Acidification Now
Keeping Washington State’s Ocean Ecosystem from Unraveling Tomorrow Requires Action Today
Washington’s coastal waters have been hit hard by ocean acidification. The state’s oyster industry was devastated a decade ago when billions of larval oysters began dying out as the water turned corrosive, an early manifestation of climate change’s evil twin. But there are things Washington officials can and should be doing today to offset those impacts.
The industry has found some temporary fixes within hatcheries, but coastal and estuarine waters — from the Columbia River to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound — continue to absorb our increasing carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and land-use mismanagement. The science is undeniable: ocean acidification will be more pervasive and damaging in the coming decades under business as usual scenarios.
Left unchecked, the highly diverse and complex web of life these waters support — from tiny plankton to shellfish, salmon, seabirds, sea lions, and even mighty orcas — could begin to unravel. In the past couple weeks, new peer-reviewed studies have shown how ocean warming and acidification will drastically change the diversity and function of our ocean and Washington’s waters are particularly vulnerable. There’s scant evidence to support the hope that marine life can adjust to a rapid changing climate, except maybe for microbes. But even microbes that secrete shells made of calcium carbonate are in decline.
Yet the outlook doesn’t have to be so bleak. Addressing ocean acidification ultimately requires human society to seriously curb global carbon emissions, but many opportunities exist to offset its impacts at the local and regional level. Washington can counteract those dire effects right now through existing laws like the Clean Water Act.
Local factors such as coastal and watershed erosion, stormwater and agricultural runoff, sedimentation, and pollution all contribute to acidification — and they can all be addressed with better management policies. The Washington Department of Ecology has the authority to offset the deleterious effects of acidification on coastal ecosystems across the state by preventing pollution that makes local waters to be more acidic and harmful to life.
As our ocean and atmosphere becomes “saturated” with carbon pollution, people are also becoming saturated with doom-and-gloom stories about this crisis, and it’s easy to label this overwhelming issue a “global problem” as an excuse for inaction. But we can and must act now — there’s still time.
As someone who has spent much of his personal and professional life in the oceans, it’s difficult to watch the wonderful biodiversity they host being pulled apart by the millions of tons of carbon the oceans absorbed every day. The lives of tiny sea creatures, oysters, salmon, and pods of powerful orcas are intricately connected. Unraveling one will unravel them all.
We’ve arrived at a critical moment in saving our oceans, and the window of time to avoid the worst impacts won’t remain open for long. Scientific studies are important and the backbone of sound marine policy, but we need to act and apply the knowledge we have acquired. Washington can start today. The cost of more delays, denial, and inaction is simply too steep.
