The future of salmon in Denmark (audio)

Beyond the farms and ranches of Denmark, Oregon, the land is wild: mountain and forest, streams and rivers.

Between the Pistol and the Rogue Rivers, there’s Willow Creek and Crystal Creek, the Sixes River, and the Elk.

The emerald green Elk River winds down from the Coast range mountains, past tree-shaded banks. And riding the Elk’s currents to the sea are Chinook salmon.

Photographs and video from the Alaska “Acid Ocean SOS”

Commercial fishermen and other mariners join together to send an urgent message to save the oceans from ocean acidification caused by fossil fuel emissions in Homer, Alaska, on September 6, 2009. Over a hundred boats and hundreds of members of the fishing community participated in the event.

Ocean voices puts on first in Alaska

Demonstration sends a message to leaders that global warming puts us all in hot water

As more than 100 boats gathered in Kachemak Bay on Sunday to send out an S.O.S about ocean acidification via aerial art, many began to get a little antsy as a heavy fog continued to roll in and blanket the water.

Foraminifera promote calcification by elevating their intracellular pH

Surface seawaters are supersaturated with respect to calcite, but high concentrations of magnesium prevent spontaneous nucleation and growth of crystals. Foraminifera are the most widespread group of calcifying organisms and generally produce calcite with a low Mg content, indicating that they actively remove Mg2+ from vacuolized seawater before calcite precipitation. However, one order of foraminifera has evolved a calcification pathway, by which it produces calcite with a very high Mg content, suggesting that these species do not alter the Mg/Ca ratio of vacuolized seawater considerably. The cellular mechanism that makes it possible to precipitate calcite at high Mg concentrations, however, has remained unknown. Here we demonstrate that they are able to elevate the pH at the site of calcification by at least one unit above seawater pH and, thereby, overcome precipitation-inhibition at ambient Mg concentrations. A similar result was obtained for species that precipitate calcite with a low Mg concentration, suggesting that elevating the pH at the site of calcification is a widespread strategy among foraminifera to promote calcite precipitation. Since the common ancestor of these two groups dates back to the Cambrian, our results would imply that this physiological mechanism has evolved over half a billion years ago. Since foraminifera rely on elevating the intracellular pH for their calcification, our results show that ongoing ocean acidification can result in a decrease of calcite production by these abundant calcifyers.

Alaska fishermen: “SOS-Ocean Acid”

More than 100 fishing boats, sail boats, skiffs and kayaks took to the waters of Homer Alaska recently as commercial fishermen, mariners and others from coastal communities spelled out an urgent message to protect jobs and fisheries from the threat of ocean acidification.

The boats arranged themselves in the ocean to spell out “Ocean Acid SOS” as part of a ‘Voices for the Ocean’ event hosted by the Alaska Marine Conservation Council (AMCC) and the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP).