U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

42–610PS 2008

THE FEDERAL OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

RESEARCH AND MONITORING ACT:

H.R. 4174

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND

ENVIRONMENT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JUNE 5, 2008

Serial No. 110–106

Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.science.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chairman

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California

MARK UDALL, Colorado

DAVID WU, Oregon

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

BRAD MILLER, North Carolina

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois

NICK LAMPSON, Texas

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona

JERRY MCNERNEY, California

LAURA RICHARDSON, California

PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

DARLENE HOOLEY, Oregon

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

JIM MATHESON, Utah

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana

BARON P. HILL, Indiana

HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona

CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio

ANDRE ́ CARSON, Indiana

RALPH M. HALL, Texas

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR.,

Wisconsin

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan

FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

JO BONNER, Alabama

TOM FEENEY, Florida

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina

DAVID G. REICHERT, Washington

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska

PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

HON. NICK LAMPSON, Texas, Chairman

JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois

LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California

DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois

GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona

JERRY MCNERNEY, California

MARK UDALL, Colorado

BRIAN BAIRD, Washington

PAUL KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

BART GORDON, Tennessee

BOB INGLIS, South Carolina

ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland

JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri

RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida

RALPH M. HALL, Texas

JEAN FRUCI Democratic Staff Director

CHRIS KING Democratic Professional Staff Member

MICHELLE DALLAFIOR Democratic Professional Staff Member

SHIMERE WILLIAMS Democratic Professional Staff Member

ELAINE PAULIONIS PHELEN Democratic Professional Staff Member

ADAM ROSENBERG Democratic Professional Staff Member

ELIZABETH STACK Republican Professional Staff Member

TARA ROTHSCHILD Republican Professional Staff Member

STACEY STEEP Research Assistant

(III)

C O N T E N T S

June 5, 2008

Page

Witness List ............................................................................................................. 2

Hearing Charter ...................................................................................................... 3

Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman, Subcommittee on

Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S.

House of Representatives .................................................................................... 6

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 6

Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................................................... 7

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 7

Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member, Committee

on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives ............................. 8

Panel I:

Hon. Jay Inslee, a Representative in Congress from the State of Washington

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 9

Discussion ................................................................................................................. 10

Panel II:

Dr. Richard A. Feely, Supervisory Chemical Oceanographer, Pacific Marine

Environmental Laboratory, Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research,

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of

Commerce

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 13

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 15

Biography .......................................................................................................... 20

Dr. Joan A. Kleypas, Scientist, Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, National Center for Atmospheric Research

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 20

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 22

Biography .......................................................................................................... 30

Dr. Scott C. Doney, Senior Scientist, Department of Marine Chemistry and

Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 34

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 35

Biography .......................................................................................................... 43

Dr. Ken Caldeira, Scientist, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution of Washington

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 45

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 46

Biography .......................................................................................................... 48

Mr. Brad Warren, Director, Productive Oceans Partnership Program, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 55

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 59

Page

IV

Mr. Brad Warren, Director, Productive Oceans Partnership Program, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership—Continued

Biography .......................................................................................................... 61

Discussion

Interagency Coordination .................................................................................... 61

Ocean Acidification Monitoring ........................................................................... 62

International Cooperation ................................................................................... 62

More on Interagency Coordination ..................................................................... 63

Ocean Acidification Models ................................................................................. 64

The Effect of Ocean Acidification on Calcifying Organisms ............................. 65

Mitigation of Ocean Acidification ....................................................................... 66

Comments on H.R. 4174 ...................................................................................... 68

Reducing or Reversing Ocean Acidification ....................................................... 72

An International Panel on Ocean Acidification ................................................. 74

Atmospheric Transport ........................................................................................ 75

More on Ocean Acidification Monitoring ............................................................ 76

Appendix: Additional Material for the Record

Section-by-Section Analysis of H.R. 4174 .............................................................. 80

H.R. 4174, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act ........ 81

(1)

THE FEDERAL OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

RESEARCH AND MONITORING ACT: H.R. 4174

THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2008

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT,

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY,

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in Room

2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Nick Lampson

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

2

3

HEARING CHARTER

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT

COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The Federal Ocean Acidification

Research and Monitoring Act:

H.R. 4174

THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 2008

10:00 A.M.–12:00 P.M. 2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING

Purpose

On Thursday, June 5, 2008 the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the

Committee on Science and Technology will hold a hearing on H.R. 4174, the Federal

Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act.

The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on H.R. 4174, legislation introduced by Rep. Tom Allen of Maine on November 14, 2007. The Committee will also

examine the current status of science on ocean acidification and research and monitoring activities focused on ocean acidification and its potential impacts on marine

organisms and marine ecosystems.

Witnesses

Dr. Richard A. Feely, Supervisory Chemical Oceanographer, Pacific Marine

Environmental Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Dr. Feely will discuss the quantification of oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide

and NOAA’s monitoring program; major research issues to be addressed including

the relationship between the ocean acidification process and carbon cycling processes in the ocean.

Dr. Joan Kleypas, Scientist, Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, National Center for Atmospheric Research. Dr. Kleypas will discuss the

impacts of ocean acidification on marine life and marine ecosystems, particularly on

coral reef ecosystems.

Dr. Scott Doney, Senior Scientist, Department of Marine Chemistry and

Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Doney will discuss

the gaps in our understanding of ocean acidification and the implications of ocean

acidification for marine resource management. Dr. Doney will also discuss current

interagency efforts and federal programs addressing ocean acidification.

Dr. Ken Caldeira, Scientist, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science of Washington. Dr. Caldeira will discuss the ongoing changes

in the global carbon cycle and its relationship to ocean acidification including the

research and modeling efforts needed to better understand ocean acidification and

to project its impacts and develop strategies for adaptation and mitigation.

Mr. Brad Warren, Director, Productive Oceans Partnership Program, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership. The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership provides

policy and technical guidance to seafood suppliers and producers. The Productive

Oceans Partnership Program was formed to address the issue of ocean acidification.

Mr. Warren will discuss the potential impacts of ocean acidification on the world

seafood industry and the steps the Partnership is recommending to deal with the

problem of ocean acidification.

Background

What is Ocean Acidification?

Ocean acidification is the process by which the pH of seawater is being lowered

through the absorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. Atmospheric

concentrations of CO2 have increased over the past 200 years from a pre-industrial

4

1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007. ‘‘Working Group I: The Physical Science

Basis of Climate Change.’’ Fourth Assessment Report. Chapter 2, p. 137. 2The Royal Society 2005, Science Policy Section, ‘‘Oceanic acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide,’’ www.royalsoc.ac.uk 3The Royal Society 2005, Science Policy Section, ‘‘Oceanic acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide,’’ www.royalsoc.ac.uk

level of about 280 parts per million to 379 parts per million in 2005.1 The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere would be much higher if not for the absorption of

CO2 by the oceans. The oceans have absorbed about 50 percent of the carbon dioxide

(CO2) released over the past 200 years due to human activities resulting in chemical

reactions that release carbonic acid and lower ocean pH. The Royal Society of London released a report in 2005 of the consequences of ocean acidification and indicated that the increase in acidity could be as high as 30 percent over the last 200

years.2

Impacts of Ocean Acidification

While oceanic absorption of CO2 has reduced the atmospheric concentration of

CO2 and therefore limited the greenhouse effect, acidification of the oceans may

have negative consequences for sea-life that uses calcium carbonate to grow shells

and other physical structures. A growing number of studies have demonstrated adverse impacts on marine organisms, including a decreased rate at which reef-building corals produce their skeletons; reduction in the ability of marine algae and freeswimming zooplankton to maintain protective shells and exoskeletons; and reduced

survival of larval marine species, including commercial fish and shellfish. As ocean

pH decreases, the amount of available calcium carbonate decreases. Many marine

organisms require calcium carbonate to produce their shells and exoskeletons. Calcifying organisms include coral, mollusks, echinoderms and crustaceans.

The U.S. is the third largest seafood consumer in the world—total consumer spending for fish and shellfish is approximately $60 billion per year. Coastal and

marine commercial fishing generates as much as $30 billion per year and nearly

70,000 jobs. The organisms likely to be impacted by ocean acidity include both commercially important groups (e.g., clams, oyster, crab, shrimp, and lobster) and organisms that serve as primary food sources for other commercially important species.

Healthy coral reefs are the foundation of many of these viable fisheries, as well as

the source of tourism and recreation revenues. Changes to the stability of coastal

reefs may reduce the protection they offer to coastal communities against storm

surges and hurricanes.

Many fisheries are also under stress from over fishing, pollution, diseases, and

changes in water temperature.

