Welcome to the fifteenth issue of the Ocean Acidification Report, the most widely read publication on the effects of climate change on the ocean, including research, resources, and profiles of major figures, with a special focus on OA. 

This is a special issue with a focus on macroalgae. As more and more projects look at the potential of macoralgae like kelp to remediate OA, and as carbon removal approaches -- particularly ocean based ones -- become more important and more advanced, we felt it was an ideal time for a closer look. Macroalgae not only have a spectrum of benefits (from increasing biodiversity to wave attentuation to critical habitat to a range of uses outside the water), they're also receiving growing attention for their carbon sequestration potential. Now, what precisely "sequestration" means, and how to verify it, is still up for some debate, as is discussed in this issue. However, this is a moment at which macroalgae are likely receiving more attention in the sciences than ever before. So read on to learn more about why that is, and just what kind of macroalgae projects are in the works. 

We are thankful to all of you receiving this for being champions of the ocean. We know it's been a tough 18+ months for many people, but if you have the ability to give any amount, it'd mean the world to us. If each person reading this sent just $10, we'd be able make significant strides toward ensuring that the newest and most ambitious climate policy in the U.S., Washington State's Climate Commitment Act, includes a fair and effective carbon policy which allows those that make their living putting dinner on the table to part of the solution rather than being unfairly burdened. It all comes down to the details of implementation, and NOW is the time to bring these folks to the table and help them champion their unique needs. Please click here to support that work with a tax-deductible donation of any size, and receive a hand-written thank-you note and a very snazzy bumper sticker in return -- as well as the confidence of knowing your donation will go a long way toward making the Climate Commitment Act (CCA) an equitable and effective policy. 

Stay tuned for more on the CCA in coming months, as well as new episodes of our podcast, Changing Waters. Like us on Facebook to stay in the loop on all the latest news, events, and research. Now, on to the good stuff!

Note: your email service may "clip" the Report due to length, disabling some links in the table of contents. Choose "Web Version" in upper left corner to view full email.

 

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We gratefully acknowledge the Wildlife Forever Fund, which provides funding to sustain the OA Report.

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- Julia A. Sanders, Editor

- Brad Warren, Publisher

 

Ocean Quote:

“Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.

There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.

-- Psalm 104:25-26

 

Profiles

• Alyson Myers and Fearless Fund Innovate with Sargassum
• Seagrove: Breaking Ground in Alaskan Kelp Farming and Doing Their Bit for OA

Macroalgae

• Dept. of Energy Program Funds Macroalgae Biomass Opportunities
• Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy and Law Conference Starts Today (9/21)
• Bigelow Laboratories Leads Worldwide Kelp Experiments
• Time for a New Sargassum Paradigm?
• Cultivating Kelp Will Help Cut Down Nitrogen in Local Waters

Ocean Acidification

• Protecting Food Security and Ocean Economies: Building Resilience and Sustaining Leadership for Climate and Ocean Action
• Yes Ocean Acidification is Happening, but can We Please do Better Science?
• In Acidic Oceans, Lineage and Experience May be the Key to Red Abalone Survival

Resources

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By Julia A. Sanders

Fearless Fund, a nonprofit focused on ocean health, is an endeavor with ambitious goals and innovative approaches. They work with sargassum, a macroalgae that grows in floating mats that can be either integral to ecosystems, a costly nuisance, or even a deadly harmful algal bloom (HAB), depending on location and context. Fearless Fund is looking at using it as a large-scale source of biomass for renewable fuel, and/or as an important piece in the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) field, employing its carbon sequestration abilities.

Alyson Myers is the main force behind Fearless Fund. She explains that her background is in beneficial aquaculture: using the culture of certain species to assist marine environments. She began with oysters, that of course provide valuable filtration to their local environment, as well as being ecosystem engineers, providing juvenile nursery habitat, and encouraging the growth of some seagrasses and seaweeds. “I was doing work on the coast of Virginia with seaweed that was growing on my oyster farm,” Myers says, “so we began thinking, can we use this seaweed to remove nutrients that cause hypoxia?”

“I went back to school to study whether we could use seaweed to mitigate dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, which have long been plagued by hypoxia,” says Myers. Then she was approached by the Department of Energy (DOE), who asked her if she could grow macroalgae at a scale that could create energy – specifically transportation fuels. “Basically DOE wanted to find a solution to the thirty-odd percent of emissions caused by transportation fuels by having us look at macroalgae as a feedstock. The DOE wanted to see if we could grow it at a large enough scale to meet their goal of making a substantial dent in transportation emissions,” Myers says.

And so began a project to look at sargassum as a feedstock. Just like any other plant – marine or land-based – sargassum grows via photosynthesis and absorbs CO2. But unlike other macroalgae, it floats at the top of the ocean in mats held aloft by grape-like gas filled bladders, and isn’t traditionally farmed. Instead it can be harvested in the wild. Rather than attempting to cultivate biomass, like projects using kelp, Fearless Fund seeks out sargassum in the places where it’s a nuisance, and removes it – providing a benefit to the local ecosystem and economy while they’re at it.

Since 2011, sargassum has wreaked havoc on tropical shores. And since it reseeds itself each year, that state is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. As sargassum piles up on beaches throughout the Caribbean, it begins to rot and stink. Sulfurous (it literally emits hydrogen sulfide), the thick layers attract insects and repel tourists. In the last decade, it’s washed ashore in unprecedented quantities. It prevents fishers from getting in the water, and entangles their nets and propellers. It entangles sea turtles and dolphins too, preventing them from surfacing for air and causing untold deaths. The sargassum dies in warm shallow waters offshore and sinks, smothering seagrass meadows and coral reefs. In 2018, Barbados declared a national emergency because of the sargassum inundating its beaches.

But the sargassum story is by no means all bad. Before the plague of beach pileups began, it was a blessing rather than a curse – and in many places still is. Described by Sylvia Earle as a “golden floating rainforest,” the mats are a breeding site for American eels, a sanctuary for turtle hatchlings, and a haven for hundreds of other fish, shrimp, lobsters, crab, and other species – some of which can’t be found anywhere else. For example, the aptly named Sargassum fish, which has evolved its body to perfectly mimic the seaweed. Valuable commercial fish species like mahi-mahi, tuna, jackfish, and blue marlin lay their eggs in the sargassum habitat and feed on juvenile fish seeking refuge there. The Sargasso Sea, in the North Atlantic, has long been blanketed with it. The first recorded reference to this seaweed was in 1492, when the abundant sargassum fooled Christopher Columbus into thinking he was approaching land, even though the Sargasso Sea has no shore.

However, because of an outflow of nutrients from the Amazon and upwelling from West Africa, a new and devastating outbreak of sargassum has brought havoc to the Caribbean and elsewhere. Satellite images show that since 2011 an ocean-spanning bloom, dubbed the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt, is now an annual feature. In June 2018 it contained more than 22 million tons of seaweed, and stretched fully across the Atlantic’s waters, from the Gulf of Mexico to the western coast of Africa. And the larger the bloom, the more likely it can reseed itself the following year. “Each successive bloom makes it difficult to imagine an end to this self-reinforcing cycle,” Amy Siuda, an ecologist and oceanographer at Eckerd College told The Atlantic. “This is likely the new normal.”

In examining the new system of the Sargassum Belt, Myers was inspired. The sargassum from the Belt ends up coming onto the shores of the U.S. Caribbean Islands, and South America. “But we can repurpose that macroalgae that just absorbed all that CO2, and has washed up to re-emit it. We can use it to create aircraft fuels, marine fuels, and other major transportation fuels,” says Myers.

“Sargassum is doing an enormous service by absorbing CO2. But when it comes into the coastal zone it should be harvested while it’s healthy and alive, and before it’s exposed to shallow coastal environments that cause it to die. At that point it becomes a HAB that must be managed before it causes dead zones. Current management involves collection from the beaches, usually via bulldozers, and we propose to collect it before it reaches the beaches and becomes an expensive and harmful problem. We hope to provide protection against decomposing sargassum in the coastal zone, where it causes negative effects on corals, seagrasses and other life like fish and turtles,” Myers says.

She explains that governments and hotels have to bulldoze beaches, which is not only very expensive but also extremely harmful: destroying habitat including turtle hatching grounds, and speeding shoreline erosion. The cost in terms of lost tourism is difficult to calculate; but there’s no doubt that it’s taking a major toll on tropical Caribbean economies that rely heavily on income from tourists who are unwilling to visit beaches covered with rotting, sulfurous, insect-infested seaweed mats.

“In 2018, the cost to the Caribbean as a whole was approximately $128 million just to deal with the beached biomass – not to mention the ecological consequences. And that’s likely an underestimate, as the information is difficult to collect” says Myers.

“The Belt stretches about 6000 kilometers,” she says. “On a given day there are 20 million tons of biomass in the system, with an annual estimate of 125 million tons. We want to turn the problem of sargassum beaching into a source of raw material that stores carbon and provides an engine for the changing economy.” The DOE project in which they participate (see story this issue) is called ARPA-E Mariner (Macroalgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources). Fearless Fund is now engaged in Phase II after two to three years, in cooperation with various universities and orgs, including Pacific Northwest National Labs, Los Alamos National Lab, Texas A&M, and the University of South Florida.

