Science Snippets: Upwelling of the California Current Increases Acidification

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]From the Cascadia Daily News on December 5th, 2025 comes a story titled Cold-water corals in Salish Sea unlock new insights into ocean health.

[00:00:10]Here's the subhead, quote, study acidification in the Pacific foreshadows world's other waters, end quote.

[00:00:18]The first word of the subhead, study, suggests a peer-reviewed paper is embedded in the article at Cascadia Daily News.

[00:00:25]More about that later. Here's the lead followed by another single sentence paragraph that tells the story.

[00:00:31]Quote, the RV Albatross's nets and dredges caught all manner of sea life from tiny cold-water corals to enormous halibut and salmon as the research vessel surveyed the fisheries of Alaska and the West Coast in the late 1800s.

[00:00:47]But the ship's naturalist, O.H.

[00:00:49]Townsend, could not have anticipated that the bright, gem-like orange cup corals extracted from the depths of the Salish Sea would be a key for unlocking new insight into ocean acidification more than 100 years later, end quote.

[00:01:07]The first author of the peer-reviewed open access paper is then quoted, quote, understanding how ocean acidification will progress in the future is really important for economic, biological, and cultural reasons in the Salish Sea, end quote.

[00:01:22]The first author of this paper recently graduated with her PhD at the University of Washington.

[00:01:28]The following four paragraphs explain the link between ocean acidification and carbon dioxide emissions driven by industrialization.

[00:01:36]The first paragraph quotes the first author of the peer-reviewed paper.

[00:01:40]Quote, ocean acidification is driven by absorption of carbon dioxide in the ocean. The Salish Sea is a case study of the impacts of ocean acidification on the health of marine ecosystems, providing a window into the future conditions other regions will likely face, end quote.

[00:01:59]>> [gasps] >> The article in Cascadia Daily News continues with three paragraphs that provide results of the peer-reviewed study.

[00:02:08]Quote, the team's research reveals that the increased carbon dioxide levels of deeper waters, historically thought to be more protected from anthropogenic acidification, was outpacing outpacing the increase of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

[00:02:26]The ocean mitigates the effects of climate change, absorbing about 30% of human-driven emissions since the Industrial Era.

[00:02:35]Ocean acidification directly impacts plankton, oysters, mussels, crabs, and other organisms that calcify. This can cause a ripple effect throughout the entire system as many of these animals are food sources for seabirds, salmon, and other marine organisms.

[00:02:53]Research has drawn a connection between global warming events throughout the Northeast Pacific and Alaska to mass seabird die-offs with researchers referencing seabirds as an indicator species when it comes to changes in the marine environment, end quote. The first author of the peer-reviewed paper is then quoted in the article at Cascadia Daily News, quote, ocean acidification is not only impacting the health of the entire marine ecosystem, but also people. Ocean acidification is impacting commercial fisheries and cultural and recreational activities that occur in and around the Salish Sea, end quote. The article at Cascadia Daily News continues with the economic implications of acidification, quote, the commercial Dungeness crab fishery, which was valued at $66.8 million for the 2023 to 2024 season in Washington state is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification. The shells of young crabs in the Pacific Northwest were dissolving due to changes in pH levels, according to a scientific paper published in 2020, end quote.

[00:04:05]There is no link to the 2020 scientific paper.

[00:04:09]A senior scientist with the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project told CNN, quote, if the crabs have already been harmed by the effects of ocean acidification, we really need to make sure we pay more attention to various components of the food chain before it is too late, end quote.

[00:04:28]Apparently, the senior scientist doesn't know it's already too late. As I've mentioned in this space far too frequently to suit you, the design-to-fail Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded several years ago that Earth has amid abrupt, irreversible climate change. Our collective use of fossil fuels has driven the most abrupt event in planetary history. This event is irreversible. The abruptness and irreversibility of this ongoing event were pointed out by the IPCC with two reports both published more than 7 years ago.

[00:05:00]I now turn to the peer-reviewed open access paper published in Nature Communications. Created by eight scholars, the paper was published on November 13th, 2025.

[00:05:11]Titled A Century of Changes in the California Current Upwelling System Amplifies Acidification, the abstract tells the tale.

[00:05:21]Quote, predicting the pace of acidification in the California Current System, a productive upwelling system that borders the West Coast of North America, is complex because the anthropogenic contribution is intertwined with other natural sources.

[00:05:36]A central question is whether acidification in the California Current System will follow the pace of increasing atmospheric CO2 or if climate effects and other biogeochemical processes will either amplify or attenuate acidification.

[00:05:51]Here, we apply the boron isotope pH proxy to cold-water orange cup corals to establish a historic level of acidification in the California Current System and the Salish Sea, an associated marginal sea.

[00:06:07]Through a combination of complementary modeling and geochemical approaches, we show that the California Current System and Salish Sea have experienced amplified acidification over the Industrial Era driven by the interaction between anthropogenic CO2 and a thermodynamic buffering effect. From this foundation, we project future acidification in the California Current System under elevated CO2 emissions.

[00:06:34]The projected change in pCO2 over this 21st century will continue to outpace atmospheric CO2, posing challenges to marine ecosystems of biological, cultural, and economic importance, end quote.

[00:06:49]As I have mentioned before in this space, life on Earth originated in the oceans. The oceans continue to serve as important sources of food and pleasure for humans. As Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson famously and repeatedly said, quote, if our oceans die, we die, end quote. Obviously, we all die. I'd rather not do so as a result of an easily avoided means.