Changes to the ocean’s chemistry can be so long-lasting that they are basically

irreversible once begun. According to the Royal Society of London’s report,3 it would

take ten thousand years for the oceans’ pH to return to their pre-industrial level.

Chemical additives to the ocean to restore pH are unproven and could have many

unintended consequences to ocean ecology and climate.

Current Federal Research and Monitoring Programs on Ocean Acidification

Although there are projects being funded through several federal agencies and

some initial workshops and meetings have been organized to identify key research

areas, there is no coordinated plan of research in place with identified funding to

ensure that all aspects of ocean acidification are being monitored and explored to

provide a comprehensive picture of this phenomenon. H.R. 4174 is intended to provide a statutory structure to ensure ongoing coordination of the relevant agencies

to develop a comprehensive federal research, monitoring and assessment program

to address the impacts of ocean acidification. A few of the recent activities undertaken by federal agencies are provided below.

NSF, NOAA, NASA, and USGS have been working to develop and coordinate individual agency programs on ocean acidification. These efforts also involve the academic research community and international partners. Japan, Korea, Canada and

the European Union are also developing research and monitoring efforts to better

understand ocean acidification. The agencies produced a workshop report: Impacts

of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A Guide for Future Research. NSF supported a workshop convened by Scripps Institution of Oceanography in October 2007 to discuss potential ocean acidification research projects

and to identify key gaps in knowledge about ocean acidification and its potential impacts.

Through these efforts the following key research and monitoring needs have been

identified: Monitoring of the changing ocean chemistry and biological impacts at

5

selected coastal and open-ocean monitoring stations, including satellite-based monitoring to characterize reef habitats and to detect changes in surface ocean chemistry

in response to ocean acidification; Research to understand the species-specific

physiological response of marine organisms to ocean acidification and develop environmental and ecological indices that track marine ecosystem responses to ocean

acidification; Modeling to predict changes in the ocean carbon cycle as a function

of CO2 and climate-induced changes in temperature, ocean circulation, biogeochemistry, ecosystems and terrestrial input; and to determine impacts on biological

systems; Technology development and standardization for carbonate chemistry

measurements on moorings and autonomous floats; and Analysis of social and economic implications of ocean acidification and development of adaptation strategies to help society cope with and respond to climate-induced changes in marine

ecosystems.

There are several federal monitoring and research projects underway. The National Science Foundation recently awarded a grant through its Biocomplexity in the

Environment area to support deployment of the first buoy to monitor ocean acidification in collaboration with scientists at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Washington and scientists at several universities. The buoy was launched

in the Gulf of Alaska last year and will measure air-sea exchange of carbon dioxide,

oxygen and nitrogen gases and it will measure pH of surface seawater.

In 2005, NSF and NOAA collaborated on a cruise to collect field data on ocean

acidification in the Pacific Ocean from the southern to the northern hemispheres as

part of a long-term, cooperative hydrographic study. The results indicated decreases

in pH and increases in dissolved inorganic carbon, both indicators of ocean acidification.

NSF is also supporting individual extramural academic research projects on ocean

acidification topics through several of its directorates and programs. For example,

Dr. Victoria Fabry is leading a team to study a species of marine snail to determine

how changes in seawater chemistry may impact its ability to extract calcium from

seawater to form its shell and other impacts on its physiology.

6

Chairman LAMPSON. Well, good morning. This hearing will come

to order. I welcome to today’s hearing all of you on this hearing on

the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, H.R.

4174.

We have heard that climate change will have tremendous consequences for our environment, and today we will learn about one

of these in detail, ocean acidification.

The oceans cover over 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and have

absorbed as much as 50 percent of our carbon emissions during the

past 200 years.

As we will hear from our witnesses today, the addition of this excess carbon dioxide has altered the equilibrium between the atmosphere and the ocean, and it is making seawater more acidic.

Ocean acidification poses a threat to many marine organisms and

ocean ecosystems. It reduces the ability of shellfish and corals to

form their shells and skeletons. It impacts the health and survival

of other organisms that are part of the food chain supporting fish

and marine mammals.

Coral reefs and many of our fisheries are already compromised

by over fishing, disease, pollution, and rising water temperatures.

Ocean acidification is yet another stress that could dramatically

and permanently alter our ocean environments.

H.R. 4174 introduced by our colleague from Maine, Congressman

Tom Allen, and co-sponsored by two Members of this committee,

Mr. Baird and Mr. Ehlers, is intended to coordinate and expand

the efforts of the Federal Government to expand our knowledge of

ocean acidification. Through more comprehensive monitoring and

research we can begin to develop strategies to address the impacts

of these changes on our fisheries and ocean ecosystems.

We have a distinguished panel of experts here with us today. I

look forward to their testimony and your recommendations of what

the Federal Government can do to address this serious issue and

preserve the productivity and diversity of our oceans.

[The prepared statement of Chairman Lampson follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN NICK LAMPSON

Good morning. I want to welcome everyone to today’s hearing on The Federal

Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act: H.R. 4174.

In this committee we have heard that climate change will have tremendous consequences for our environment and today we will learn about one of these in detail—ocean acidification.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere dissolves in our oceans causing the pH

of the ocean to decrease. Our oceans are our largest environment, covering over seventy percent of the Earth’s surface and have absorbed as much as fifty percent of

our carbon emissions during the past two hundred years.

Our oceans, however, are not simply a convenient CO2 storage sink. As we will

hear from our witnesses today, too much CO2 disrupts the healthy equilibrium between our atmosphere and oceans.

The pH of the ocean decreasing poses a threat to the most delicate ocean ecosystems. For example, it reduces the ability of coral, shrimp, lobsters, and crab, to

grow their shells and structures.

The changing ocean environment is likely to threaten not only these species, but

impact the health of other ecosystems that support the food chain of fish, shrimp

and our larger marine organisms. For example, coral reefs, around the world and

off the coast of my home State of Texas, are already compromised by rising temperatures and land run off. Ocean acidification is yet another event that could dramatically and permanently alter our ocean environments.

While this committee cannot regulate carbon dioxide emissions, we can aid the

science and research to understand our changing world.

7

I am pleased we are here today to discuss H.R. 4174. The Act was introduced by

our colleague from Maine, Congressman Tom Allen, and is sponsored by two Members of this committee from both sides of the aisle, Mr. Baird and Mr. Ehlers, and

our guest from Energy and Commerce, Mr. Inslee.

I am looking forward to hearing from our witnesses today on what the Federal

Government should be doing to strengthen the research in order to understand the

ecological state and consequences of ocean acidification.

Chairman LAMPSON. At this time I would like to yield to my distinguished colleague from South Carolina, our Ranking Member,

Mr. Inglis, for an opening statement.

Mr. INGLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate you holding

this hearing.

On our way to Antarctica this past January, our Science Committee CODEL stopped for a day in Australia to visit the Great

Barrier Reef. Scientists there gave us a primer on the effects of

ocean acidification on coral reefs. As climate change debate continues, it is essential for us to focus not only on atmospheric effects

but also on the oceanic implications as well, understanding that the

ocean holds tremendously valuable resources for the world’s economy and environment.

The Federal Government is currently working to address ocean

acidification on a number of fronts. Programs such as NSF, NOAA,

NASA, and USGS all have individual efforts to work to understand

the changing ocean chemistry and its biological impacts. H.R. 4174,

the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act,

would organize and coordinate these efforts into a comprehensive

research, monitoring, and assessment program.

The effects of ocean acidification I witnessed first hand in Australia highlight the necessity that this research should also be in

a global undertaking. The European Union is launching the ‘‘European Project of Ocean Acidification’’ next week in Paris. This

project has been put together to fill in the many gaps of our understanding of the impacts and ramifications of ocean acidification. As

we move forward, I would hope that our research agenda reflects

the fact that this is an international issue and encourages our scientists to work with their colleagues overseas.

Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from

our witnesses on their perspectives on this legislation and any suggestions they may have to make improvements.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Inglis follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE BOB INGLIS

Thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman.

On our way to Antarctica this past January, our CODEL stopped for a day in

Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists there gave us a primer on the

effects of ocean acidification on coral reefs. As the climate change debate continues,

it is essential for us to focus not only on atmospheric effects, but on the oceanic implications as well, understanding that the ocean holds valuable resources for our

economy and environment.

The Federal Government is currently working to address ocean acidification on

many fronts. Programs such as NSF, NOAA, NASA, and USGS all have individual

efforts at work to understand the changing ocean chemistry and its biological impacts. H.R. 4174, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act,

would organize and coordinate these efforts into a comprehensive research, monitoring and assessment program.