In the pilot phase in 2018, they ran growth trials in the Gulf of Mexico. The main project goal was to analyze the techno-economics of a process that would produce macroalgae at a very large scale that would make sense as a biofuel feedstock from an economic standpoint. “Specifically,” says Myers, “DOE wanted us to produce macroalgae at $80 per metric dried ton with an energy budget of five to one. So if it were converted to fuel, we’d need to produce much more fuel than the energy/fuel used to create it (five to one). This is a demanding goal and we are trying to reach it while protecting coastal environments from the cost of beaching biomass.”

“Our world is changing beneath our feet, and we need to respond to it: to protect our natural environment and provide jobs. In this case, specifically ocean jobs. There are no safe places from climate change; we don’t have a choice but to solve this: we just have to work as hard as possible on the problem, now.” Myers says: “At best right now we’re removing 20 million tons of CO2 per year, and the IPCC estimates we need to remove 100 billion to a trillion tons by the end of the century. Sargassum is 30% carbon when it’s dried, so we’re focused on doing what we can with this problem, with the tools we have available. We’re working with our partners, and consider that imperative: we all just need to scale up as quickly as possible.”

In addition to their work on the ARPA-E Mariner program, looking at sargassum as a biofuel feedstock, Fearless Fund is also exploring sargassum’s potential for long-term carbon sequestration—either by sinking it to the deep sea or through carbon utilization in products. Again, it would be harvested when it reached shallow coastal waters, just before it could become a harmful algal bloom and smother seagrass meadows and coral reefs, or beach itself and become an onshore hazard and nuisance. Sinking to the deep ocean, like ancient algae became oil, would effectively sequester the carbon for the long term, and potentially qualify for carbon credits. This is similar to other marine CDR approaches that seek to sink carbon sequestering photosynthesizers: but this time it would be with sargassum. Both sinking and carbon utilization in products requires verification of the exact amount of sequestered CO2 and encounters a lack of a market for “blue carbon” credits. Most importantly, how long can either pathway sequester the carbon to assist our atmosphere?

Regardless of any difficulties, there can be no doubt of the passionate dedication which Alyson Myers has brought to Fearless Fund, and which is reflected in its work to find effective solutions to carbon emissions. The challenge that DOE has set is a tough one: it will be interesting to see if Fearless Fund is able to reach the desired 5 to 1 energy budget, and we will also be waiting to what other endeavors they engage in under Myers’ leadership.

Back to the table of contents

By Julia A. Sanders

“Someone Just Needed to Go Out and Do It”

Seagrove Kelp Co. represents a paradigm shift in Alaska: from extraction of natural resources (e.g. fish and oil) to new production. CEO Markos Scheer says, “We’re growing what’s natural in a natural way.” And this farm isn’t working on a small scale: this year they anticipate producing 150 tons of kelp. All their seed stock is sourced within 50km of the farm, per Alaska law. Fortunately, says Scheer, “Southeast Alaska has the third highest seaweed diversity in the world.

Markos Scheer is the driving force behind Seagrove Kelp, which is by far the largest and most ambitious kelp farm in the newly burgeoning Alaskan mariculture field. “My story starts back in the 1970s,” says Scheer: “most of my youth we lived in a remote cabin in the woods in North Idaho, with no running water or electricity. My mother was a botanist and worked as a tree thinner – and in 1982 tree thinning on Prince of Wales Island brought the family to Alaska.”

By 1984, at the age of 16, Scheer had left home and been legally emancipated. He got a job with a small seafood processor in Ketchikan in the summer of 1985, and stayed with it while he finished high school – even working summers there through his undergraduate years at University of Colorado Boulder, and for another six and half years after college. After that, he went to law school at the University of Idaho and received his JD.

Scheer drew on that experience in his years practicing: specializing in fisheries and maritime law working out of Seattle, one of the largest commercial fishing hubs in the nation. While working in law, he became involved with the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF). Originally formed out of the 1976 passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (the principal law governing marine fisheries in the U.S.), the AFDF “Identifies opportunities common to the Alaska seafood industry and collaborates with coastal communities, research institutes and government agencies to develop effective solutions with shared benefits,” according to its website. About 10 years ago, while Scheer was a board member, the AFDF began to look at how to do more with the opportunities presented by Alaska fisheries, and how to utilize its resources in a unique way. As a result of that work, it began to look at mariculture in a serious way – in particular growing kelp.

In 2013 the AFDF started the Alaska Mariculture Initiative, with the goal of having a billion-dollar industry within thirty years. Between 2013 and 2018, AFDF and the Alaska Mariculture Task Force (AMTF) produced economic analyses, marketing reports, and other concepts and plans intended to grow interest in mariculture, including kelp farming, and spur potential investors to act. In 2018, the AMTF produced its Alaska Mariculture Development Plan. The AFDF received grants to fund the work and did a number of analyses that indicated there was real potential for kelp farming to be a new and fruitful Alaskan industry.

Scheer says: “It seemed like such an obvious fit: pristine water and so many things we could grow among shellfish and seaweed species.” He kept waiting for someone to do it. “There’d been shellfish aquaculture for a long time, but mainly as a cottage or boutique industry,” he explains. Scheer and Julie Decker, the Executive Director of AFDF, were promoting a vision of large-scale mariculture. But it wasn’t working. So in 2015 he went and took a serious look at why it wasn’t happening: “Is it money, what’s the problem here?”

“It turned out that someone just needed to go out and do it,” Scheer says.

So in 2017 he applied for a 127 acre mariculture lease in Doyle Bay. It took some time to get the lease. “But,” Scheer says, “I couldn’t have done what I did anywhere except in Alaska, and you can see that in the results. There’s no place in the U.S. – or frankly in the world – where you can scale and operate like you can in Alaska.”

“Today, four more leases for 770 acres are in the approval process for Seagrove, and another 1000+ acres are pending for people looking to get into the business. “The scaling available to us if we can find the market can’t be matched anywhere else. And it’ll work for small guys or big guys,” Scheer enthuses. “We hope to reach that critical mass as quickly as possible so the industry can support itself: the challenge is to move it from the cottage industry it’s been and scale up.” “I was looking at the limitations that prevented the growth we aimed for in the Alaska Mariculture Task Force, and going through the analyses and looking for the pinch point. In the process I created a business plan, and that actually turned into the kernel for this company. All that remained was to go out there and push it.”

Scheer raised capital and in 2018 they started work back in his home ground in Ketchikan: building one of the largest seaweed nurseries in the world, and hiring a PhD to run it. “We filled it with 150 feet of inoculated seed line, built the infrastructure in Doyle Bay to support that line, put it in the water in Oct-Nov 2019, and harvested our first crop in May-June of 2020,” Scheer says.

In fall of 2020 Seagrove put out about 25 miles (132,000 feet) for the 2021 harvest. They grew a number of species: bullwhip kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana), ribbon kelp (Alaria marginata), and sugar kelp (Saccharina latissima). They harvested 35 tons in 2020 and 50 tons in 2021, and hope to increase that amount yet again (substantially) in the next cycle. Seagrove sold the 2020 kelp harvest in a variety of markets: e.g. value-added food, pet food, and fertilizer.

Originally, they’d intended to move immediately into restaurants and hospitality, but the Covid pandemic made that nearly impossible. The 2021 market was similar to the previous year’s, but in addition they created a retail product: primarily sold through the massive Asian supermarket Uwajimaya in Seattle are one pound fresh-frozen packs of ribbon kelp, custom processed in Alaska. The ribbon kelp packs are also available from a seafood store in Ketchikan (Fish from Trish), from whom you can order online for delivery.

Seagrove also created a restaurant food-service pack to begin the process of marketing their nutrient-dense, umami-rich product to that market, which they hope may someday be the primary one. There are a few restaurants buying their product: a restaurant called the NY Café in Ketchikan serves a kelp pesto gnocchi.

Scheer uses the fresh-frozen product for scones, bagels and breads, and even ice cream – naturally, he’s a big fan. “Ribbon kelp is so versatile – it can be used anywhere spinach can and other places as well,” he says. Once you have your ribbon kelp in hand, a QR code on the back of the package will take you to the Seagrove Kelp website, where you’ll find recipes for kelp chowder, gnocchi, cookies, bread, and more.

For the 2021 fall season, Seagrove conducted seed collection in August, with a focus on sugar kelp and ribbon kelp, and a plan to increase the number of lines from 132,000 feet to 200,000 feet. Scheer says, “Every part is improving year over year, every time we learn more – and we see that in our yields, and in our farm and processing practices. We continue to get better.”

Ecosystem and Sequestration Benefits

Seagrove is part of a research project led by Bigelow Laboratories (see story elsewhere this issue), looking at the effect kelp may have in remediating climate change/ocean acidification. Scheer says: “We’re part of an international network contributing to this analysis. There isn’t a ton of data out there about the benefits of kelp. But we do know that seaweeds are significantly more effective at removing carbon from their environment than land-based plants, have a benefit to the local waters in removing carbon and nitrogen, and may provide other positive changes to ocean chemistry.”

