Ocean Acidification and Its Effects on the Gulf

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE GULF

Acidification is a continuing challenge for the ocean, coastal estuaries, as well as organisms dwelling there. For more than a decade, HRI’s Ecosystem Science and Modeling Program has been committed to providing science-based data to key stakeholders and researchers.

The program continues its work in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to monitor seawater for acidification around its coral reefs, located approximately 100 miles off Galveston, Texas.

Ocean acidification is the reduction of pH of the ocean over an extended period and is caused primarily by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The studies are continuing to provide key data on how seawater chemistry is changing over time and this information is used by stakeholders and resource managers to adapt and mitigate impacts. These changes have been monitored since at least 2007 as the sanctuary protects portions of 17 separate reefs and banks, which are a combination of small underwater mountains, ridges, troughs, and hard bottom patches along the continental shelf, created by underlying salt domes.

Oceanography Program on freshwater inflow into shallow estuaries. They are studying how much alkalinity, or acid-neutralizing capacity, sediments generate or take away in these shallow water environments.

The project will examine three estuaries along the northwestern Gulf of Mexico with different amounts of freshwater inputs and will help provide information on how coastal environments turn carbon from the atmosphere to the dissolved form and keep it in the ocean for many years.

This information can be key in helping provide valuable information for ecosystem protection and restoration that can affect aquaculture practices and recreation activities.