The effects of ocean acidification I witnessed first-hand in Australia highlights the

necessity that this research should also be a global undertaking. The European

Union is launching the ‘‘European Project of Ocean Acidification’’ next week in

8

Paris. This project has been put together to fill in the many gaps in our understanding of the impacts and ramifications of ocean acidification. As we move forward, I would hope that our research agenda reflects the fact that this is an international issue and encourages our scientists to work with their colleagues overseas.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on

their perspectives of this legislation and any suggestions they may have to improve

it.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Inglis.

I ask unanimous consent that all additional opening statements

submitted by the, by Committee Members be included in the

record. Without objection, so ordered.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE JERRY F. COSTELLO

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing today, as this is an important

opportunity to learn more about the affects of carbon dioxide on our environment

and more specifically, our oceans. As Congress considers climate change legislation

in the future, this committee will undoubtedly examine the legislative options available to address the affects of global warming. It is important to understand how carbon dioxide affects all aspects of our planet, and I’m pleased that our witnesses are

here today to further discuss this issue.

Although government research does exist on the acidification of oceans and the

living environment they support, it is clear that we have only scratched the surface.

As researchers and as policy-makers, we do not know enough about the effects of

CO2 on our ecosystems.

With the rising energy costs in our country, there is an increasing urgency to find

clean, renewable sources of energy that have a zero carbon footprint. With better

research and the tools to address this issue, the better prepared we will be to develop technologies that will yield a steady, stable source of energy. During my tenure on this committee and throughout my time in Congress, I have been a strong

supporter of Carbon Capture Sequestration technology, so that we can use domestic

sources of energy safely, without harm to our ecosystems.

It is clear from our witnesses today that the scientific community is well-poised

to take advantage of this bill. The programs that would begin under H.R. 4174

would finally allow for a federally-directed and federally-funded program to build

upon the existing ocean acidification research.

I’m confident that the scientific community would yield results that would prove

useful to help create the innovative technology solutions that we will need to help

solve the problem of carbon dioxide and global warming. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to our witnesses’ testimony today and I yield back.

Panel I:

Chairman LAMPSON. At this time I would like to yield to my distinguished colleague from Washington, Mr. Baird, to introduce our

first panel.

Mr. BAIRD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to invite my

dear friend and colleague, Mr. Inslee, up to the desk there, and I

want to introduce him. It is a real pleasure to introduce somebody

who had led this Congress in its efforts on global warming and

ocean acidification.

As many of us know, this is the shameless plug part, but it is

warranted. Mr. Inslee is the author of ‘‘Apollo’s Fire,’’ which I understand has sold over 10,000 copies, and I am glad that it has. I

hope it sells many more, because it is a comprehensive and very

positive look at what we can do to reduce ocean acidification. I had

the privilege of traveling with Mr. Inglis last year the Great Barrier Reef. We know how important it is there. Mr. Inslee has been

involved in following up on some of the studies of the Great Northwest, where we are also having acidification problems, and I see

9

some folks here in the room who are part of the meeting that just

kicked off yesterday, Ocean Week, here on the Capitol. It is tremendously appropriate we are having this hearing today.

I think, Mr. Chairman, that at some point people may look back

on this hearing and on all the other things that are going on the

Capitol today and during the next few months, this hearing may

be addressing one of the most grave threats to all of humanity and

to our planet, and I am grateful for your leadership and calling it

and grateful for Mr. Inslee for his presence as with all the other

witnesses here.

Chairman LAMPSON. Congressman Inslee, you are recognized to

make your statement.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAY INSLEE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, and I appreciate Mr. Baird’s shameless

plug for my book. We were going to cast Harrison Ford in the lead

of ‘‘Apollo’s Fire,’’ the movie, but we are now going to cast Congressman Brian Baird as the male lead in the movie.

Mr. BAIRD. If you make it, I want to be in it.

Mr. INSLEE. No, no. We have some roles for everyone. And everyone does have a role in this revolution actually.

I want to thank the Chair and Ranking Member Inglis for holding this hearing. I agree with Mr. Baird that this really could be

the largest issue we are going to grapple with in the next several

decades. And just on a personal observation how I came to be

aware of it, you know, for years I have been doing quite a bit of

reading about global warming, back to, you know, mid 1990s, and

I have been trying to keep abreast of the science involving global

warming. And for years I thought this was a wonderful phenomenon because the oceans were sucking up what I called excess

CO2 out of the atmosphere, and you know, sequestering it in the

ocean so we could get it out of that atmosphere and reduce the impact of the climactic system.

So for a long period of time I thought this was a blessing that

the oceans were a sponge for carbon dioxide, until May 9, 2006,

when Ken Caldeira, another scientist, came to us here in Congress

and said, this is great, except it is creating acidic conditions in the

ocean, and we have now had a 30 percent increase in ions associated with the acidic and corrosive activities in the ocean.

And the reason I mention this is that this is kind of a tell-tale

reason why climactic changes and CO2 is so dangerous. None of us,

at least I did not see this as a problem until just the last year or

two, and it shows you how this, when we mess with Mother Nature, it can bite us big time in ways that we do not understand,

because we still have such a primitive understanding of the carbon

dioxide cycle and what it does throughout these multiple systems,

biological and geological and otherwise.

So I think this is a perfect example of the danger associated with

CO2 and the atmosphere that we still don’t understand exactly

what it is doing.

So obviously this is a problem that we need better scientific

knowledge about. We had a hearing in Seattle led by Senator Cantwell on this last week or the week before last, and we are very conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
10

cerned about this in the Puget Sound region, because we are so intimately involved. You know, the iconic restaurant in Seattle is

Ivers Acres of Clams, and Ivers said, when the tide is out, the table

is set with clams and oysters. And that may not be the case in

Puget Sound in the next century as conditions become so acidic

that it can retard the ability to form a calcium carbonate structure

which could hurt all the clam and oyster lovers like myself.

But to me, I will just tell you here is what really does terrify me,

even on a deeper basis that may cause oyster farms to be in trouble, is that 30 percent of the world’s bottom of the food chain, the

zooplankton, form some calcium carbonate structure. And at some

point it becomes difficult for those little critters to form calcium,

and that is the base of the entire food chain, upon which, you

know, seven to 10 percent of our protein internationally comes from

and which the whales depend on ultimately.

So the whole food chain of the ocean, I believe, is at risk at some

level. We don’t know exactly where that level is. The biology is

very, it is in its very early stages to figure that out, but we had

a scientist there in Seattle two weeks ago say she has actually seen

a shell dissolve in corrosive water of the types that we will find the

next century or so if things do not change. And we have seen the

devastation the coral reefs are already experiencing, and the scientists will talk about that.

So in an answer to that I hope that we can move a bill that will

try to develop a more, a systematic approach to federal research on

how to really tackle this problem. We have been very lucky that

some of the scientists today almost volunteered their time to go research this. We were lucky to dodge this bullet. We did not have

an organized sentinel on duty for the Federal Government to look

for this problem. We need to have an organized federal approach

to this, and this bill is one approach on how to do that, and I know

there are things we can talk about how to make it perfect, but we

need to have some systematic, scientific approach to this, both on

a national and ultimately international level. And I think that this

bill is one step forward to accomplish this.

So we should not be blind-sided by this or anything else, and we

were lucky to have these men and women working for us. They

were the minute men and women, but now we need a more organized approach. And I hope that this bill will help move that forward.

So thank you for your farsightedness in holding this hearing.

Any questions, happy to oblige.

DISCUSSION

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Inslee. I don’t

have questions. Does anyone wish to question?

Yes, sir. You are recognized.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me try and get a little

bit of the basic science of the concern.

I assume when you talk about more CO2 in the atmosphere then

as the rain comes down, it picks it up, turns it into carbonic acid,

and that goes into the ocean. So it is a form of sort of acid rain.

It is not a sulfuric type of stuff, but it is more of a carbonic acid.

11

And then that changes the pH of the ocean. Is that the basic concern mechanically of what is going on?

Mr. INSLEE. Given my test scores in freshman chemistry, I may

not be the proper person to ask that question to, but generally

speaking, yes. I actually don’t know if it is conveyed through rain

or just some partial pressure driving the CO2 to go into solution,

and the chemists behind me will answer that. And I should point

out that when we say it becomes more acidic, it actually becomes

less base, because the ocean is actually in base conditions, and it

reduces the pH, a very small number. On a logarithmic scale that

is about a 30 percent increase in those ions that would be, ‘‘acidic.’’

So it is definitely a corrosive, though, for biological, anything

forming a calcium-base system, and that is where the real problem

is. So I hope that I didn’t cloud it too much.

Mr. AKIN. Mr. Chairman, if it is okay, is there somebody else

who wanted to go a little further?