“These are some of the most pristine waters in the world, and having the ecosystem benefits [provided by kelp] in pristine waters is all the better. There are no pesticides, no fertilizers, and it’s a great way to grow nutritious food. But carbon sequestration is a tough one – we know it’s happening in significant amounts, and we can measure the carbon we’re removing from the water. The hard part is what is sequestration? Is it only sequestered when you sink it into the deep ocean? Is it still sequestration when we introduce it into the life cycle of humans and animals? Everyone has a different idea of the definition.”

“But we know what we’re doing is a positive thing. Whatever rubric you put it in, we know we’re doing a good thing that has a benefit to our local waters. We put our kelp in the water in Oct-Nov and remove it in May-June. While the kelp we grow may not be permanent placements, we believe it still provides numerous benefits. Kelp forests are so essential to the ecosystem, not just to provide shelter to fish, but because of all the creatures that live in or rely on its stalks and leaves, like kelp crab. The documentary My Octopus Teacher shows the entire relationship built around a kelp forest. If you removed the kelp forest none of that world they showed would be present.”

They also have plans to expand into shellfish cultivation. Currently, they’re working on an oyster larvae project with Oceans Alaska, a local shellfish and kelp hatchery. They are building a seed bank so that they can start again in case there’s some kind of major mortality event. They plan to farm the oysters adjacent to the kelp. As long as they’re in the same bay, Scheer believes the benefits are the same as in so-called “3D-farming,” in which each species provides benefits to the other as well as to the greater ecosystem and local fish, particularly juveniles.

Dr. Tiffany Stephens, Chief Scientist and Research Director at Seagrove, who received her doctorate studying giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera), elaborates on some of their work that falls into the research realm. She explains they’ve received a grant to work on black seaweed (Pyropia abbottiae). Black seaweed is a prized food in Alaska Native communities and an important traditional trade item. The nutrient-rich species grows in the mid to lower intertidal range in rocky areas with high wave action, but the species has never been cultivated along these coasts.

The grant funds will be used to 1) coordinate in-depth communication with native stakeholders to document concerns and ambitions in including black seaweed in Alaska mariculture ambitions -- due to the importance of the species for traditional foods and cultural identity , and 2) work directly with only local native communities to learn how to cultivate it. Black seaweed is very popular in Alaska wild harvesting, but hasn’t been successfully cultivated in the past. Stephens affirmed, “This project is especially important because coastal communities spanning southern British Columbia to Southeast Alaska have reported events where black seaweed either looks less healthy, has reduced in abundance, or has disappeared in traditional collection sites. Changing oceanic conditions – particularly increased temperatures and more dynamic nutrient conditions – may be behind these observations. Regardless, learning how to cultivate black seaweed could help keep this resource around for continued use by stakeholders.”

The project with Bigelow Labs (partially funded by World Wildlife Fund, with assistance from Bezos Earth Fund) is scheduled to run for three years, and they’ll be looking at a series of parameters including carbon chemistry: putting custom designed, highly sophisticated testing and recording instruments in the water in spring 2022.

“When the Bigelow project began,” Stephens says, “it was already looking at the potential for CO2 remediation with kelp at Bangs Island Mussels in Maine, and then they received funding that allowed them to expand that research to include Seagrove, as well as a farm in Norway.”

“The project will include two sophisticated sensors, one inside the farm and one outside,” Stephens says. The preliminary data from the initial collaboration with the Bangs Island farm suggested that kelp does remove CO2 from the water in a localized way, like a halo effect; expanding this work across farms and across ocean basins (Alaska, Maine, Norway) will help build a novel dataset to begin addressing the scope of remediation that is possible in different site conditions, and perhaps different kelp species. They’ll be recording aragonite saturation, pH, and other water quality parameters, as well as gathering discrete water samples to compare to the continuous logger data. The project is hoped to better describe realistic expectations of using kelp farms as a tool to mitigate oceanic CO2.”

Seagrove also has access to a Burke-O-Lator through Oceans Alaska, which can track carbon water chemistry either real time or discretely. But it’s not currently functioning. Stephens says: “We don’t have the bandwidth or the funding right now to operate it, if anyone would like to collaborate on that, it would be fantastic to have that kind of data collection happening. In addition, if there’s anyone looking for a semi-controlled system to use for their graduate degree (MS, PhD) or post-doc project, we have a perfect farm plot up here with pristine conditions and we’re ready to work with individuals or organizations to increase knowledge around macroalgal cultivation.”

Stephens agrees with Scheer that “The scientific community is still doing some soul searching concerning what carbon sequestration means and how to define it.” “So that discussion is a quagmire for the kelp mariculture community. Along with verification, there are a lot of questions about sinking kelp into the deep ocean as a sequestration solution,” says Stephens. That particular method of sequestration is one that is receiving a lot of attention in the burgeoning field of CDR, but there is still plenty of controversy surrounding it as a method of removing carbon dioxide at the scale needed to make a difference.

Fortunately, Seagrove doesn’t have to grapple with these bigger questions except as something tangential to the work they do of farming kelp for consumption. While Scheer maintains a strong interest in changing ocean conditions as a result of climate change, his main focus is on making Seagrove a successful endeavor as an example to others of the opportunities to be found in Alaskan mariculture.

Alaskan waters are free from the effects of upwelling that make OA such a problem on the West Coast: instead Alaska offers abundant clean and productive water in which shellfish and macroalgae (as well as their famous fisheries) can thrive. The Alaska Mariculture Task Force just recently formed the Alaska Mariculture Alliance, a private non-profit organization initiated in June 2021 with a mission to “develop and support a robust and sustainable mariculture industry, producing shellfish and aquatic plants for the long-term benefit of Alaska’s economy, environment and communities.”

The AFDF website offers Seaweed Farm Startup Training Resources, as well as regularly holding workshops and other opportunities to learn more about how to begin the process of starting a seaweed farm. Scheer hopes to see the goal of a billion-dollar kelp industry in Alaska reached in his lifetime, and to see Alaska begin the process of turning from a resource-extractive economy to one of resource creation.  

Photo courtesy of Seagrove Kelp Co.

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By Julia A. Sanders

Launched in 2016, the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) initiated a new program through their Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). The new program was named MARINER, with MARINER being an acronym for MacroAlgae Research Inspiring Novel Energy Resources. With over 20 projects funded, and a $50+ million dollar budget, MARINER is a large foray into a largely unexplored field.

In a presentation on the State of Macroalgae Science and Technology last fall, ARPA-E Director Dr. Marc Von Keitz described macroalgae as “The quintessential ocean crop, with over 15,000 species growing in a wide range of geographies, a fast growth rate, mostly carbohydrate and protein, and amenable to cultivation and harvest.”

While Asia dominates seaweed cultivation, U.S. macroalgae production is small but growing, with a 500+% increase (to 550k-600k wet pounds) between 2018 and 2019, and a continuing multiplication of production since then. However, there are still issues with finding a market for the macroalgae being produced in the U.S.: many of the earliest adopters of mariculture have found themselves with tons of kelp that they have, in some cases, had to literally give away.

Von Keitz acknowledges that expanding market opportunities is critical to achieve scale. He lists a large number of examples of possible markets: whole foods, nutraceuticals, proteins, hydrocolloids, animal Health and nutrition products, fertilizer, energy and industrial products like biogas, biofuel, and other chemicals and intermediaries, and (although these are much more difficult to view in the manner of traditional products, or ascribe a value to), ecosystem services like nutrient reuptake, local deacidifcation, wave attenuation, and carbon storage.

In terms of carbon capture, one ton of dry macroalgae is calculated to equal approximately one ton of CO2 captured. That means that in order to capture one gigaton of CO2 (the very minimum of amounts we need to be looking at in order to have macroalgae play a meaningful role in reaching climate goals) about 182,000 square kilometers of area would be needed. “That’s about 1.6% of the U.S EEZ,” Von Keitz points out.

So what does it take in order to reach climate/energy scale with macroalgae cultivation? According to Von Keitz, at minimum:

‣ Move off-shore and survive/operate in open ocean conditions ‣ Accessing “free” nutrients predictably and reliably

‣ Maximize biomass yield by optimizing productivity of individual plants and whole farm system

‣ Highly energy-efficient operation and harvesting through advanced automation & remote monitoring.

According to its website, “The goal of the MARINER program is to develop the critical tools that will allow the United States to grow into a world leader in the production of marine biomass. The program is supporting the development of a suite of technologies that will accelerate the deployment of advanced ocean farming systems, capable of sustainably delivering macroalgal biomass at a cost and volume competitive with terrestrial biomass feedstocks. The program focuses on demonstrating advanced cultivation technologies and tools that enable cost- and energy-efficient production of macroalgal biomass feedstock at a scale suitable for the production of fuels and chemicals. Offshore seaweed farms can also be part of a portfolio of solutions for nutrient remediation and carbon removal in our oceans.”

