EPOCA/EUR-OCEANS data compilation on the effects of ocean acidification, 2011

The uptake of anthropogenic CO2 by the oceans has led to a rise in the oceanic partial pressure of CO2, and to a decrease in pH and carbonate ion concentration. This modification of the marine carbonate system is referred to as ocean acidification. Numerous papers report the effects of ocean acidification on marine organisms and communities but few have provided details concerning full carbonate chemistry and complementary observations. Additionally, carbonate system variables are often reported in different units, calculated using different sets of dissociation constants and on different pH scales. Hence the direct comparison of experimental results has been problematic and often misleading. The need was identified to (1) gather data on carbonate chemistry, biological and biogeochemical properties, and other ancillary data from published experimental data, (2) transform the information into common framework, and (3) make data freely available. The present paper is the outcome of an effort to integrate ocean carbonate chemistry data from the literature which has been supported by the European Network of Excellence for Ocean Ecosystems Analysis (EUR-OCEANS) and the European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA). A total of 185 papers were identified, 100 contained enough information to readily compute carbonate chemistry variables, and 81 data sets were archived at PANGAEA - The Publishing Network for Geoscientific & Environmental Data. This data compilation is regularly updated as an ongoing mission of EPOCA.

Nighttime dissolution in a temperate coastal ocean ecosystem increases under acidification

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing ocean acidification, lowering seawater aragonite (CaCO3) saturation state (Omega arag), with potentially substantial impacts on marine ecosystems over the 21st Century. Calcifying organisms have exhibited reduced calcification under lower saturation state conditions in aquaria. However, the in situ sensitivity of calcifying ecosystems to future ocean acidification remains unknown. Here we assess the community level sensitivity of calcification to local CO2-induced acidification caused by natural respiration in an unperturbed, biodiverse, temperate intertidal ecosystem. We find that on hourly timescales nighttime community calcification is strongly influenced by Omega arag, with greater net calcium carbonate dissolution under more acidic conditions. Daytime calcification however, is not detectably affected by Omega arag. If the short-term sensitivity of community calcification to Omega arag is representative of the long-term sensitivity to ocean acidification, nighttime dissolution in these intertidal ecosystems could more than double by 2050, with significant ecological and economic consequences.

Physiological energetics of the thick shell mussel Mytilus coruscus exposed to seawater acidification and thermal stress

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have caused seawater temperature elevation and ocean acidification. In view of both phenomena are occurring simultaneously, their combined effects on marine species must be experimentally evaluated. The purpose of this study was to estimate the combined effects of seawater acidification and temperature increase on the energy budget of the thick shell mussel Mytilus coruscus. Juvenile mussels were exposed to six combined treatments with three pH levels (8.1, 7.7 and 7.3) * two temperatures (25 °C and 30 °C) for 14 d. We found that clearance rates (CRs), food absorption efficiencies (AEs), respiration rates (RRs), ammonium excretion rates (ER), scope for growth (SFG) and O:N ratios were significantly reduced by elevated temperature sometimes during the whole experiments. Low pH showed significant negative effects on RR and ER, and significantly increased O:N ratios, but showed almost no effects on CR, AE and SFG of M. coruscus. Nevertheless, their interactive effects were observed in RR, ER and O:N ratios. PCA revealed positive relationships among most physiological indicators, especially between SFG and CR under normal temperatures compared to high temperatures. PCA also showed that the high RR was closely correlated to an increasing ER with increasing pH levels. These results suggest that physiological energetics of juvenile M. coruscus are able to acclimate to CO2 acidification with a little physiological effect, but not increased temperatures. Therefore, the negative effects of a temperature increase could potentially impact the ecophysiological responses of M. coruscus and have significant ecological consequences, mainly in those habitats where this species is dominant in terms of abundance and biomass.

Synergistic effects of ocean acidification and warming on overwintering pteropods in the Arctic

Ocean acidification and warming will be most pronounced in the Arctic Ocean. Aragonite shell-bearing pteropods in the Arctic are expected to be among the first species to suffer from ocean acidification. Carbonate undersaturation in the Arctic will first occur in winter and because this period is also characterized by low food availability, the overwintering stages of polar pteropods may develop into a bottleneck in their life cycle. The impacts of ocean acidification and warming on growth, shell degradation (dissolution), and mortality of two thecosome pteropods, the polar Limacina helicina and the boreal L. retroversa, were studied for the first time during the Arctic winter in the Kongsfjord (Svalbard). The abundance of L. helicina and L. retroversa varied from 23.5 to 120 ind /m2 and 12 to 38 ind /m2, and the mean shell size ranged from 920 to 981 µm and 810 to 823 µm, respectively. Seawater was aragonite-undersaturated at the overwintering depths of pteropods on two out of ten days of our observations. A 7-day experiment [temperature levels: 2 and 7 °C, pCO2 levels: 350, 650 (only for L. helicina) and 880 ?atm] revealed a significant pCO2 effect on shell degradation in both species, and synergistic effects between temperature and pCO2 for L. helicina. A comparison of live and dead specimens kept under the same experimental conditions indicated that both species were capable of actively reducing the impacts of acidification on shell dissolution. A higher vulnerability to increasing pCO2 and temperature during the winter season is indicated compared with a similar study from fall 2009. Considering the species winter phenology and the seasonal changes in carbonate chemistry in Arctic waters, negative climate change effects on Arctic thecosomes are likely to show up first during winter, possibly well before ocean acidification effects become detectable during the summer season.

Adaptive evolution of a key phytoplankton species to ocean acidification

Ocean acidification, the drop in seawater pH associated with the ongoing enrichment of marine waters with carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, may seriously impair marine calcifying organisms. Our present understanding of the sensitivity of marine life to ocean acidification is based primarily on short-term experiments, in which organisms are exposed to increased concentrations of CO2. However, phytoplankton species with short generation times, in particular, may be able to respond to environmental alterations through adaptive evolution. Here, we examine the ability of the world's single most important calcifying organism, the coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi, to evolve in response to ocean acidification in two 500-generation selection experiments. Specifically, we exposed E. huxleyi populations founded by single or multiple clones to increased concentrations of CO2. Around 500 asexual generations later we assessed their fitness. Compared with populations kept at ambient CO2 partial pressure, those selected at increased partial pressure exhibited higher growth rates, in both the single- and multiclone experiment, when tested under ocean acidification conditions. Calcification was partly restored: rates were lower under increased CO2 conditions in all cultures, but were up to 50% higher in adapted compared with non-adapted cultures. We suggest that contemporary evolution could help to maintain the functionality of microbial processes at the base of marine food webs in the face of global change.

Data compilation on the biological response to ocean acidification: environmental and experimental context of data sets and related literature

The exponential growth of studies on the biological response to ocean acidification over the last few decades has generated a large amount of data. To facilitate data comparison, a data compilation hosted at the data publisher PANGAEA was initiated in 2008 and is updated on a regular basis (doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.149999). By January 2015, a total of 581 data sets (over 4 000 000 data points) from 539 papers had been archived. Here we present the developments of this data compilation five years since its first description by Nisumaa et al. (2010). Most of study sites from which data archived are still in the Northern Hemisphere and the number of archived data from studies from the Southern Hemisphere and polar oceans are still relatively low. Data from 60 studies that investigated the response of a mix of organisms or natural communities were all added after 2010, indicating a welcomed shift from the study of individual organisms to communities and ecosystems. The initial imbalance of considerably more data archived on calcification and primary production than on other processes has improved. There is also a clear tendency towards more data archived from multifactorial studies after 2010. For easier and more effective access to ocean acidification data, the ocean acidification community is strongly encouraged to contribute to the data archiving effort, and help develop standard vocabularies describing the variables and define best practices for archiving ocean acidification data.

Effects of ocean acidification on embryonic respiration and development of a temperate wrasse living along a natural CO2 gradient

Volcanic CO2 seeps provide opportunities to investigate the effects of ocean acidification on organisms in the wild. To understand the influence of increasing CO2 concentrations on the metabolic rate (oxygen consumption) and the development of ocellated wrasse early life stages, we ran two field experiments, collecting embryos from nesting sites with different partial pressures of CO2 [pCO2; ambient (400 µatm) and high (800-1000 µatm)] and reciprocally transplanting embryos from ambient- to high-CO2 sites for 30 h. Ocellated wrasse offspring brooded in different CO2 conditions had similar responses, but after transplanting portions of nests to the high-CO2 site, embryos from parents that spawned in ambient conditions had higher metabolic rates. Although metabolic phenotypic plasticity may show a positive response to high CO2, it often comes at a cost, in this case as a smaller size at hatching. This can have adverse effects because smaller larvae often exhibit a lower survival in the wild. However, the adverse effects of increased CO2 on metabolism and development did not occur when embryos from the high-CO2 nesting site were exposed to ambient conditions, suggesting that offspring from the high-CO2 nesting site could be resilient to a wider range of pCO2 values than those belonging to the site with present-day pCO2 levels. Our study identifies a crucial need to increase the number of studies dealing with these processes under global change trajectories and to expand these to naturally high-CO2 environments, in order to assess further the adaptive plasticity mechanism that encompasses non-genetic inheritance (epigenetics) through parental exposure and other downstream consequences, such as survival of larvae.