Mr. INSLEE. Yes. You better defer to the real scientific——

Chairman LAMPSON. We will have the next panel come up in just

a minute.

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Inslee.

Chairman LAMPSON. They will be able to get into the details of

that.

Dr. Bartlett.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much.

Carbon dioxide, of course, is very soluble in water, and the colder

the water the higher the solubility. We require something like 10

percent oxygen, and we have about almost 21 percent, we can

make due at 10 percent, but our plants at the other side of this

cycle, they have less than .04 percent CO2. If you are a rose fan,

you are growing them in the greenhouse, you put a tank of CO2

in there, and you crack the valve because they get starved for CO2

shortly in the wintertime.

The ocean, of course, has two kinds of plankton, the zooplankton

you mentioned, which may be adversely affected by higher CO2,

but the phytoplankton should be happier with high CO2. The

oceans will certainly be different with higher CO2, and I am wondering what that ultimate balance might be. The phytoplankton is

going to do better, it is going to grow faster with higher CO2 levels.

There may be some impediment to the, some of the things that the

zooplankton need to do, but it will be a very different world. And

I don’t know whether it will be a worse world or not, but it will

certainly be different, and there is a risk that it could be worse.

So thank you very much for your——

Mr. INSLEE. I appreciate that. I think that is a really important

point. The answer is obviously we don’t know what, you know, the

differences will be. One of the scientists at this hearing in Seattle

basically said that it is at least a substantial likelihood that there

will be species substitution. You will have niches in the food chain

that may be filled by different species, but that is not exactly a benign answer, because I don’t think my constituents are going to be

happy about a fishing season on jellyfish as opposed to a season on

salmon.

And that is one of the situations, and by the way, there is, I am

told that there is some things going on there right now. There is

12

a profusion of jellyfish going on in the oceans. I don’t know what

the reason for that it is, but, yes, important point.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Dr. Bartlett.

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Chair, perhaps one of our later witnesses could

comment on the profusion of jellyfish in this institution as well.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you for that insight.

Mr. MCNERNEY. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LAMPSON. Mr. Inslee, thank you——

Mr. MCNERNEY. I just want to say, I have been here for about

a year and a half, and I have worked with Mr. Inslee on global

warming issues. He has shown a lot of leadership, and I appreciate

your coming and testifying before us today. I think you are doing

a great job.

Mr. INSLEE. And I am often wrong but never in doubt, as you

know.

Chairman LAMPSON. Well, we think that you are doing a tremendous job——

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr.——

Chairman LAMPSON.—keeping this on our minds and raising the

awareness of the world. So, thank you very much, Mr. Inslee.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Chairman, can I say——

Chairman LAMPSON. Yes.

Ms. WOOLSEY.—nice things about my colleague?

Chairman LAMPSON. Certainly you may, Ms. Woolsey. You are

recognized. Just don’t say anything too nice.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Jay, I want to say nice things about you.

Mr. INSLEE. Okay. I will listen.

Ms. WOOLSEY. All I can tell you is every time we start talking

about our Democratic position on global warming and energy, I say,

has anybody asked Jay Inslee. So we need to pay attention to what

he is saying. He is a guru, and he is going to be a huge part of

what goes right.

Mr. INSLEE. I really appreciate that. Let me just say one thing.

I do want to say, though, we are not going to apparently pass the

cap and trade system. It would be the first step in an effort to deal

with these kind of problems this year. I just want to say that I am

optimistic about our ability on a bipartisan, international, multilevel approach to solve this problem.

I do believe it is the largest problem humanity has faced at one

time internationally ever. There has never been a problem that

people have ever shared all the way around the world other than

this one, and we all share this everywhere in the world. And I believe it is going to unite the world eventually. I believe it is going

to be a significant cause for economic growth, because the problems

we are talking about here have a solution to technologies, which we

can create in this country.

And I was just in Napa, California, two weeks ago, meeting with

the venture capital community and a bunch of CEOs who are building the technologies today to grow the U.S. economy that will also

stop ocean acidification. And I think we should be optimistic and

very American and bullish on our ability to solve this, and I look

forward to it.

13

Thank you.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you very, very much.

As he leaves and we invite the next panel up, we will just take

a breather here without calling it a recess. So we will pause.

Panel II:

Chairman LAMPSON. I want to welcome our second panel of witnesses here. Dr. Richard Feely is the Supervisory Chemical Oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more commonly

known as NOAA. Dr. Joan Kleypas is a Research Scientist at the

Institute for the Study of Society and Environment at the National

Center for Atmospheric Research. Dr. Scott Doney is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole,

Massachusetts. Dr. Ken Caldeira is a Scientist at the Carnegie Institution, Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University,

and Mr. Brad Warren is the Director of the Productive Oceans

Partnership Program at the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership.

You will each have five minutes in your spoken testimony. Your

written testimony will be included in the record for the hearing,

and when you all complete your testimony, we will begin with

questions. Each Member will have five minutes to question the

panel.

Dr. Feely, you may begin.

STATEMENT OF DR. RICHARD A. FEELY, SUPERVISORY CHEMICAL OCEANOGRAPHER, PACIFIC MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL

LABORATORY, OFFICE OF OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH, NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Dr. FEELY. Good morning, Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member

Inglis, and Members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for giving me

the opportunity to discuss ocean acidification and the Administration’s views on H.R. 4174.

Over the past two centuries the oceans have absorbed approximately 525 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The

ocean’s daily uptake of 22 million tons of carbon dioxide is starting

to have a significant affect on the chemistry and biology of the

oceans. Hydrographic surveys and modeling studies reveal that the

chemistry changes in seawater resulting from absorption of carbon

dioxide are increasing the acidity of the seawater.

Furthermore, future predictions indicate the oceans will continue

to absorb carbon dioxide and become more acidic. It is now well established that our ocean surface waters have increased in acidity

by about 30 percent.

Future predictions of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations

indicate by the middle of the century atmospheric carbon dioxide

levels could reach 500 parts per million and near the end of the

century could be as high as 800 parts per million. This will result

in the ocean becoming approximately 150 percent more acidic.

To this point in historical perspective this increase in surface

ocean acidity will result in the oceans being more acidic than it has

been for over 20 million years. The increase in ocean acidification

14

has significant affects on many marine ecosystems and species. For

example, increased ocean acidification significantly reduces ability

of reforming corals to produce their skeletons. This affects the individual coral’s growth rates and makes the reefs more vulnerable to

erosion.

Ongoing research is showing that the increased ocean acidification may also harm commercially-important fish and shellfish larvae. Scientists have also seen a reduced ability of marine algae and

free-flowing plants and animals to produce the protective carbonate

shells. The effects of ocean acidification on coral reef ecosystems

and fisheries could reverberate throughout the entire U.S. and

global economy.

Ocean acidification is an important new scientific frontier. NOAA

research activities offer significant contributions to improving our

understanding and assessing the impacts of this rapidly-emerging

issue. NOAA’s ocean acidification research falls into three main

categories; observations, physiological effects on marine species,

and modeling efforts.

An example I would like to share with some of you, the new research that we have acquired this past year. NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory carries out ocean observations.

Their carbon dioxide measurements on ships and monitoring buoys

provide data that helps NOAA discern seasonal changes in the

ocean carbon system.

Recently we discovered that up along the west coast of North

America is drawing corrosive, acidic waters up onto the Continental Shelf. This process happens during the spring and summer

months when the winds push surface waters away from the coast

and draw CO2-rich waters on the Continental Shelf in very shallow

waters. In fact, we observed some of the coastal waters had actually up-welled all the way to the surface off the northern coast of

California.

These findings are quite surprising. No one considered that upwelling of corrosive waters offshore would make the waters on our

Continental Shelf so vulnerable to ocean acidification on the

timescales that the models have provided thus far. Our findings

represent the first evidence that a large section of the North American Continental Shelf is seasonally impacted by ocean acidification. This means that ocean acidification may be seriously impacting marine life on our Continental Shelf right now.

The introduction of H.R. 4174 reflects recommendations from the

national scientific community for coordination of scientific research

on this issue. The scientific community has identified four major

themes for a research program. These include carbon system monitoring, calcification and physiological response studies, environment and ecosystem modeling, and socioeconomic risk assessments.

This research will provide resource managers with the basic information they need to develop strategies for protection of critical species, habitats, and ecosystems.

With support and we support the intent of H.R. 4174 to develop

an ocean acidification research and monitoring plan and appreciate

the interests of this committee on this research area. As part of our

mission NOAA has a strong foundation of ocean acidification research. We will be able to provide strong leadership for federal

15

inter-agency effort examining ocean acidification across the Federal

Government.