“The challenge is to dramatically reduce the capital and operating cost of macroalgae cultivation, while significantly increasing the range of deployment by expanding into more exposed, off-shore environments.”

The MARINER program has seven categories:

• In the category of Cultivation & Harvest Systems are Fearless Fund (see story this issue), Marine BioEnergy, Marine Biological Laboratory, Ocean Era - Blue Fields, Ocean Rainforest, Trophic, and University of Alaska Fairbanks.

• In Numerical Modeling Tools are Makai Ocean Engineering, University of California Irvine, and University of New England

• In Remote Sensing & Monitoring Capabilities are University of California Santa Barbara and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - UUV

• In Advanced Breeding & Genomics are University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution - Kelp Breeding

• In Ecosystem Services & Nitrogen Extraction are Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and San Diego State University

• In Marine Spatial Planning & Lifecycle Assessment are Argonne National Laboratory and NOAA

• And, finally, Ocean Era - KRuMBS is in the category of Seaweed Conversion.

Among those program participants actually cultivating macroalgae, approaches range from open ranching to floating array and single to multi-point anchoring; from different nutrient sources like deep ocean or surface, pumping or diving; and geographically as distant as the Philippines to Puerto Rico.

While much of the program has seemed to focus on using macroalgae as biomass feedstock for renewable fuels, it also examines the potential for carbon sequestration. Von Keitz discussed the potential paths from carbon capture to sequestration: “[There’s] cultivation-associated carbon sequestration, which has no carbon translocation to soil system, but instead relies on refractory Dissolved Organic Carbon. Then deep ocean sinking of macroalgae, which requires translocation of whole macroalgal biomass to the deep ocean (>1,000m) by sinking. This approach requires negatively buoyant macroalgae, either by crushing of pneumatocysts or weighing down of material.”

While this is the most common approach taken by those taking a serious approach to carbon sequestration via macroalgae there are both benefits and uncertainties. “Benefits: can sequester carbon for hundreds or thousands of years, and minimizes transport requirements of macroalgae back to shore. Challenges/Uncertainties: the effect of enhanced macroalgal deposition on ocean ecosystems is not well understood, and there is no direct product opportunity – relies on carbon tax/payment,” said Von Keitz.

Both of the latter represent serious potential drawbacks. Without a clear understanding of what mass sinking of magroalgal biomass at scale would cause in the deep ocean and the benthos, there could be serious negative consequences. And without a carbon credit of some kind, normally originating with some kind of carbon policy, how could any producer cover the expenses of producing/gathering the macroalgae, and sinking it below 1000 meters?

The final possible paths from carbon capture to sequestration are BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration), the process of extracting bioenergy from biomass and capturing and storing the carbon; Biochar/Hydrochar; and conversion into chemicals used in durable goods.

The last two bring some familiar questions about what exactly constitutes sequestration into play, but overall that list represents a comprehensive overview. And remember: just like carbon capture isn’t the same as carbon sequestration, carbon sequestration isn’t a direct conversion into removal of atmospheric carbon – although a case can be made that there’s some equivalency between the two.

Nevetheless, the ARPA-E MARINER program has opened doors and provided funding for a whole new generation of projects focused on the potential of macroalgae as a tool in the fight to lower emissions and reach climate change goals. New datasets are being created, new findings documented, and with so many simultaneous projects with so many different approaches, the field is growing exponentially. None too soon for the purposes of carbon removal and biofuel production, either. Both of those elements of the MARINER program are important to the overarching goal of preventing warming halting warming below two degrees Celsius by 2100.

The third annual review meeting of the MARINER program took place in June 2021. To read the agenda from that meeting, click here. Visit the Arpa-E MARINER website here.

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By Julia A. Sanders

The First Annual Conference on Carbon Policy and Law, focused on exploring ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches, starts today Sept 21st and runs through tomorrow the 22nd. Beginning at 7am PDT/10am EDT, you can view the agenda and register here. And don’t worry, you can still register after the conference begins, and all registrants will receive a recording of the entire conference. Founding Co-Director of the Institute for Carbon Policy and Law at American University and Conference Chair Dr. Wil Burns has an impressive set of credentials, and a fascinating tale to tell about his introduction to the field of carbon dioxide removal/negative emissions technology/carbon capture and sequestration (AKA CDR/NETs/CCS) – one could almost believe it was fated.

As he explains, in about 2008 Burns was on a plane trip to see a visiting scholar at Williams College when he discovered that he had another entire week of lecture material he needed to prepare for a class he was teaching on environmental law. Waiting to deplane, he noticed that the passenger next to him left a magazine behind with an article on geoengineering (the early term for what later developed into CDR). It caught his eye, and he read the short piece as he waited to disembark. He thought what a great intersection of environment and law and government agency regulation it represented. Burns decided to research the subject further and make it the subject of that additional week of lectures.

Thus began an ongoing passion for and fascination with the subject. He realized early on that most of the people working in the field were scientists, but that there were significant implications for social and environmental justice as well, and they weren’t being addressed. “The Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment was formed because the technocracy was not looking at bringing the people (stakeholders) into it,” Burns says. The Forum sought to change that, and then eventually split and formed the Institute for Carbon Removal Policy and Law.

Regarding the conference, Burns says: “I had been considering organizing a conference of this nature for a couple of years, and had discussed doing it live. There’s one already – a very good one – that is put on in Sweden, that has hosted a couple of carbon removal conferences already, but the focus is almost entirely on the science side. But I wanted to do a complimentary conference on the law and policy side. I thought this was a golden opportunity to do it online and save carbon.

In recent years, there has been growing recognition of the critical role that CDR/NETs approaches must play in effectuating the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement. However, if those technologies are to occupy such an important role in climate policymaking, it is also critical that effective institutions are in place at the national and international level to help facilitate research and deployment of promising technologies and processes. Equally importantly, such institutions must also be structured in a manner that ensures minimization of potential negative impacts, meets recognized current notions of justice and equity, and fully engages the world community in discussing the optimal role of CDR in our portfolio of responses to climate change.

Unfortunately, there are currently large lacunae in the governance framework for CDR at all levels. This provides a compelling rationale for an annual convening to bring together experts in all pertinent sectors, including government, non-governmental organizations, corporations and academics to help build the architecture for effective governance of the array of approaches that are currently under consideration, or which may play a role in the future. This conference seeks to fill that role and answer key questions around many of the issues with CDR policy and regulation.

Burns discusses some of the topics that will be covered in conference panels, and the issues he sees as needing the most attention in this specialized field.

“There is a panel looking at marine CDR approaches focused primarily on domestic regulation. For example, some of them would primarily be done in coastal areas, and so will have state and federal government regulation. An example of that would be mineral weathering, like olivine on beaches” says Burns.

“Then some of the open ocean approaches – like alkalinization, iron enhancement, or sinking macroalgae in the deep ocean – and how the London Convention (and perhaps the London Protocol), the Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and other regulations could affect it. The London Convention and the CBD both came into play in past iron fertilization projects. The London Protocol, which specifically mentions geoengineering, has been ratified, but not by all the countries that are part of the Convention, and the geoengineering amendment has only seven signers, while it needs thirty-odd. But at some point it will likely be what regulates open ocean CDR approaches,” explains Burns.

Another important aspect to examine is who the stakeholders in various ocean-based CDR approaches are, how to get them involved, and how to create a deliberate process that engages them. And, for example, do they have the right to stop it if they wish to? One panel that should interest those looking to actively set up carbon removal operations in the U.S is at 1pm on the 22nd: “Case Studies in Ocean CDR Project Development: Legal Aspects. Moderated by Brad Ack of Ocean Visions, panelists include representatives from Running Tide (a kelp approach), Project Vesta (an olivine approach), Fearless Fund (sargassum-based, see story this issue), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (which examines iron fertilization as well as selective breeding of sugar kelp). All of them have real world experience in dealing with government agencies in siting and permitting their projects and they’ll share their experience: what obstacles they encountered, lessons learned, gaps that should be addressed, etc.

Global Ocean Health’s own Executive Director Brad Warren will also appear on a panel, titled “Exploring Intersections Between Public Engagement and Justice in Ocean-based CDR. Dr. Wil Burns will join him to discuss this important contemporary issue.

Burns says, “The need for regulation can be overwhelming – how to do it correctly but also accomplish the things we need to do. We have a hugely significant amount of carbon removal to do by the end of the century if we wish to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid catastrophic climate effects. And with CDR so many of the potential consequences aren’t understood. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered by research, but at the same time we are running out of time. If it were 1980 we wouldn’t have to rush like this but now we’re in a position where we must hurry more than we would otherwise wish to.”

As we see in our work here at Global Ocean Health, and as many of our readers are actively engaged in, there’s so much life and so many livelihoods tied to the ocean, and many aren’t even aware of these potential projects, or how CDR may affect their way of life. Some of it may be beneficial, but it’s also quite likely there will be harmful unintended consequences and clashes between users of the ocean commons. If there are to be winners and losers, how will we balance it?

