Ocean Acidification

Fish carbon-era: How our fossil fuel habit is changing the future of seafood

About a decade ago, workers at an Oregon oyster farm began to notice that the baby oysters weren’t doing so well. The die-off of spats, as they’re called, happened around the same time that the farm, located in a coastal wetland, was experiencing unusually acidic seawater conditions. They suspected that the water’s increased acidity—in this case, due to an upwelling of deep coastal water—was harming the oysters.

Climate Change

Human activities are altering the chemistry, temperature, and sea level of the world’s oceans and research at Bodega Marine Laboratory seeks to understand how these global environmental changes influence coastal marine ecosystems. Rising CO2 also affects the temperature and chemistry of the ocean, which can have negative impacts on many kinds of marine life. As the ocean absorbs CO2 emissions, the pH of seawater decreases and it becomes more acidic.