Because of the very potential for ocean-wide effects of ocean

acidification at all levels of the marine ecosystem, we can expect

to see significant effects that are of immense importance to humankind. Ocean acidification is an emerging scientific issue, and much

research is needed before ecosystem species responses are well understood.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to address this committee, and I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Feely follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD A. FEELY

Introduction

Chairman Lampson and Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for giving me

the opportunity to speak with you today on ocean acidification and the Administration’s views on H.R. 4174, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring

Act of 2007. My name is Richard Feely. I am a Supervisory Chemical Oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory of the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, WA. My personal area of research

is the study of the oceanic carbon cycle and ocean acidification processes. I have

worked for NOAA for 34 years and have published more than 165 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, book chapters and technical reports. I serve on the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program Scientific Steering Group and I am the co-chair of the

U.S. Repeat Hydrography Program Scientific Oversight Committee. I am also on the

International Scientific Advisory Panel for the European Program on Ocean Acidification.

What is Ocean Acidification?

As the Committee is aware, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) has documented, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the atmosphere

have increased since the start of the industrial age. What happens to all that CO2

that is put into the atmosphere? Over the past two centuries, the oceans have absorbed approximately 525 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or

about one third of the anthropogenic carbon emissions released during this period

(Sabine and Feely, 2007). This natural process of absorption has benefited humankind by significantly reducing the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and mitigating some of the impacts of global warming. However, the ocean’s current daily

uptake of 22 million tons of carbon dioxide is starting to have a significant impact

on the chemistry and biology of the oceans.

Over the last three decades, NOAA, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy have co-sponsored repeat hydrographic and chemical surveys of

the world oceans, documenting the ocean’s response to increasing amounts of carbon

dioxide being emitted to the atmosphere by human activities. These surveys have

confirmed the oceans are absorbing increasing amounts of carbon dioxide. Both the

hydrographic surveys and modeling studies reveal that chemical changes in seawater resulting from absorption of carbon dioxide are increasing the acidity of seawater (or, lowering its pH, the scale used to measure acidity). Scientists have estimated that the pH of our ocean surface waters has already fallen by about 0.11

units from an average of about 8.21 to 8.10 since the beginning of the industrial

revolution (a drop in pH indicates an increase in acidity, as on the logarithmic pH

scale 7.0 is neutral, with points lower on the scale being ‘‘acidic’’ and points higher

on the scale being ‘‘basic’’; Raven et al., 2005). Further, future predictions indicate

that the oceans will continue to absorb CO2 and become more acidic. Estimates of

future atmospheric and oceanic carbon dioxide concentrations, based on the IPCC

emission scenarios and numerical circulation models, indicate that by the middle of

this century atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could reach more than 500 parts per

million (ppm), and near the end of the century they could be over 800 ppm (Orr

et al., 2005). This would result in a surface water pH decrease of approximately 0.4

pH units as the ocean becomes more acidic. To put this in historical perspective,

the resulting surface ocean pH would be lower than it has been for more than 20

million years (Feely et al., 2004).

16

Effects of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs

Many marine organisms that produce calcium carbonate shells are negatively impacted by increasing carbon dioxide levels in seawater (and the resultant decline in

pH). For example, increasing ocean acidification has been shown to significantly reduce the ability of reef-building corals to produce their skeletons, affecting growth

of individual corals and making the reef more vulnerable to erosion (Kleypas et al.,

2006). Some estimates indicate that, by the end of this century, coral reefs may

erode faster than they can be rebuilt. This could compromise the long-term viability

of these ecosystems and perhaps impact the thousands of species that depend on

the reef habitat. Decreased calcification may also compromise the fitness or success

of these organisms and could shift the competitive advantage towards organisms

that are not dependent on calcium carbonate. Carbonate structures are likely to be

weaker and more susceptible to dissolution and erosion in a more acidic environment. In long-term laboratory and mesocosm experiments corals that have been

grown under lower pH conditions for periods longer than one year have not shown

any ability to adapt their calcification rates to the low pH levels. In fact, a recent

study showed that the projected increase in CO2 is sufficient to dissolve the calcium

carbonate skeletons of some coral species (Fine and Tchernov, 2007).

Effects of Ocean Acidification on Fish and Shellfish

Ongoing research is showing that decreasing pH may also have deleterious effects

on commercially important fish and shellfish larvae. Both king crab and silver

seabream larvae exhibit very high mortality rates in CO2-enriched waters

(Ishimatsu et al., 2004). Some of the experiments indicated that other physiological

stresses were also apparent. Exposure of fish to lower pH levels can cause decreased

respiration rates, changes in blood chemistry, and changes in enzymatic activity.

The calcification rates of the edible mussel (Mytilus edulis) and Pacific oyster

(Crassostrea gigas) decline linearly with increasing CO2 levels (Gazeau et al., 2007).

Squid are especially sensitive to ocean acidification because it directly impacts their

blood oxygen transport and respiration (Po ̈rtner et al., 2005). Sea urchins raised in

lower-pH waters show evidence for inhibited growth due to their inability to maintain internal acid-base balance (Kurihara and Shirayama, 2004). The food supply of

these commercially valuable species is in jeopardy from ocean acidification. Scientists have also seen a reduced ability of marine algae and free-floating plants and

animals to produce protective carbonate shells (Feely et al., 2004; Orr et al., 2005).

These organisms are important food sources for other marine species. One type of

free-swimming mollusk called a pteropod is eaten by organisms ranging in size from

tiny krill to whales. In particular, pteropods are a major food source for North Pacific juvenile salmon, and also serve as food for salmon, mackerel, pollock, herring,

and cod. Other marine calcifiers, such as coccolithophores (microscopic algae), foraminifera (microscopic protozoans), coralline algae (benthic algae), echinoderms

(sea urchins and starfish), and mollusks (snails, clams, and squid) also exhibit a

general decline in their ability to produce their shells with decreasing pH (Kleypas

et al., 2006).

Effects on Marine Ecosystems

Since ocean acidification research is still in its infancy, it is impossible to predict

exactly how the individual species responses will cascade throughout the marine

food chain and impact the overall structure of marine ecosystems. It is clear, however, from both the existing data and from the geologic record that some coral and

shellfish species will be negatively impacted in a high-CO2 ocean. The rapid disappearance of many calcifying species in past extinction events has been attributed,

in large part, to ocean acidification events (Zachos et al., 2005; Vernon, 2008). Over

the next century, if CO2 emissions are allowed to increase as predicted by the IPCC

CO2 emissions scenarios, mankind may be responsible for increasing oceanic CO2

and making the oceans more corrosive to calcifying organisms than at anytime in

the last 20 million years. Thus, the decisions we make about carbon dioxide emissions over the next several decades will probably have a profound influence on the

makeup of future marine ecosystems for centuries to millennia.

Potential Economic Impacts

The impact of ocean acidification on fisheries and coral reef ecosystems could reverberate through the U.S. and global economy. The U.S. is the third largest seafood

consumer in the world with total consumer spending for fish and shellfish around

$70 billion per year. Coastal and marine commercial fishing generates upwards of

$35 billion per year and employs nearly 70,000 people (NOAA Fisheries Office of

Science and Technology; http://www.st.nmfs.gov/st1/fus/fus05/index.html). InVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
17

creased ocean acidification may directly or indirectly influence the fish stocks because of large-scale changes in the local ecosystem dynamics. It may also cause the

dissolution of the newly discovered deep water corals in the Alaskan Aleutian Island

region. Many commercially important fish species in this region depend on this particular habitat for their survival. Healthy coral reefs are the foundation of many viable fisheries, as well as the source of jobs and businesses related to tourism and

recreation. In the Florida Keys, coral reefs attract more than $1.2 billion in tourism

annually. In Hawaii, reef-related tourism and fishing generate $360 million per

year, and their overall worth has been estimated at close to $10 billion. In addition,

coral reefs provide vital protection to coastal areas that are vulnerable to storm

surges and tsunamis.

NOAA Ocean Acidification Research

Ocean acidification is an important new scientific frontier. NOAA research activities offer significant contributions to improving our understanding and assessing the

impacts of this rapidly emerging issue. NOAA research relevant to ocean acidification falls into the categories of ocean observations, studies of the physiological impact on marine species, and support of environmental and ecological modeling efforts.

For example, some on going work includes the following:

• The Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory’s CO2 shipboard measurements and monitoring buoys provide data that helps NOAA discern seasonal

changes in the oceanic carbon system.

• The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory monitors

changes in CO2 and pH through the use of chemical sensors on ships and

moorings.

• The NOAA Repeat Hydrography Program provides valuable data on the

large-scale changes of carbon system and ocean acidification over decadal

time scales.

• NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program plans to conduct a study starting in FY 2008 and continuing in FY 2009 to determine the impacts of global

climate change and coral bleaching on the recreation and tourism industry in

the Florida Keys.

• Sea Grant supports research on the affects of ocean acidification on coral

reefs in Hawaii.

• The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory participated in the OceanCarbon Cycle Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP2) to develop an international collaboration to improve the predictive capacity of carbon cycle models through evaluation and intercomparison.

• NOAA Fisheries Alaska Fisheries Science Center has been conducting

exposure studies of blue king crab larval survival due to reduced pH.

• NOAA Fisheries Southwest Fisheries Science Center has been evaluating the long-term impacts of low pH on marine plankton in the California

Current and off Antarctica.

• Projects funded by NOAA Global Carbon Cycle Program at NOAA laboratories and universities provide necessary information to address the CO2 and

pH changes in the ocean.

NOAA Views on H.R. 4174, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and

Monitoring Act of 2007

As noted in our views letter on S. 1581, the companion bill to H.R. 4174, the Administration supports the intent of the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and

Monitoring Act of 2007, to develop an ocean acidification research and monitoring

plan, and appreciates the interest of the Committee on this area of research. However, the bill creates an interagency committee that is largely redundant with existing government bodies.

In support of well-coordinated programs for climate change and ocean science and

technology, the Administration created two interagency bodies under the National

Science and Technology Council—the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) and

the Joint Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology (JSOST). Both bodies

have been successful in reducing the duplication of efforts in research programs,

identifying and addressing programmatic gaps, and synthesizing information for the

18

American public. Their organizational structure supports focused, high-level interaction among Departments and agencies.

As disconcerting as the ramifications of ocean acidification may be, we encourage

the Committee to avoid the temptation of creating interagency committees for each

potential impact of climate change and rather work within the framework of existing institutions.

The introduction of H.R. 4174 reflects recommendation of the national and international scientific communities for a coordinated scientific research program. The

scientific community has identified four major themes for a research program: (1)

carbon system monitoring; (2) calcification and physiological response studies under

laboratory and field conditions; (3) environmental and ecosystem modeling studies;

and (4) socioeconomic risk assessments. This research will provide resource managers with the basic information they need to develop strategies for protection of

critical species, habitats and ecosystems (similar to what has already been developed for coral reef managers with the publication of The Reef Manager’s Guide by

the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force to help local and regional reef managers reduce the

impacts of coral bleaching to coral reef ecosystems).

Ocean acidification is an emerging issue, and research and monitoring are of critical importance to a better understanding of the processes involved. NOAA has a

strong foundation in ocean acidification research and as such would be able to provide strong leadership for an interagency effort examining ocean acidification across

the Federal Government. Such an effort would support NOAA’s mission, which is

to provide information to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet the Nation’s

economic, social, and environmental needs. NOAA’s unique capacity to develop and

deploy ocean observation systems can support further examination of ocean acidification.

NOAA has already begun identifying key issues related to the potential impacts

of ocean acidification on fisheries and ecosystems, and we are working with the National Academy of Science’s Ocean Studies Board (OSB) to prioritize future research

and monitoring efforts. Science planning workshops and a university office to foster

academic research in ocean acidification (among other responsibilities) has also been

jointly funded by the National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space

Administration, and NOAA. It is important that NOAA and other agencies coordinate laboratory studies and collaborate in the design of appropriate field investigations. This will allow us to better assess the threat and more precisely forecast the

impacts of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems, and the associated socioeconomic consequences.

NOAA believes that the National Academy can provide an important bridge between the academic community and federal agencies in designing and implementing

appropriate long-term cooperative studies and experiments to determine how marine ecosystems may respond to ocean acidification. A planned National Academy

study, to be conducted through its OSB, will be used to help design long-term monitoring studies to monitor changes in carbonate chemistry in vulnerable marine ecosystems of the United States, and as a method to collaborate internationally. The

OSB will provide guidance regarding methods, frequency, and placement of monitoring sensors and oceanographic sensing to track ocean acidification over time, and

in relation to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This work will be important

in influencing the interagency committee on ocean acidification as outlined in H.R.

4174.

We note that many of the timelines established by H.R. 4174 for production of

plans and reports appear ambitious. If NOAA is to consider input from other committees and panels (e.g., the National Research Council, the Ocean Research and

Resources Advisory Panel, the Joint Subcommittee on Ocean, Science, and Technology of the National Science and Technology Council, the Joint Ocean Commission

Initiative, and other expert scientific bodies) before it establishes a national program

on ocean acidification, it will require at least two years to coordinate. Each of the

committees and panels must be allowed some time to perform their work before they

can provide meaningful input back to NOAA, and the Committee will require additional time to evaluate the different input provided by each of the committees and

panels before a final recommendation to Congress can be made.

The Administration recommends that H.R. 4174 be modified to place greater emphasis on changing ocean carbon chemistry, rather than limiting the scope to pH.

In particular, the impacts of the changing levels of various forms of dissolved inorganic carbon and alkalinity offer more comprehensive information on how changes

in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are impacting our oceans. It is the

changes in the carbon system parameters that are at the heart of the ocean acidification issue. In addition to atmospheric carbon dioxide, there are secondary procVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00022 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
19

esses (such as changes in land use, continental weathering, and emissions of other

acidic compounds) that will also influence carbonate chemistry and will thus need

to be considered in any research program.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it has been recently discovered that ocean acidification, caused by

the buildup of carbon dioxide and other acidic compounds in the atmosphere, may

have significant impacts on marine ecosystems. Results from laboratory, field and

modeling studies, as well as evidence from the geological record, clearly indicate

that marine ecosystems are highly susceptible to the increases in oceanic CO2 and

the corresponding decreases in pH. Because of the very clear potential for oceanwide impacts of ocean acidification at all levels of the marine ecosystem, from the

tiniest phytoplankton to zooplankton to fish and shellfish, we can expect to see significant impacts that are of immense importance to mankind. Ocean acidification is

an emerging scientific issue and much research is needed before all of the ecosystems responses are well understood. However, to the limit that the scientific community understands this issue right now, the potential for environmental, economic

and societal risk is also quite high, hence demanding serious and immediate attention. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to address this subcommittee. I look

forward to answering your questions.

References and Additional Sources

Caldeira, K., and M.E. Wickett (2005). Ocean model predictions of chemistry

changes from carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and ocean. Journal

of Geophysical Research (Oceans) 110, C09S04, doi:10.1029/2004JC002671.

Feely, R.A., C.L. Sabine, K. Lee, W. Berrelson, J. Kleypas, V.J. Fabry, and F.J.

Millero (2004). Impact of anthropogenic CO2 on the CaCO3 system in the

oceans, Science, 305(5682): 362–366.

Feely, R.A., J. Orr, V.J. Fabry, J.A. Kleypas, C.L. Sabine, and C. Landgon (in press):

Present and future changes in seawater chemistry due to ocean acidification.

AGU Monograph on ‘‘The Science and Technology of Carbon Sequestration.’’

Fine, M. and D. Tchernov (2007). Scleractinian coral species survive and recover

from decalcification, Science (315): 1811.

Gazeau, F., Quiblier, C., Jeroen M. Jansen, J.M. Jean-Pierre Gattuso, J.-P.,

Middelburg, J.J., and C.H.R. Heip (2007). Impact of elevated CO2 on shellfish

calcification, Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L07603, doi:10.1029/

2006GL028554.

Ishimatsu, A., Kikkawa, T., Hayashi, M., Lee, K.-S., and J. Kita (2004). Effects of

CO2 on marine fish: Larvae and adults, Journal of Oceanography, Vol. 60, pp.

731–741.

Kleypas, J.A., R.A. Feely, V.J. Fabry, C. Langdon, C.L. Sabine, and L.L. Robbins

(2006). Impacts of ocean acidification on coral reefs and other marine calcifiers:

A guide to future research. Report of a workshop held 18–20 April 2005, St. Petersburg, FL, sponsored by NSF, NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey, 88 pp.

Kurihara, K. and Shirayama, Y. (2004). Impacts of increased atmospheric CO2 on

sea urchin early development, Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser., 274, pp. 161–169.

Marshall, P. and H. Schuttenberg (2006): A Reef Manager’s Guide to Coral Bleaching, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, Townsville, Australia, 139 pp.

Orr, J.C., V.J. Fabry, O. Aumont, L. Bopp, S.C. Doney, R.A. Feely, A.

Gnanadesikan, N. Fruber, A. Ishida, F. Joos, R.M. Key, K. Lindsay, E. MaierReimer, R. Matear, P. Monfray, A. Mouchet. R.G. Najjar, G.-K. Plattner, K.B.

Rodgers, C.L. Sabine, J.L. Sarmiento, R. Schlitzer, R.D. Slater, I.J. Totterdel,

M.-F. Weirig, Y. Yamanaka, and A. Yool (2005). Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms, Nature, 437: 681–686.

Po ̈rtner, H.O., M. Langenbuch, and B. Michaelidis (2005) Synergistic effects of temperature extremes, hypoxia, and increases in CO2 on marine animals: From

Earth history to global change, J. Geophys. Res. 110, C09S10, doi:10.1029/

2004JC002561.

Raven, J. Caldeira, K. Elderfield, H. Hoegh-Guldberg, O. Liss, P. Riebesell, U. Shepherd, J. Turley, C. Watson, A. (2005). Acidification due to increasing carbon dioxide. In Report 12/05. London, T.R.S.o. (ed.) London: The Royal Society, pp. vii

+ 60.

20

Sabine, C.L., and R.A. Feely (2007). The oceanic sink for carbon dioxide. In Greenhouse Gas Sinks, D. Reay, N. Hewitt, J. Grace, and K. Smith (eds.), CABI Publishing, Oxfordshire, UK.

Vernon, J.E.N. (2008). A reef in time: the Great Barrier Reef from beginning to end,

The Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 289pp.

Zachos, J.C., U. Ro ̈hl, S.A. Schellenberg, A. Sluijs, D.A. Hodell, D.C. Keely, E.

Thomas, M. Nicolo, I. Raffi, L.J. Lourens, H. McCarren, and D. Kroon (2005).

Rapid acidification of the ocean during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, Science, 308: 1611–1616.

BIOGRAPHY FOR RICHARD A. FEELY

Dr. Richard A. Feely’s major research areas are carbon cycling in the oceans and

ocean acidification processes. He received a B.A. in chemistry from the University

of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1969. He then went on to Texas A&M University where he received both an M.S. degree in 1971 and a Ph.D. degree in 1974.

Both of his post-graduate degrees were in chemical oceanography. He is a member

of the U.S. Science Steering Committees for the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program,

the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Climate Change Program, and the U.S. Carbon and Biochemistry Program. Dr. Feely has authored more than 150 refereed research publications.

Visit Dr. Feely’s website for more information on his research activities and publications (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/personnel/feely.html).

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Dr. Feely.

And Dr. Kleypas, with whom I share an alma mater, Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. You are recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF DR. JOAN A. KLEYPAS, SCIENTIST, INSTITUTE

FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETY AND ENVIRONMENT, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH

Dr. KLEYPAS. Thank you, Chairman Lampson, also Ranking

Member Inglis, Members of the Subcommittee. I am very grateful

for being able to provide testimony about the effects of ocean acidification on marine life and to provide recommendations on the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act.

Representative Inslee may have not done so well in the Stanford

Chemistry, but he got an A-plus today in his description of ocean

acidification, and as he and Dr. Feely has described, ocean acidification is proceeding, and it will continue for as long as carbon dioxide remains unstabilized in our atmosphere.

Over the last decade we have gathered a lot of information to

confidently say that ocean acidification is a major threat to marine

life, and here are some of the effects.

Ocean acidification has been shown to affect a wide variety of organisms from the tiniest microscopic single-celled bacteria in the

oceans, all the way up through coral reef ecosystems, and it is likely to alter our food webs as well.

Ocean acidification can affect photosynthesis, respiration, reproduction, and growth, and as described already, it also affects the

ability of many marine organisms to secrete their calcium carbonate skeletons or shells. These, we often think of the common

things like corals, shellfish, and starfish, but it also affects many

lesser-known microscopic organisms that are pervasive in, throughout the oceans.

As the oceans become more acidic, it simply is harder for these

organisms to secrete their calcium carbonate shells, and as an example, you might recall that experiment when you were a kid

where you take an egg and you put it in household vinegar. After

21

a few days that calcium carbonate has dissolved away, and that

eggshell is soft, and it is no longer protective. So that experiment

is really a dramatic example of what acid can do to calcium carbonate skeletons, but the principle is really the same.

So shells and skeletons are very important for the survival of

marine organisms. They produce those shells for a reason, and

those reasons are things like protection and for competition of

space. In corals, for example, we estimate that the growth rates of

their skeletons will decline by 10 to 50 percent within the next 40

to 50 years. That means they will have to grow much more slowly

or less densely, like osteoporosis, and you know, if our bones grew

10 to 50 percent less, that would be a pretty big deal. We would

either be much shorter or our bones would be a lot weaker.

Ocean acidification affects coral reefs in other ways, too. Reefs

exist because corals and other organisms build them faster than

they are eroded away. Even if corals are able to maintain their

growth, ocean acidification will still cause reefs to erode away more

quickly, and if they do erode away, we are going to lose a lot of

those services that reefs provide like fisheries, biodiversity, and

coastline protection.

Right now we really can’t predict exactly what will happen to

marine ecosystems if ocean acidification continues, but another example would be like an aquarium, and a lot of us started aquariums when we were little, and we did everything just right. We got

the salinity right, the temperature, the organisms, but one of the

most important things to do in an aquarium is to get the pH just

right, to keep it within a very narrow range. If you don’t do that

and the pH declines, the first thing to go are the corals. They stop

growing, and then what happens is the algae tend to take over.

And so what you have witnessed there on a small scale is the replacement of that very desirable ecosystem with one which we don’t

desire.

So across the entire ocean as acidification proceeds, we expect to

see similar changes in our ecosystems. So what do we do about

this? Well, first, we need to take actions to reduce carbon dioxide

emissions, but second, given that we are already experiencing

ocean acidification and that we expect it to continue in the next

two, you know, next few decades, we need studies to tell us what

impacts will be and how to manage ecosystems underneath this additional stress.

So the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring

(FOARAM) Act is, really is a good bill, and it addresses the major

research needs, but I have two recommendations to strengthen it.

One is a stronger commitment of funds. The appropriations are

really quite modest when we consider the scope of the problem and

the cost of comparable ocean programs in the past. In order to do

this research quickly and to provide good advice to managers and

decision-makers, we have estimated that the minimum costs to do

this research is about $50 to $55 million a year.

The other point is this. Ocean acidification is a big, emerging

issue, and there is the potential for many new discoveries, things

that we just don’t know about yet. So we need not only applied research, but we need very basic research as well.

22

1 Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are

those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation. 1 Henderson C. 2006. Paradise lost. New Scientist 5 August 206:29–33. 3Turley C. 2005. The other CO2 problem. In ‘‘openDemocracy,’’ http://www.acamedia.info/

sciences/sciliterature/globalw/reference/carol¥turley.html 4 Caldeira K, Wickett ME. 2003. Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature 425:365–365. 5Feely RA, Sabine CL, Lee K, Berelson W, Kleypas J, et al. 2004. Impact of anthropogenic

CO2 on the CaCO3 system in the oceans. Science 305:362–366. 6Orr JC, Fabry VJ, Aumont O, Bopp L, Doney SC, et al. 2005. Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437:681–686. 7Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, et al. 2007. Climate Change 2007: The

Physical Science Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press. 8Fabry VJ, Seibel BA, Feely RA, Orr JC. 2008b. Impacts of ocean acidification on marine

fauna and ecosystem processes. ICES Journal of Marine Science. 9 Bibby R, Cleall-Harding P, Rundle S, Widdicombe S, Spicer J. 2007. Ocean acidification disrupts induced defences in the intertidal gastropod Littorina littorea. Biology Letters 3:699–701. 10Orr JC, Fabry VJ, Aumont O, Bopp L, Doney SC, et al. 2005. Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437:681–686.

Through our previous workshops and planning efforts we have

already identified the strengths that both federal and academic

agencies will bring to ocean acidification program, and to build on

those efforts I recommend that the bill explicitly delineate the roles

of each of those relevant agencies and allocate resources directly to

them.

Thank you again for this opportunity to take, to make the case

for ocean acidification as an urgent and important issue and to

comment on the FOARAM Act.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Kleypas follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOAN A. KLEYPAS1

Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the Subcommittee:

thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony about the importance of the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring (FOARAM) Act. My name is Joan

Kleypas. I am a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. My research has focused on the interactions between marine ecosystems and climate change, with particular emphasis on the impacts of climate

change on coral reef ecosystems. I have worked on coral reefs for more than 20

years, and on ocean acidification for 10 years. I have authored or co-authored more

than 40 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, book chapters, and technical documents, and have presented more than 40 invited talks worldwide. I have co-organized several international workshops on issues related to climate change and marine ecosystems. I currently serve on three committees related to carbon and the

oceans: the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Scientific Steering Committee, the

International advisory boards of the European CarboOcean Program, and the European Program on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA). You have asked me to discuss the

potential scope and impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms and ecosystems, the need for federal research, monitoring and assessment programs to address this phenomenon, and for recommendations for strengthening and improving

federal research to do so.