This first annual conference, and the ones that follow it, are sure to address many of these critical concerns. And make no mistake, the policy and law that emerge around CDR will be some of the most important over the coming decades.

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By Julia A. Sanders

Dr. Nichole Price, Senior Research Scientist at Bigelow Laboratory, has been exploring the potential of kelp to remediate OA for some years now. I recall interviewing her for an article on phytoremediation back in 2015. “Of all the potential ways to address climate change, I'm pursuing phytoremediation because it can be done on existing infrastructure and generates a new revenue stream,” said Price, who also directs Bigelow Laboratory’s Center for Venture Research. “It also creates a nutritious, edible product in a world of increasing food insecurity.”

By 2018, she’d worked hand in hand with shellfish growers in Maine, along with partners from the Island Institute and the University of New Hampshire, to definitively determine that there was in fact a halo effect that improved the water chemistry in a localized area. “We’ve seen that growing cultured seaweed creates a bubble of better water emanating from the farm, and it changes throughout the year,” Price said in a Bigelow Labs press release. “That could be important in Maine's bays and estuaries that are targeted for aquaculture or conservation of certain shellfish species.”

That summer she worked with Bangs Island Mussels to see if there was any measurable beneficial effect for mussels grown adjacent to kelp. To confirm any results were due to the presence of kelp, juvenile mussels were planted both inside and outside a local kelp farm. After several months of growth, the mussels’ ability to withstand pressure was tested. In a simulation of the knocking and rattling that mussels experience on the journey from harvest to table, the mussels grown inside the “bubble” of improved water quality caused by the presence of kelp appeared to be better able to avoid the fracturing and crushing of their shells (making them unsaleable) that often occurs. The presence of kelp in the neighborhood seemed to have improved their resilience.

Earlier this year, Price’s work at Bigelow received a major expansion thanks to nearly $900,000 in new funding from World Wildlife Fund, with support from the Bezos Earth Fund. The expanded funding allowed Bigelow to make arrangements to equip two more locations, far outside their kelp experiments’ past geography in the waters off Maine, with sensors to provide continuous logging of water quality parameters during and after the kelp growing season. The funding will also allow discrete water samples to be taken, to confirm the sensors’ accuracy. Along with continuing the work with Bangs Island Mussels, Bigelow will be equipping Alaska’s Seagrove Kelp Co. (see story this issue), and a kelp farm in Norway, for a three year project.

"The role of kelp aquaculture has been relatively unexplored, despite its great potential to reduce carbon dioxide concentration and seawater acidity with benefits for the shellfish industry and surrounding coastal areas," said Aurora Martinez Ricart, a Bigelow Laboratory postdoctoral researcher and co-investigator on the new project.

Specifically, the team will track carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nutrient concentrations, as well as other basic parameters like salinity and temperature.

From this information, the researchers will create a computer model of water circulation, kelp growth, and resulting water quality changes that will enable them to better understand farmed kelp's impact at the study farms – which is why it’s so important that the datasets will be gathered from such diverse ocean basins. The resulting model with also help predict kelp's effects in other locations.

"Seaweed farming has the possibility to provide not only diversification and profit for struggling working waterfronts, but also critical ecosystem services for coastal marine systems," said Price. "However, to earn the social acceptance of aquaculture, we need to rigorously document evidence of these water quality benefits across a range of settings."

According to the press release, the researchers’ peer-reviewed findings will inform farmers, the public, and policymakers. They hope to provide an evaluation of seaweed aquaculture that helps foster positive public interest and develop science-based solutions for the growing kelp industry.

Photo courtesy of the Island Institute

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Fishing and coastal communities must have a seat at the table

OPINION

By Alyson Myers, Annie Hawkins and Brad Warren

No one knows the ocean better than those who depend on it for a living. And no one is better positioned to help define solutions to keep it healthy. American fishing and tourism communities in the Caribbean and beyond are enduring severe coastal impacts from changing oceans, one of which is a human-fueled overgrowth of sargassum (a seaweed), which has expanded in the tropical Atlantic since 2011. Under current policies, U.S. fishers and their neighbors are largely blocked from harvesting this versatile, carbon-rich (31%) resource at sea. As a result, these communities are missing out on potential local options to better protect nearshore habitats, combat climate change, and maybe earn some income.

Sargassum management policies today result in a region-wide practice that harms coastal ecosystems and economies: wait for thousands of tons of macroalgae “wrack” to wash ashore or pile up in shallow bays. This made sense until recently. In its core range on the open ocean, sargassum has long been recognized as a vital floating habitat. When it washes ashore, modest amounts of wrack can still offer some ecological benefits to beach environments. But in this new era of large-scale coastal sargassum inundations, people who clean up the mess increasingly view it in a different light: on beaches and in nearshore waters, it is a harmful algal bloom (HAB). Heaps of decomposing sargassum drive localized acidification and hypoxia in the water, foul the air with methane and toxic hydrogen sulfide, and impact ecosystems and economic activities including tourism and fishing. Coastal residents scrape the material off the beach, mostly using heavy equipment, and dump it in landfills. This “cleanup” racks up an annual bill that was estimated at ~$120 million across the Caribbean in 2018.

Could we do better? Maybe so. Entrepreneurs outside the U.S. are pursuing alternatives. Some in Mexico are turning sargassum into paper and building materials. Others are pursuing options to intercept, harvest and monetize shore-bound sargassum before it hits the beach. Sargassum has also attracted interest as a potential feedstock for climate-friendly biofuels, and as a biomass that might be deliberately sunk into the deep ocean to sequester carbon.

Is this the moment to convert a problem into an opportunity? That’s not an easy question, but it’s worth a serious look.

Sargassum long ago earned its status as a “sacred cow” among major resources of the tropical Atlantic. The offshore Sargasso Sea provides food and shelter to many species, including endangered sea turtles and abundant, valuable mahi-mahi. To protect this crucial habitat and avoid destructive bycatch, current policies all but prohibit marine harvest of sargassum in U.S. waters. But the vast increase in sargassum production since 2011 places that status quo in question. Believed to be driven by fertilizer runoff and possibly global warming, a novel expansion in sargassum biomass at times now spans 6,000 km across the southern tropical Atlantic. As vast quantities of wrack break off and wash inshore, it is causing havoc. Is the old paradigm of sargassum management—basically, “Leave it in the water”—still sufficient, or even sustainable?

The time is ripe for the U.S. to step up and lead a new regional initiative to define best practices for management, conservation, harvest, bycatch control, and use of this shared marine resource. Before a major new sargassum industry fully fledges beyond U.S. shores and creates de-facto norms, the U.S. still has a chance to set a high standard for sustainable management and entrepreneurial practice, while ensuring protection of vulnerable species that depend on sargassum.

Can we turn the sargassum problem into an environmentally beneficial enterprise, perhaps even part of the solution for climate change? We think it’s time to find out.

As practitioners in marine conservation and resource management, we have teamed up to propose a project to create a roadmap and research agenda for transforming the expanded sargassum biomass from nuisance to benefit. To succeed, this effort will require an integrated approach: identifying gaps and driving sustained work in multiple disciplines, including marine science, policy, economics, and technology. Most importantly, fishers and coastal communities directly affected by this problem must have a key role in defining any new paradigm for sargassum management and use, so that the benefits accrue locally and equitably.

Editor’s note: Alyson Myers, a shellfish grower, leads Fearless Fund, an organization focused on fostering better management and use of sargassum. Annie Hawkins directs the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which organizes fisheries leaders to participate in ocean planning and research. Brad Warren runs the National Fisheries Conservation Center, whose Global Ocean Health program tackles pollution to protect the ocean’s capacity to keep making dinner for billions.

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Stony Brook University News

Using kelp to help reduce nitrogen in Long Island waters was the subject of a May 27 press conference at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) Marine Science Center at Stony Brook Southampton.

Christopher Gobler, Endowed Chair of Coastal Ecology and Conservation at SoMAS, spoke about a funding program that would be the first in New York State to offer “nitrogen credit” payments for kelp cultivation. This past winter, oyster farmers cultivated experimental kelp beds to study kelp’s role in reducing nitrogen, and they will receive the first-time payments for their 2021 harvest.

Gobler said kelp — grown in the winter months when boaters are less active on local waterways and an efficient consumer of nitrogen and carbon dioxide — can be a very effective tool in reducing nitrogen in local waters while large-scale introduction of advanced septic systems is phased in over the next few decades.

“We need solutions right now to protect water quality,” he said in a Newsday article on the press conference.

Gobler said his lab has used grant money over the past three years to cultivate sugar kelp on 10 different oyster farms, producing 10,000 pounds of kelp while removing 36 pounds of nitrogen. The program would have kelp farmers potentially produce more than 70,000 pounds of kelp on one-acre farms, and help extract 200 pounds of nitrogen from the waters, earning hundreds of dollars of credits during a season they are largely off the water.

Gobler’s lab has also made advances in the production of fertilizer from kelp, developing a product that has the same nitrogen and phosphorus content as popular garden fertilizers. “The next step is to scale up and make it commercially viable,” he told Newsday, envisioning a day when “we won’t need to import synthetic fertilizers on Long Island.”

