March 7, 2015 — His experience reflects drastic changes in the chemistry of coastal waters, the result of increasing acidification, which have been setting off alarms among fishermen, climate scientists, and policy makers from Cape Cod to Casco Bay.
“Hatcheries are the canary in the coal mine for the shellfish industry,” he said. “Because of our level of control, we can see problems that others might not — and we were seeing really big problems.”
The problems stem from a surge of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from fossil fuels that has made oceans on average 30 percent more acidic at the surface since the Industrial Revolution, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA scientists predict they will become 150 percent more acidic by 2100 — more than at any point in the past 20 million years.
Acidification has also been exacerbated by the region’s increasing precipitation. Federal reports have shown that rain or snow from heavy storms have increased more than 70 percent over the past 50 years in New England. The fresh water that drains from land is significantly more acidic than seawater and frequently carries sewage, organic matter, and other nutrients that add carbon dioxide in coastal waters.
The Gulf of Maine, which extends from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, is especially vulnerable to acidification, because carbon dioxide is absorbed more easily in colder water, and much of the region’s economy relies on the sea life that is most likely to suffer.
Read the full story and watch the video at the Boston Globe