Ocean acidification reaches deep-sea corals

With increasing levels of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere and moving into the world’s oceans, marine waters have become more acidic, scientists have shown. The long hand of acidification is reaching far down in The Deep. Corallium rubrum (pictured here) and other deep-sea corals are now being affected.

To address the growing concern for acidifying marine ecosystems, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 21 grants under the Ocean Acidification theme of its Climate Research Investment. The awards are supported and managed by NSF’s Office of Polar Programs, Directorate for Geosciences and Directorate for Biological Sciences. Projects will support research on the nature, extent and effects of ocean acidification on marine environments and organisms in the past, present and future — from tropical systems to icy seas.

How does your coral garden grow?

I don’t usually cover new research paper releases here, there are plenty of people already doing a fine job of that. But a coral experiment published this past weekend caught my eye – probably because I am here in Panama where it was carried out.

Researchers here have been looking at how ocean warming and acidification will affect one of the most important survival strategies reefs have: the settlement of coral larvae on a suitable rock, followed by the growth of baby coral polyps. Aaron O’Dea, Holger Anlauf and their colleagues at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, scooped up orangey-pink larvae of a tropical eastern-Pacific coral, Porites Panamensis, and grew them under very mild conditions of global warming to see what happened.