Currently only around 1,000 to 1,500 such systems have been deployed in Suffolk. Gobler said 220,000 such systems are expected to be deployed by 2050.

Read more in Newsday and watch video coverage at WCBS-TV.

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By Jesse Turner

As governments and communities around the world are working to address the health, social justice and economic crisis accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exposed the many vulnerabilities and inequities across our civic lives, it’s more important than ever that climate and ocean action are understood as a critical part of immediate and long-term resiliency building.

The International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification (AKA the OA Alliance) is an international initiative of governments and non-government members representing nearly 300 million people and 366,414 kilometers of coastline. At every level, OA Alliance members have continued to lead by raising ambition for climate action and promoting efforts that increase biodiversity, adaptive capacity and resilience.

While the pandemic has resulted in the delay of many pivotal ocean and climate convenings and benchmarks across 2020 and 2021, governments and non-government actors have banded together to ensure progress and momentum is sustained.

Climate Week NYC 2020 took place from September 21-27, in coordination with the United Nations General Assembly and the City of New York. The OA Alliance was proud to host two events alongside partners, Ocean Conservancy, Ocean & Climate Platform and Because the Ocean Initiative. The events helped meet our shared goals, ensuring that climate and ocean commitments, policies and communications accurately reflect their interdependence.

On September 23rd during an event titled, “U.S. States Leading on Climate-Ocean Action,” Washington State Governor Jay Inslee spoke about the impacts already being felt along the Pacific Coast of North America and how the state has effectively used science to respond and ensure that climate and ocean policies accurately reflect their interdependence. “Climate change and carbon emissions are changing the ocean and the life within it. Jobs, food security and ocean health are under threat. Our shellfish aquaculture industry felt the first impacts over a decade ago, when ocean acidification caused the death of juvenile oysters in their hatcheries…with the investment of science we now know that other key species are at risk—which put our region’s economy and identify at risk.”

U.S. Congressional leaders Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and Representative Suzanne Bonamici (OR) reinforced the role of the federal government in charting a path forward in 2021 to squarely place climate and ocean action within a broad suite of urgent resiliency building and recovery priorities. The Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act of 2020 was introduced to in the House and includes everything from climate ready fisheries, blue carbon ecosystems, renewable offshore energy, the building out of regional ocean partnerships, as well as several priorities for monitoring, piloting adaptation strategies in partnership with fishing and aquaculture communities and grant making to support states and regions.

Additionally, high-level representatives from the states of California, Maryland, Maine and Hawaii spoke on a panel about the importance of ocean, coastal and bay health to their state economically, culturally, and environmentally. They all described the urgency of taking actions to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, increase ocean related mitigation and adaptation, facilitate the development of clean and renewable energy, and reduce shore and land-based stressors.

All reflected on the toll that the pandemic had taken on communities across their state, exacerbating existing issues like food insecurity. Hawaii Department of Lands and Natural Resources, Division of Aquatics, Administrator, Brian Neilson spoke about the importance of coastal fishing for communities during the Pandemic. “For us, the pandemic added an increased awareness of our ocean resources. Early on, when shelves where empty at grocery stores…and many people found themselves out of work needing to put food on the table, we were reminded of the importance of sustainable fisheries in knowing that our food security depends on a productive ocean. [The ocean] serves as our food reserve when global issues arise, like the pandemic, but it could be the next hurricane or major disruption down the road.” Melanie Loyzim, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Acting Commissioner, echoed the importance of ocean and coastal fisheries during the pandemic, referencing the opening of Maine’s Working Waterfront and inviting folks to fish at designated landing spots in order to keep the local supply chain moving.

On September 24th an international event, “Climate-Ocean Impacts to Food Security and Ocean Economies: Assessing Risk and Leveraging International Climate Frameworks,” brought together national, tribal and regional governments alongside entities like the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nationals Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Around the world, 2.6 billion people rely on the ocean for their primary source of protein. Fishing and shellfish harvesting for sustenance or ceremonial purposes is critical for tribal, First Nation and indigenous communities across the world. And by 2030, the ocean economy is expected to reach US $3 trillion and employ 40 million people.

Dr. Tarub Bahri, Fishery Resources Officer with the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department presented priorities and efforts to increase studies and recommendations that further support governments and civil society in the face of climate related changing ocean conditions and subsequent impacts of fishing dependent communities and economies at scale. She emphasized the need for cross-sectoral cooperation and stakeholder participation that can help support efforts across UN frameworks like FAO, UNFCCC and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. “It is important that our work relies on bottom-up input so that it reflects needs at the local level.” Additionally noting, “Fish is food” and “fish is more than food” because there are important cultural, social and economic ties to species and ecosystems that we must understand and account for in our assessments of risks and vulnerabilities.

Tribal governments along the North American West Coast understand this; their livelihoods, culture and identities are strongly tied to the ocean, coasts and rivers. A short video played at the event highlighted a collaborative effort in Washington State to understand the vulnerability and resilience of Olympic coast tribes to impacts of OA. Manila clams, crab, geoduck, salmon, razor clams are all cultural keystone species meaning they are centrally important to tribal community life. “Razor clams are a big part of our lifestyle both as a food and as a source of revenue. [Harvesting] offers tribal members an opportunity to go out and supplement their income,” said Justine James, Cultural Resource Specialist with the Quinault Indian Nation. In response to the difficulty with addressing ocean acidification impacts, Joe Schumacher, Marine Resources Specialist with Quinault Indian Nation concluded, “The West Coast is going to possibly see substantial issues faster than other areas…. what we don’t know is the scariest part. What we do know is frightening.” It’s increasingly important that place-based communities are able to partner with scientists in order to bridge the gap between the science of ocean change and the impacts of ocean change on human wellbeing.

Cameron Diver, Deputy-Director General at Pacific Community, a collaborative of 26 Pacific Island Country and Territory members forming the principal scientific and technical organization in the Pacific Region, described efforts to advance regional science that better informs mitigation and adaptation responses—as well as leading internationally across processes and frameworks like the UNFCCC, UN Sustainable Development Goals and UN Decade of Ocean Science. Under the effects of ocean acidification and climate change, projections show productivity loss of 10-20% by 2030 and up 35% by 2050 in coastal fisheries in the Western Pacific. Projections also show tuna stocks will be shifting east under a warming ocean over the course of this century, creating issues for food security and economies of Western Pacific Countries. Fish provide 50–90% of animal protein in the diet of coastal communities across a broad spectrum of Pacific islands. Deputy-Director Diver concluded his remarks with a call to action, “The challenges are huge, but the solutions are there. When you overlay the Covid-19 pandemic and its effect on island people and island economies, you can image how much more significant these challenges become. This is why we need international cooperation and the spirit of multilateralism to support urgent action, not only to ensure that we save our ocean in the Blue Pacific, but for the health of our global ocean and a more sustainable planet.

”Rosana Garay, Directorate of Environment and Ocean Affairs for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Chile, a tireless champion for the ocean across climate and applicable platforms, relayed the importance of engaging multiple sectors and multiple disciplines. Additionally, she described the importance of multi-lateral government collaboration. As President of COP25, the “Blue Ocean COP”, Chile brought together governments and civil society leaders to help advance the call for a UNFCCC Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue that will further examine the interlinkages across ocean and climate mitigation and adaptation.

The event concluded with a panel of actors working to study, assess and prioritize risks posed by climate and ocean change. The International Atomic Energy Agency - Ocean Acidification International Coordinating Center (IAEA-OICC), unveiled a new research project, “Evaluating the Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Seafood - A Global Approach,” which will help countries identify risks to the most important seafood species in their regions.

The Ocean and Risk and Resilience Action Alliance alongside insurance company AXA XL described how insurers can concretely support climate ocean risk products that serve, for example, aquaculture industries at risk from ocean acidification. Moving forward, climate risk assessments and insurance products should be utilized and scaled by private and public sectors.

Finally, the UNFCCC Secretariat shared relevant submissions and possible outcomes of Ocean & Climate Change Dialogue mandated at COP25, which will examine how to strengthen ocean mitigation and adaptation within existing UNFCCC regime, a global structure for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting those most at risk.

Governments at every level, along with impacted industries and communities are helping to assess social, economic and cultural vulnerabilities caused by climate and ocean change. Internationally, entities and climate frameworks like are working to scale the science and suite of actions that will address food security and help build a sustainable blue economy over the next several decades.

It’s clear each year requires an ongoing commitment to addressing the multiple and intersecting crises and opportunities facing our shared global community, because we know that increased urgency for climate and ocean action is directly linked to our shared recovery and our future resilience. As Climate Week NYC 2021 begins this week, all the more work is revealed. Today (Sept 21st) at 8am PDT/11am EDT we co-hosted an event with Ocean Conservancy, National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, and The Seattle Aquarium. “Integrated Policies for Ocean Climate Action: Building Coastal Resiliency in the U.S.” which examined how, in concert with federal partners, U.S. states are demonstrating the kinds of local actions, policy integration and regional cooperation that are needed to: (1) mobilize urgent action for reducing GHG emissions; and (2) help communities build resilience to climate-ocean change.

