This small shellfish has a superpower.
Not only can oysters make pearls out of grains of sand and taste incredible on the half shell.
They can also completely transform their environment.
One oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water in a single day, leaving it cleaner and
healthier.
These amazing shellfish are like the natural cleaning crew of the ocean.
But ocean acidification and other climate-related changes are threatening oyster populations,
which could be problematic for their entire ocean ecosystem.
The world's oceans work like a giant sponge soaking in heat energy and carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere.
And while this may actually help to mitigate some of the effects of climate change on land
that extra heat and co2 is affecting the natural chemical balance of the ocean.
And so all that carbon dioxide that we put into the atmosphere, about a third of it goes
straight into the ocean.
And that carbon dioxide is fundamentally changing the chemistry of the ocean, and that's the
phenomenon that we call ocean acidification.
And how this acidification or change in the ocean's pH balance is going to impact the
ocean's smallest creatures is a major focus of Dr. Hill's research.
So what we see in laboratory experiments that we've done here at the Bodega Marine Lab is
that the more and more acidic the water gets, the stronger negative response you get from animals.
Animals like oysters and mussels tend to grow smaller, thinner shells.
25 miles down the road from Dr. Hill's lab, oyster farmer Terry Sawyer was noticing something
similar with his oysters - that they were dying at higher rates, and at the deaths were in
correlation with high acidification of the water where they were growing.
So when Terry and Dr. Hill met at a conference, something clicked.
So Dr. Hill and I were like looking at each other like wait...
Dr. Hill is based out of Bodega Laboratory just in the north of here 45 minutes away,
we're here, we're in the water all the time.
We do a lot of
thinking about sort of how to translate that work from what we know about the native oyster
to the oysters that they are growing
at the farm.
With the resources and daily data Terry and his team are able to gather in the
farm, they're able to track in real time how water chemistry is impacting oyster yields,
which obviously benefits Terry's business, but can also lead to a greater understanding
of the world's marine life.
And what that data is showing is that the high carbon dioxide
levels are making it difficult for oysters to grow their shells.
And if oysters can't grow strong shells many won't survive to maturity, which means a blow
to the oyster economy, but also to the health of our oceans.
Lowering of the pH.
the acidifying of the water is directly related to the amount of co2 that's produced by the
anthropogenic activities, burning of fossil fuel, co2, greenhouse gases, etc.
All of these things are being produced by a lot of activities we have.
What happens is the carbon dioxide mixes into the surface water of the ocean and forms carbonic acid.
This then dissolves into bicarbonate and a whole bunch of extra hydrogen ions.
It's these hydrogen ions that cause the real problem here.
As animals are trying to build their shell material, they're actually pulling the building
blocks of that shell material out of the water column.
And so they're building their shell from, for example, a calcium ion and a carbonate ion.
Marine bivalves like
oysters combine the calcium ions and the carbonate ions into solid crystals of calcium
carbonate that they use to form their shells, but hydrogen ions from the dissolved co2 in
the ocean have a tendency to bond with the carbonate ions, leaving fewer available for
the newly spawned oysters.
The vulnerable stages of any organism are at the larval stage.
And so if you start affecting how hard it is for that organism to live. In this case
for an oyster to build a shell, then that's going to lead to problems with it being able
to be a viable organism.
Basically, the more energy the oyster has to waste competing with hydrogen ions for
shell material, the less energy it has for growing big and strong.
It can also result in a weaker shell,
so that shell now is compromised where it's too thin or breaks easily, then it can no
longer seal itself out, seal that that poor water quality out and they will not be viable.
Terry and Dr. Hill are also working together to actually simulate future water conditions
in the lab, in order to try to predict what may happen to oysters
in the coming decades,
We built almost a decade ago, built an experimental setup that kind of operates like a time machine.
We can dial in today's carbon dioxide values in a tank.
And then in the tank next door we can actually ramp it up and maybe put the carbon dioxide
concentrations that you'd see in 100 years
with acidification levels rising 30% since the Industrial Revolution, it's critical to
be tracking the problem now, and try to work on how to be ready for
the future.
Oftentimes when you hear about ocean acidification,
it seems like this sort of distant chemical problem that the ocean is experiencing.
And if you go to Hog Island Oyster Company and you have, you know you're sitting at a
picnic table and you have lunch sitting in front of you, all the sudden we can talk about
ocean acidification in a way that's about a family business, and a coastal economy,
and the food on our plates, and a future that we want for our kids.
This data from the lab and the data collected by instruments placed at the farm itself,
all help Terry address acidification by knowing precisely when the pH differences lead to
high mortality rates.
From this, he can figure out which oyster strains are more resilient
than others.
But this won't solve the problem outright.
In the end it all comes down to the carbon dioxide that's blasting nonstop into the atmosphere
and getting soaked up by the ocean.
I think ocean acidification is a problem that we can confront and change the course of the
problem.
So, just like the other issues that we are dealing with with climate change, the fundamental
issue is our carbon dioxide emissions.
More people need to be aware of this and what has change look like.
It actually means a lot of changes in our behaviors.
And that means everything from efficiencies, on how we run our heating systems to producing
electricity as to how we get around.
And I think the other part of this is just know that the collective energy would have
an amazing impact.
And I think that's really the important part is that there is something that people can do