Change are coming
The list of ways acidification can impact the marine world keeps getting longer. There’s budding acceptance even by many commercial fishermen that it poses risks to jobs and their way of life.
It’s not that the solution is unclear.
If the goal is to substantially reduce acidification, CO2 emissions need to come down. If you want a more precise picture of what’s happening in the water, more money has to go toward research. Even if both happen soon, people who rely on the sea should prepare for a different world.
Some changes to marine life are coming whether we’re ready for them or not.
“The data show that we’re seeing the symptoms of acidification arrive and progress at a much faster rate than we would have expected even just a few years ago,” said Kathryn Sullivan, acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “The longer-term consequence it presents is very, very daunting.”
A small start
Yet Congress thus far has taken only baby steps.
In 2009, it passed the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, pushed initially by the late Rep. Frank Lautenberg, then by Baird, then-Congressman Jay Inslee and Sen. Maria Cantwell.
It required an assessment of acidification’s impacts, put money toward marine monitoring to help the Northwest’s troubled oyster industry, and called on the National Science Foundation to pay for more research.
A team of ocean scientists detailed the need: “Once the program is fully engaged, $50 million to $100 million per year is considered the minimum if scientists are to provide useful information regarding how the oceans are responding,” they wrote in March 2009.
The act only authorized $14 million to $35 million a year.
Back then, the nation was mired in recession.
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