Speakers included:

• U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere

• Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State

• Dr. Beth Kerttula, National Caucus of Environmental Legislators Board President and former Director of White House National Ocean Council

• Janis Searles Jones, CEO of Ocean Conservancy

• State Legislators from across the U.S.

To learn more about what occured at the event and lessons learned about mobilizing action and bulding resilience, email jessie@oaalliance.org.

Jessie Turner is Project Manager for the International Alliance to Combat Ocean Acidification. To become a member, or to find resources like a toolkit for creating an OA Action Plan, as well as posters, publications, and webinars, visit their website.

Image credit MareLife, designed by Arild Saeter

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OPINION

By Robert Rheault  

Climate change is undeniably having profound impacts on our lives, and the marine ecosystems are no exception. The vast amounts of carbon dioxide that we have added to the earth’s atmosphere are changing the climate in dramatic ways that are embodied in record breaking heat waves, hundred and thousand-year floods, changing distributions of plants and insects and much more. In the marine realm we are seeing species distributions marching northward at a kilometer a year, while the increased frequency of significant rainfall events has forced many shellfish harvesters and farmers to suspend harvests because of rainfall closures.

One impact of the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide that many in the general population don’t know about is ocean acidification. Just a few decades ago, PhD. Oceanography students were taught that the pH of the world’s oceans is constant. The oceans were too vast and the oceans were so well buffered that nothing could budge our ocean pH from a comfortably neutral pH of 8.1. Well it turns out we were wrong. The pH of our oceans is declining, and that has impacts on a variety of organisms.

We also know that in the nearshore environment there are many processes at work that can cause wide daily fluctuations in pH. When the sun is shining a rich bloom of phytoplankton will consume most of the dissolved CO2 to make carbohydrates and grow, driving the local pH higher by as much as a full pH unit. At night those same plants will respire, consuming oxygen and releasing CO2 causing pH to plunge. Some eutrophic waters frequently see early morning CO2 concentrations much higher than we expect to see by the end of the century. Coastal areas with upwelling currents will periodically get pulses of oceanic deep water that is hypoxic, heavily enriched in CO2 and quite acidic. Coastal acidification driven by respiration and upwelling are natural processes that have gone on for millennia, while anthropogenic CO2 from fossil fuel consumption is a recent phenomenon.

Unfortunately, the full suite of impacts of acidification is still not fully understood. We know that shellfish and corals have to work harder to make shell under acidic conditions. Many fisheries managers are predicting dire consequences to our shellfisheries. Yet even the top scientists admit that we don’t really know what to expect and many of the dire predictions are based on some really shoddy science.

It is easy to bubble some CO2 into a beaker until you reach concentrations projected for some future time and then toss in some shellfish larvae to watch their shells dissolve and say the sky is falling. This sort of experiment is so easy a third grader can do it, but it tells us little about the real world. The real world of ocean chemistry is incredibly complex. The dynamics of shell formation is impacted by pH, alkalinity, aragonite saturation state and many other complex processes. There are interactions with the sediment, the phytoplankton, diel changes in sunlight, and the concentration of CO2 itself has direct physiological impacts on the physiology. If your experiment doesn’t keep track of all of these factors, it is pretty worthless, and yet we are seeing hundreds of these simpleton publications every year.

If the end of shellfish and corals is looming then I really need to know! But we still have questions about how shell is actually formed that you might think we should have resolved by now. We know we can expect some measure of epigenetic adaptation; when shellfish parents are exposed to acidic conditions the offspring are more resilient. The fact that shellfish evolved through the Carboniferous Period (300 million years ago when CO2 levels were much higher) may have left some trace genetic information that might help shellfish endure a low pH future.

Taking a bunch of animals and plunging them into a bath of low pH water and pretending it will predict how these species will react to future anthropogenic CO2 increases is incredibly naïve. It is like taking a human and throwing him in an ice bath to see how we might adapt to cold climates. It is an easy experiment to do but it doesn’t tell you much. If you vary the CO2 concentration or the alkalinity you invariably alter other components of the system like the aragonite saturation state and the ionic state of dissolved sulfides and metals. All these play important roles in mediating physiology, so you can’t really say what variable is causing the observed response. But there are plenty of other examples of poor OA science being published. I have seen experiments without controls, ones where larvae are tortured for weeks without food, and most commonly, experiments where the CO2 levels are jacked up to unrealistically high levels in the hopes that some type of measurable impact will be seen. I wonder why many of these papers ever get published!

Fortunately, we are starting to see some well-designed experiments. For instance, George Waldbusser has done some great work holding certain factors constant while varying others. This allows us to evaluate the impacts of each of these processes independently. These are incredibly challenging studies requiring highly sensitive instrumentation to monitor a suite of interconnected variables. We are starting to see labs trying to mimic real world conditions with sediments and phytoplankton and daily fluctuations in sunlight. Some researchers have already shown that exposing parental stocks to low pH can have profound impacts on the resilience of their progeny. Multi-generational studies will take more time, but should also give us important clues. We should probably start selecting lines of animals for resilience to future CO2 levels because selective breeding may be our best hope for the future.

I am not sanguine that continued increases in CO2 will not mean the end of shellfish. In fact, I am quite worried that the impacts of CO2 emissions have already baked in radical changes to our environment for decades to come, even if we were to somehow garner the political will to stop fossil fuel consumption in my lifetime. My plea is to stop publishing crappy science and to commit the proper resources to do good science so that we can answer these really important questions with some certainty. Since shellfish are the official “poster child” for OA impacts we really need to know what the future holds.

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By Jessica Ramos, for UC Davis Coastal and Marine Sciences Institute

The flashlight illuminates tens of thousands of swirling, floating specks, each no bigger than a breadcrumb. Raising my voice to be heard over the low roar of machinery in the wet lab, I ask Dr. Dan Swezey, a project scientist here at the Bodega Marine Laboratory and Isabelle Neylan, a graduate student in the Population Biology program (advised by Jay Stachowicz and Andy Sih), how old these minute red abalone are. They tell me that they are only six days old, and that they just might hold the key to a better understanding of what ocean acidification means for the future of their species.

Isabelle explains that she is particularly interested in transgenerational plasticity, which explores how the stressors that a parent experiences influences their offspring when offspring experience that same stress later in their life. In this particular project, Dan and Isabelle are investigating red abalone and ocean acidification. It’s April 8th, 2021, and just a few days ago Dan, Isabelle, and a team of helpers worked to spawn the sesame-seed-sized larvae that would help them answer questions about how ocean acidification will impact red abalone from generation to generation.

Now, I had the opportunity to ask them about the process and the long term implications of their work:

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about the process of spawning red abalone?

Daniel Swezey: It was a huge and collaborative team effort. So, we’ve been raising abalone we first created five years ago here at the marine lab for, well, five years. Then, last week we got a big team of people together to spawn our 5 year olds all at once. We’re talking 150 animals. That is a really big experiment for abalone, trying to spawn that many animals all at once. And the reason we tried to spawn so many is because we were very interested in specific parents that responded (to ocean acidification) a certain way when they were babies 5 years ago. The goal was making specific offspring from those specific moms and dads to see if they respond the same way in the next generation. And we were really successful.

It’s pretty much the best red abalone spawn we’ve had in five years, so a lot of parents reproduced and we had a good and organized team of 15 to 20 people all together. We were able to quickly collect sperm, collect eggs, make those crosses really fast, and still keep track of everything. We ended up making 82 different pairs of specific moms and dads, which is a lot. And those that made it, and developed properly were then put in our ocean acidification system in the wet lab, and now they’re six days old.

Q: What are they doing now that they’re six days old?

Daniel Swezey: They’re swimming still, so they’re larvae. Abalone swim for a week, they’re these little microscopic breadcrumb size swimming things that are green-colored. They’re quite cute even at the earliest stage. They’re pretty adorable under the scope and right now we have them in culture buckets that we’re giving flowing seawater to and they’re flowing back and forth between bucket pairs. Some of the buckets have acidic seawater simulating ocean conditions we expect in 20 years while some of the buckets have the pH of the current ocean, and so it’s been a really great process getting them through the larval phase all the way until tomorrow when we’re going to settle them. It’s been a very action-packed week.

Q: How does settling happen, and where do they settle?

Daniel Swezey: In nature they settle on coralline algae, which is a pink calcifying red alga found along the California coast.n captivity and in abalone farms they spread diatoms on surfaces for them to settle on. Diatoms are single celled plankton that cover the sea floor in nature, so a diatom layer is a more controlled environment that we give them after they finish swimming. he abalone kind of float down when they’re ready - right now they look like little nautiluses (if you know what those are) - kind of like little shells with tentacles, almost like little squids but very, very, very tiny, and when they settle they cue in on the diatoms and different cues on the seafloor. At this point, they’ve swam for a week and so they’re ready to use their last energy to turn into a snail. They go straight down and the nautilus flattens into this pancake-shaped abalone and then for the rest of their life they’re that flat pancake-like shape.