Effect of ocean warming and acidification on the early life stages of subtropical Acropora spicifera

This study investigated the impacts of acidified seawater (pCO2 900 µatm) and elevated water temperature (+3 °C) on the early life history stages of Acropora spicifera from the subtropical Houtman Abrolhos Islands (28°S) in Western Australia. Settlement rates were unaffected by high temperature (27 °C, 250 µatm), high pCO2 (24 °C, 900 µatm), or a combination of both high temperature and high pCO2 treatments (27 °C, 900 µatm). There were also no significant differences in rates of post-settlement survival after 4 weeks of exposure between any of the treatments, with survival ranging from 60 to 70 % regardless of treatment. Similarly, calcification, as determined by the skeletal weight of recruits, was unaffected by an increase in water temperature under both ambient and high pCO2 conditions. In contrast, high pCO2 significantly reduced early skeletal development, with mean skeletal weight in the high pCO2 and combined treatments reduced by 60 and 48 %, respectively, compared to control weights. Elevated temperature appeared to have a partially mitigative effect on calcification under high pCO2; however, this effect was not significant. Our results show that rates of settlement, post-settlement survival, and calcification in subtropical corals are relatively resilient to increases in temperature. This is in marked contrast to the sensitivity to temperature reported for the majority of tropical larvae and recruits in the literature. The subtropical corals in this study appear able to withstand an increase in temperature of 3 °C above ambient, indicating that they may have a wider thermal tolerance range and may not be adversely affected by initial increases in water temperature from subtropical 24 to 27 °C. However, the reduction in skeletal weight with high pCO2 indicates that early skeletal formation will be highly vulnerable to the changes in ocean pCO2 expected to occur over the twenty-first century, with implications for their longer-term growth and resilience.

Evaluation of the threat of marine CO2 leakage-associated acidification on the toxicity of sediment metals to juvenile bivalves

The effects of the acidification associated with CO2 leakage from sub-seabed geological storage was studied by the evaluation of the short-term effects of CO2-induced acidification on juveniles of the bivalve Ruditapes philippinarum. Laboratory scale experiments were performed using a CO2-bubbling system designed to conduct ecotoxicological assays. The organisms were exposed for 10 days to elutriates of sediments collected in different littoral areas that were subjected to various pH treatments (pH 7.1; pH 6.6; pH 6.1). The acute pH-associated effects on the bivalves were observed, and the dissolved metals in the elutriates were measured. The median toxic effect pH was calculated, which ranged from 6.33 and 6.45. The amount of dissolved Zn in the sediment elutriates increased in parallel with the pH reductions and was correlated with the proton concentrations. The pH, the pCO2 and the dissolved metal concentrations (Zn and Fe) were linked with the mortality of the exposed bivalves.

Colony-specific calcification and mortality under ocean acidification in the branching coral Montipora digitata

Ocean acidification (OA) threatens calcifying marine organisms including reef-building corals. In this study, we examined the OA responses of individual colonies of the branching scleractinian coral Montipora digitata. We exposed nubbins of unique colonies (n = 15) to ambient or elevated pCO2 under natural light and temperature regimes for 110 days. Although elevated pCO2 exposure on average reduced calcification, individual colonies showed unique responses ranging from declines in positive calcification to negative calcification (decalcification) to no change. Similarly, mortality was greater on average in elevated pCO2, but also showed colony-specific patterns. High variation in colony responses suggests the possibility that ongoing OA may lead to natural selection of OA-tolerant colonies within a coral population.

Effect of acidification on an Arctic phytoplankton community from Disko Bay, West Greenland

Long-term measurements (i.e. months) of in situ pH have not previously been reported from the Arctic; this study shows fluctuations between pH 7.5 and 8.3 during the spring bloom 2012 in a coastal area of Disko Bay, West Greenland. The effect of acidification on phytoplankton from this area was studied at both the community and species level in experimental pH treatments within (pH 8.0, 7.7 and 7.4) and outside (pH 7.1) in situ pH. The growth rate of the phytoplankton community decreased during the experimental acidification from 0.50 ± 0.01/day (SD) at pH 8.0 to 0.22 ± 0.01/day at pH 7.1. Nevertheless, the response to acidification was species-specific and divided into 4 categories: I, least affected; II, affected only at pH 7.1; III, gradually affected and IV, highly affected. In addition, the colony size and chain length of selected species were affected by the acidification. Our findings show that coastal phytoplankton from Disko Bay is naturally exposed to pH fluctuations exceeding the experimental pH range used in most ocean acidification studies. We emphasize that studies on ocean acidification should include in situ pH before assumptions on the effect of acidification on marine organisms can be made.

