Applied Physics Laboratory oceanographer and engineer . The project is funded by NOAA’s U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System.

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For more information, contact Newton at 206-543-9152 or newton@apl.washington.edu. She will be at UW’s Friday Harbor Labs through Dec. 5. The website is .

“Being able to predict future phytoplankton blooms, ocean temperatures and low-oxygen events could help fisheries managers,” said , a research scientist at the UW-based .

“This is an experiment to produce the first seasonal prediction system for the ocean ecosystem. We are excited about the initial results, but there is more to learn and explore about this tool – not only in terms of the science, but also in terms of its application,” she said.

In January, when the prototype was launched, it predicted unusually low oxygen this summer off the Olympic coast. People scoffed. But when an unusual low-oxygen patch developed off the Washington coast in July, some skeptics began to take the tool more seriously. The new tool predicts that low-oxygen trend will continue, and worsen, in coming months.

“We’re taking the global climate model simulations and applying them to our coastal waters,” said , a 91̽»¨research meteorologist. “What’s cutting edge is how the tool connects the ocean chemistry and biology.”

Bond’s research typically involves predicting ocean conditions decades in advance. But as Washington’s state climatologist he distributes quarterly forecasts of the weather. With this project he decided to combine the two, taking a seasonal approach to marine forecasts.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration funded the project to create the tool and publish the two initial forecasts.

“Simply knowing if things are likely to get better, or worse, or stay the same, would be really useful,” said collaborator , a biologist at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Early warning of negative trends, for example, could help to set quotas.

“Once you overharvest, a lot of regulations kick in,” Levin said. “By avoiding overfishing you don’t get penalized, you keep the stock healthier and you’re able to maintain fishing at a sustainable level.”

The is named the JISAO Seasonal Coastal Ocean Prediction of the Ecosystem, which the scientist dubbed J-SCOPE. It’s still in its testing stage. It remains to be seen whether the low-oxygen prediction was just beginner’s luck or is proof the tool can predict where strong phytoplankton blooms will end up causing low-oxygen conditions, Siedlecki said.

The tool uses global climate models that can predict elements of the weather up to nine months in advance. It feeds those results into a developed by the 91̽»¨Coastal Modeling Group that simulates the intricate subsea canyons, shelf breaks and river plumes of the Pacific Northwest coastline. Siedlecki added a new that calculates where currents and chemistry promote the growth of marine plants, or phytoplankton, and where those plants will decompose and, in turn, affect oxygen levels and other properties of the ocean water.

The end product is a for Washington and Oregon sea surface temperatures, oxygen at various depths, acidity, and chlorophyll, a measure of the marine plants that feed most fish. Coming this fall are sardine habitat maps. Eventually researchers would like to publish forecasts specific to other fish, such as tuna and salmon.

The researchers fine-tuned their model by comparing results for past seasons with actual measurements collected by the , or NANOOS. The UW-based association is hosting the forecasts as a forward-looking complement to its growing archive of Pacific Northwest ocean observations.

Siedlecki’s analyses suggest the new tool is able to predict elements of the ocean ecosystem up to six months in advance.

Researchers will present the project this year to the , the regulatory body for West Coast fisheries, and will work with NANOOS to reach tribal, state, and local fisheries managers.

If the forecasts prove reliable, they could eventually be part of a new management approach that requires knowing and predicting how different parts of the ocean ecosystem interact.

“The climate predictions have gotten to the point where they have six-month predictability globally, and the physics of the regional model and observational network are at the point where we’re able to do this project,” Siedlecki said.

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For more information, contact Siedlecki at 206-616-7328 or siedlesa@uw.edu and Bond at 206-526-6459 or nab3met@uw.edu.

A 91̽»¨ class is using the nation’s first controlled-ocean research tool to study the effects of increased acidity on marine ecosystems.

“The goal is to study the impact of ocean acidification on biological community structure in seawater from the San Juan Islands,” said , a 91̽»¨oceanography professor.

On the main dock at the UW’s until April 29 the team will start at 8:30 each morning by lowering bottles six feet (two meters) into each reservoir to collect water samples. Students enrolled in a research apprenticeship class then analyze the seawater to see how acidity affects chemistry, bacterial communities, and marine animal and plant life.

“The biological impacts of ocean acidification are the big unknowns,” Murray said. “We know that CO₂ is going up, and we know that the oceans are going to be more acidic, but what we don’t know, and everyone is concerned about, is the possible impact on the biology.”

Murray led development of the experimental facility over the past five years with funding from the Educational Foundation of America and the National Science Foundation. In recent years the group has worked out some tweaks – adding floats to each reservoir to keep from straining the dock, and shading the covers to slow down biological blooms in the reservoirs.

This is the first spring that the reservoirs will be used to carry out experiments, launched April 9, to simulate more acidic oceans. Four faculty members, four technicians and two teaching assistants will help the students perform chemical tests, conduct microscope analyses and do simple genetic tests of biological diversity on the seawater.

The reservoirs, called mesocosms, are water enclosures that provide a controllable section of the natural ocean. They allow researchers to conduct studies that are midway between a controlled lab test and an open-ocean experiment.

The Friday Harbor structures are 18-foot-tall plastic bags that hang from metal rings. For two days seawater near the dock was coarsely filtered to remove jellyfish and other large pieces of marine life before gradually filling the bags. Each bag holds 3,000 liters (790 gallons), enough water to fill more than 35 bathtubs. Three of the bags stay at the natural acidity, the other six have carbon dioxide pumped inside to increase acidity to the levels projected under climate change.

“This experiment is a way to look at all interactions between the components of the food web, including some of the more complex biological interactions that happen in the real ocean,� Murray said.

The acrylic domes are actually loose covers that prevent seagulls or other debris from landing in the tank.

The 91̽»¨aquatic mesocosm was modeled after similar structures to study ocean acidification in , Norway, and , South Korea. Researchers from both countries are also involved in the experiments this spring at the Friday Harbor facility.

Korean scientists are interested in dimethyl sulfide, the chemical that helps give ocean air its characteristic smell. The concentrations of this gas may differ under climate change, and some scientists believe it plays a role in cloud formation.

“This year’s experiment has gone really smoothly so far, and I think we’re on track to have some interesting results,” Murray said.

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For more information, contact Murray in Friday Harbor at 206-251-5220 or jmurray@uw.edu. Sampling will take place on the dock each day from 8:30-10 a.m. Visitors are welcome.