So tonight and tomorrow they’re going to be running out of energy, getting ready for the next phase, and then tomorrow morning when we come in they’ll probably all going to be going down to the bottom and turning into the abalone that we know.

Q: Where do you see the results of this project helping the most? What do you think the biggest impacts will be?

Isabelle Neylan: I think there are two things that are really cool about this project. The first is our understanding about basic science. How does the experience of a parent affect the experience of the offspring? That’s kind of an open question, and then I’m really curious about thinking about applications. So, for aquaculture, in particular, these are the animals that have been raised in an aquaculture setting through the lab, but this also applies to animals out in nature where they’re going to be experiencing more acidified oceans. So, if moms are able to adapt and give their babies a better fighting chance that’s good news for natural populations as well.

Daniel Swezey: Like Isabelle says it's a little of both. We’re concerned about what’s going to happen in the wild, so that’s a big part of this because we know the ocean’s changing. The ocean is getting more acidic, and red abalone populations have been doing very poorly over the last decade here on the California coast. After some major population declines linked to ocean heat waves and kelp loss, they don’t seem to be rebounding very well. So understanding what other impending ocean stressors could do to them on top of the challenges they already face is very important for managers of the fishery and the people that want to see and fish for red abalone in the wild.

It’s also important for aquaculture because the only way you can eat red abalone legally now is to get them from a farm. You can’t dive for them anymore, and as the ocean changes, seawater chemistry is also changing aquaculture farms, so they’re affected in the same way that wild populations are. If the pH drops in the ocean near a farm, then the whole farm's pH also drops, and that can have the same consequences for captive animals as wild animals. So helping growers understand what the negative consequences are going to be and what they can do onsite to mitigate those impacts is very important.

One thing we’re pursuing is breeding. Maybe there are acidification tolerant varieties. Those are the ones we should be breeding in the future. And then Isabelle’s question of should we raise the moms a certain way to set the offspring up for the future, and can the mom prime her babies to be ready for a challenging ocean. That totally applies to the growers, too, because if they have a strategy for raising moms, that really helps with their yields. That’s an important thing, so there’s lots riding on all this, and lots of information that we’ll hopefully get.

Q: What has been the most special part of this project for you?

Isabelle Neylan: This project was a lot of work and effort. We had a ton of help and people who came in and collaborated, and just a huge teamwork effort for pulling off such a big, ambitious project. I think when we proposed to do this we went big and realized that that was probably not quite what was going to happen, and now we kind of are achieving what we proposed to do, which doesn’t always happen in science. So it’s still kind of sinking in that we had such a successful spawn and that our babies are actually here and swimming. You know, we’ve been talking about this project for a long time, so the fact that it’s a reality was pretty wild.

Daniel Swezey: There’s a lot of gratitude for so many people that have been involved and we couldn’t have done it without the volunteers and the years and years of experiments with a former BML grad student (now postdoc) Sara Boles, Kristin Aquilino, the Whitehead Lab, and the Bodega Ocean Acidification Research Group group, all leading up to now. It took a lot of effort to figure out how to do this all the right way, so I’m just very grateful to have been a part of it for the last 6 years.

Update: As of July 2021, this experiment is completed, with the offspring having been successfully raised to the age of 3 months. Dan and Isabelle are working on gathering additional data and will be analyzing all of the collected data soon. Watch for more updates as their results are released.

Learn more about how red abalone are impacted by ocean acidification in this video and article about research conducted by Dr. Daniel Swezey and other researchers at Bodega Marine Laboratory. 

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Videos & Webinars:

NECAN Sea Grant Webinars

NECAN has a great archive of Sea Grant webinars, including "The Unusual Sensitivity of Northern Sand Lance, a Keystone Forage Fish, to Acidification and Warming," and "Gene Regulatory Response to End-Century Temperature and pCO2 in Post-Larval American Lobster." View them here. Check out the full archive of 2013-present webinars here.

Can CAT-astrophe
Take a minute and and a half to watch this amusing, general-public appropriate video short about ocean acidification produced by Jim McClintock and directed by award winning videographer Ingrid Pfau. It capitalizes on the popularity of cat videos on the internet!  

Ocean Acidification - the Evil Twin of Climate Change
In this TEDx talk, Dr. Triona McGrath explains how our oceans are changing due to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how it will impact our marine life. Triona shares her thoughts on ocean acidification and explain why it is the evil twin of climate change. Dr. Triona McGrath is a Fulbright scholar and post-doctorate research fellow, currently working with the National University of Ireland, Galway and the Marine Institute, Ireland. Her primary area of research is chemical oceanography where she is investigating ocean acidification in Irish marine waters

Ocean Acidification - A Cartoon Crash Course
An excellent animated video from nationally syndicated cartoonist Jim Tooney, of Sherman's Lagoon. Provides an amusing but solid look at OA. Similar videos were made for 9 other major marine conservation issues, see the full collection here.

Web:

The Ocean Acidification Information Exchange (OAIE) takes a different approach than most websites. Instead of focusing on one-way transfers of information to the website reader, it focuses on interaction and sharing. The heart of the OAIE is interactive teams that use the website’s collaboration tools to focus on specific topics related to ocean acidification or a specific region. Members of the OAIE can share resources and engage in online discussions, and, in doing so, will enhance stakeholder interactions and build well-informed communities working to respond and adapt to ocean acidification.The OAIE invites anyone working on ocean acidification to join, including but not limited to government, tribal, and academic research scientists, citizen scientists, experiential and formal educators, NGO employees, marine resources managers, policy makers, concerned citizens, aquaculturists, people in the fishing industry, technology developers, and data managers.

New NOAA Sea Level Rise Viewer 

Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) Website
GOA-ON is a collaborative international approach to document the status and progress of ocean acidification in open-ocean, coastal, and estuarine environments, to understand the drivers and impacts of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, and to provide spatially and temporally resolved biogeochemical data necessary to optimize modeling for ocean acidification.

C-CAN, the California Current Ocean Acidification Network, offers great news updates via email, as well as webinars each month. They host a past archive of in-depth OA webinars, such as: “Scientists on call: How aquaculturists and scientists are working together in the face of ocean acidification ” and “Forecasting pH and aragonite saturation state in the Pacific Northwest: progress and needs.”

http://news-oceanacidification-icc.org/
A daily news stream provided by the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre (OA-ICC)

West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel website. The panel is an interdisciplinary collaboration of 20 esteemed scientists representing California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

Global Ocean Health, with a media stream containing an archive of the most relevant OA stories and our own Ocean Acidification Reports. You can also sign up for future issues of the Report here. Find us on Twitter and on Facebook.

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Special thanks to Jordan Rabinowe at Pointe3 Real Estate, who will make a generous donation to Global Ocean Health on behalf of any client who completes a real estate transaction with him and requests it. Give him a call at (206) 579-5764.

And to Power Fuel Savers, representative of the Fitch Fuel Catalyst, which lowers emissions from fossil fuels as well as lowering engine operating costs has recently pledged to donate 5% of sales to the Global Ocean Health program. Check out powerfuelsavers.com to learn more, particularly if you operate a vessel. 

Finally, to Deckhand Seafoods, who has also pledged to donate a portion of all sales to Global Ocean Health, the flagship program of the National Fisheries Conservation Center. Read about their amazing smoked herring in this piece in The Washington Post, and visit their website here. 

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A look at OA research and related topics that you may have missed. The Report is not associated with these studies and does not necessarily agree with them.

Blue carbon stocks and exchanges along the California coast

Abstract

Salt marshes and seagrass meadows can sequester and store high quantities of organic carbon (OC) in their sediments relative to other marine and terrestrial habitats. Assessing carbon stocks, carbon sources, and the transfer of carbon between habitats within coastal seascapes are each integral in identifying the role of blue carbon habitats in coastal carbon cycling. Here, we quantified carbon stocks, sources, and exchanges in seagrass meadows, salt marshes, and unvegetated sediments in six bays along the California coast. In the top 20 cm of sediment, the salt marshes contained approximately twice as much OC as seagrass meadows did, 4.92 ± 0.36 kg OC m−2 compared to 2.20 ± 0.24 kg OC m−2, respectively. Both salt marsh and seagrass sediment carbon stocks were higher than previous estimates from this region but lower than global and US-wide averages, respectively. Seagrass-derived carbon was deposited annually into adjacent marshes during fall seagrass senescence. However, isotope mixing models estimate that negligible amounts of this seagrass material were ultimately buried in underlying sediment. Rather, the vast majority of OC in sediment across sites was likely derived from planktonic/benthic diatoms and/or C3 salt marsh plants.

Ward, M. A., Hill, T. M., Souza, C., Filipczyk, T., Ricart, A. M., Merolla, S., Capece, L. R., O'Donnell, B. C., Elsmore, K., Oechel, W. C., and Beheshti, K. M.: Blue carbon stocks and exchanges along the California coast, Biogeosciences, 18, 4717–4732, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-18-4717-2021, 2021.

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