First evidence of altered sensory quality in a shellfish exposed to decreased pH relevant to ocean acidification

Understanding how seafood will be influenced by coming environmental changes such as ocean acidification is a research priority. One major gap in knowledge relates to the fact that many experiments are not considering relevant end points related directly to production (e.g., size, survival) and product quality (e.g., sensory quality) that can have important repercussions for consumers and the seafood market. The aim of this experiment was to compare the survival and sensory quality of the adult northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) exposed for 3 wk to a temperature at the extreme of its thermal tolerance (11°C) and 2 pH treatments: pH 8.0 (the current average pH at the sampling site) and pH 7.5 (which is out of the current natural variability and relevant to near-future ocean acidification). Results show that decreased pH increased mortality significantly, by 63%. Sensory quality was assessed through semiqualitative scoring by a panel of 30 local connoisseurs. They were asked to rate 4 shrimp (2 from each pH treatment) for 3 parameters: appearance, texture and taste. Decreased pH reduced the score significantly for appearance and taste, but not texture. As a consequence, shrimp maintained in pH8.0 had a 3.4 times increased probability to be scored as the best shrimp on the plate, whereas shrimp from the pH 7.5 treatment had a 2.6 times more chance to be scored as the least desirable shrimp on the plate. These results help to prove the concept that ocean acidification can modulate sensory quality of the northern shrimp P. borealis. More research is now needed to evaluate impacts on other seafood species, socioeconomic consequences, and potential options.

Ocean acidification and its potential effects on the early life-history of non-calcifying and calcifying echinoderm (Odontaster validus, Patiriella regularis and Arachnoides placenta) larvae, 2011

Ocean acidification, as a result of increased atmospheric CO2, has the potential to adversely affect the larval stages of many marine organisms and hence have profound effects on marine ecosystems. This is the first study of its kind to investigate the effects of ocean acidification on the early life-history stages of three echinoderms species, two asteroids and one irregular echinoid. Potential latitudinal variations on the effects of ocean acidification were also investigated by selecting a polar species (Odontaster validus), a temperate species (Patiriella regularis), and a tropical species (Arachnoides placenta). The effects of reduced seawater pH levels on the fertilization of gametes, larval survival and morphometrics on the aforementioned species were evaluated under experimental conditions. The pH levels considered for this research include ambient seawater (pH 8.1 or pH 8.2), levels predicted for 2100 (pH 7.7 and pH 7.6) and the extreme pH of 7.0, adjusted by bubbling CO2 gas into filtered seawater. Fertilization for Odontaster validus and Patiriella regularis for the predicted scenarios for 2100 was robust, whereas fertilization was significantly reduced in Arachnoides placenta. Larval survival was robust for the three species at pH 7.8, but numbers declined when pH dropped below 7.6. Normal A. placenta larvae developed in pH 7.8, whereas smaller larvae were observed for O. validus and P. regularis under the same pH treatment. Seawater pH levels below 7.6 resulted in smaller and underdeveloped larvae for all three species. The greatest effects were expected for the Antarctic asteroid O. validus but overall the tropical sand dollar A. placenta was the most affected by the reduction in seawater pH. The effects of ocean acidification on the asteroids O. validus and P. regulars, and the sand dollar A. placenta are species-specific. Several parameters, such as taxonomic differences, physiology, genetic makeup and the population's evolutionary history may have contributed to this variability. This study highlights the vulnerability of the early developmental stages and the complexity of ocean acidification. However, future research is needed to understand the effects at individual, community and ecosystem levels.

Short-term metabolic and growth responses of the cold-water coral lophelia pertusa to ocean acidification

Cold-water corals are amongst the most three-dimensionally complex deep-sea habitats known and are associated with high local biodiversity. Despite their importance as ecosystem engineers, little is known about how these organisms will respond to projected ocean acidification. Since preindustrial times, average ocean pH has already decreased from 8.2 to ~ 8.1. Predicted CO2 emissions will decrease this by up to another 0.3 pH units by the end of the century. This decrease in pH may have a wide range of impacts upon marine life, and in particular upon calcifiers such as cold-water corals. Lophelia pertusa is the most widespread cold-water coral (CWC) species, frequently found in the North Atlantic. Data here relate to a short term data set (21 days) on metabolism and net calcification rates of freshly collected L. pertusa from Mingulay Reef Complex, Scotland. These data from freshly collected L. pertusa from the Mingulay Reef Complex will help define the impact of ocean acidification upon the growth, physiology and structural integrity of this key reef framework forming species.