I. Introduction

Ocean acidification is increasingly recognized as an important and potentially

dangerous consequence of increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide in

Earth’s atmosphere. Because climate change and ocean acidification are both caused

by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), acidification is commonly referred

to as the ‘‘other CO2 problem.’’ 2,3 But compared to climate change, ocean acidification is a more direct and predictable consequence of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and does not suffer from uncertainties associated with climate change forecasts.

Absorption of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, reduced pH, and lower calcium carbonate (CaCO3) saturation in surface waters, where the bulk of oceanic production

occurs, are well-verified from models, hydrographic surveys and time series

data.4,5,6,7

Since pre-industrial times, atmospheric concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from 280 to 385 ppmv (a 38 percent increase). The increase in atVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
23

8Fabry VJ, Seibel BA, Feely RA, Orr JC. 2008b. Impacts of ocean acidification on marine

fauna and ecosystem processes. ICES Journal of Marine Science.

mospheric concentration has driven more CO2 into the surface ocean that, through

a series of carbon and water chemical reactions (e.g., the formation of carbonic acid),

has led to a decrease in average pH of the surface ocean from about 8.2 to 8.1. If

atmospheric CO2 concentrations reach 800 ppmv (the projected end-of-century concentration according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

business as usual emission scenario), average surface ocean pH will decrease to 7.8–

7.9. This change in pH may at first seem small, but it is significant for several important reasons:

1) Because pH measures acidity on a logarithmic scale, a 0.1 decrease in pH

represents a 30 percent increase in ocean acidity.

2) Surface ocean pH is already lower than has occurred in the oceans for at

least 800,000 years, and probably many millions of years.

3) The speed of this change is likely to outstrip the ability of many organisms

to adapt to the lower pH.

II. Potential scope and impacts of ocean acidification on marine organisms

and ecosystems

A. Impacts on Marine Organisms

The fact that increases atmospheric carbon dioxide can cause changes in ocean pH

has been known for about a century, but the potential impacts on ocean biota have

only recently been appreciated. A general summary of these effects is provided in

Table 1.

Table 1 illustrates two main points. First, it is clear that changes in ocean chemistry cause important responses in many groups of marine organisms. Experimental

studies on corals, for example, which are the best-studied group, indicate that the

rate at which they produce their skeletons will decrease 10–50 percent by the middle of this century (e.g., when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reach 560 ppmv).

Depending on the species of coral, a decrease in this ‘‘calcification rate’’ will either

stunt the growth of the colony, or result in a weaker skeleton (similar to

osteoporosis in humans).

The second point is that relative to the potential consequences of ocean acidification, we still have very few studies on which to base our predictions about how marine life will change in response to future ocean acidification.8 Most studies have

concentrated on the rather obvious effect of ocean acidification on the ability of marine organisms to grow their shells and skeletons (corals, coccolithophores, mollusks,

etc.). Fewer studies have focused on other physiological effects such as photosynthesis, respiration, and reproduction. Even fewer studies have looked at the effects

on other important marine processes such as nitrogen fixation, or on the ability of

ecosystems to function and provide their normal ecosystem services.

24

9 Bibby R, Cleall-Harding P, Rundle S, Widdicombe S, Spicer J. 2007. Ocean acidification disrupts induced defences in the intertidal gastropod Littorina littorea. Biology Letters 3:699–701. 10Orr JC, Fabry VJ, Aumont O, Bopp L, Doney SC, et al. 2005. Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437:681–686. 11 Andersson AJ, Mackenzie FT, Lerman A. 2006. Coastal ocean and carbonate ecosystems in

the high CO2 world of the Anthropocene. American Journal of Science. 12 Andersson AJ, Bates NR, Mackenzie FT. 2007. Dissolution of carbonate sediments under

rising pCO2 and ocean acidification: Observations from Devil’s Hole, Bermuda. Aquatic Geochemistry 13:237–264. 13Widdicombe S, Needham HR. 2007. Impact of CO2-induced seawater acidification on the

burrowing activity of Nereis virens and sediment nutrient flux. Marine Ecology—Progress Series

341:111–122.

B. Impacts on Marine Ecosystems

Almost all ocean acidification studies have been performed on organisms rather

than ecosystems, and so far we have had to infer the ultimate effects on ecosystems.

For example, we have some understanding of why organisms secrete calcium carbonate shells (e.g., protection, securing to the substrate), but we have only a few

examples of how a thinner shell or slower growth rate will affect an organism’s fitness or behavior within its ecosystem.9

In some cases ocean acidification will directly affect major fishery resources, such

as shellfish. In other cases, ocean acidification will indirectly affect fisheries by altering food webs. A well-cited scenario is one where increasing ocean acidity reduces

the ranges of pteropods, small planktonic marine snails that are an important food

source for some important food fish like salmon.10

In benthic systems, ocean pH and associated carbonate chemistry affect the dissolution rates of calcium carbonate sediments,11,12 and appear to alter the functioning of sediment-dwelling organisms.13 On coral reefs, even if biological calcifiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
25

14Manzello DP, Kleypas JA, Budd DA, Eakin CM, Glynn PW, Langdon C. in press. Poorly

cemented coral reefs of the eastern tropical Pacific: possible insights into reef development in

a high CO2 world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.15Kleypas JA, Buddemeier RW, Gattuso JP. 2001. The future of coral reefs in an age of global

change. International Journal of Earth Sciences 90:426–437. 16Guinotte JM, Orr J, Cairns S, Freiwald A, Morgan L, George R. 2006. Will human-induced

changes in seawater chemistry alter the distribution of deep-sea scleractinian corals? Frontiers

in Ecology and the Environment 4:141–146. 17Fu FX, Warner ME, Zhang YH, Feng YY, Hutchins DA. 2007. Effects of increased temperature and CO2 on photosynthesis, growth, and elemental ratios in marine Synechococcus and

Prochlorococcus (Cyanobacteria). Journal of Phycology 43:485–496. 18 Hall-Spencer JM, Fodolfo-Metalpa R, Martin S, Ransome E, Fine M, et al. 2008. Volcanic

carbon dioxide vents show ecosystem effects of ocean acidification. Nature doi:10.1038/

nature07051.

cation rates did not decline, ocean acidification will decrease reef cementation14 and

cause dissolution rates to increase,15 both of which can shift the reef from one of

net growth to net erosion. We know that high biodiversity on reefs is largely due

to the reef structure and its complex of holes, substrates, etc., and loss of reef structure leads to loss of biodiversity. However, the erosion of coral reefs that act as

breakwaters also increases the exposure of adjacent low-lying coastal areas to

storms and other erosive forces. Another benthic example is deep-sea corals, recently discovered but widespread communities that live in deeper waters; these are

limited by the aragonite saturation depth in the oceans and so are directly threatened as the aragonite saturation depth shallows in response to ocean acidification.16

It is unknown how the loss of these communities will affect the fisheries that they

support, but it is certain that degradation of both coral reefs and deep water coral

communities will impact the fisheries that are associated with them.

Not all organisms will be affected by ocean acidification, and we can expect both

winners and losers. Two species of very abundant picoplankton (very small microorganism in the ocean) were cultured in elevated carbon dioxide conditions; one species exhibited a four-times increase in photosynthesis but the other showed little response,17 which suggests that open ocean food-web structures could substantially

change in the future. Such basic changes in our ocean ecosystems are of particular

concern because of the repercussions to marine biogeochemistry, food webs, fisheries, and other ocean resources. These needs are the basis for the call from the

oceanographic community to establish a national coordinated program on ocean

acidification.

A small-scale example of how we might view future changes in our ocean ecosystems is to imagine the typical sequence of events in establishing a marine aquarium. One of the most important lessons in keeping marine aquaria is to maintain

the seawater chemistry within very precise limits of pH, nutrients, temperature,

and alkalinity. Many hobbyists launch their aquaria with all of the necessary ingredients, including the sand substrate, clean seawater, water circulation, and of

course, a collection of beautiful fish and invertebrates. Unfortunately, many

hobbyists do not maintain the seawater chemistry adequately, and nutrient levels

increase and most notably, the acidity of the water increases. As the seawater chemistry changes, so does the ecosystem, with undesirable species (winners) displacing

the desirable ones (losers) until the original ecosystem has been entirely replaced

by another. As ocean acidification progresses in our oceans, we can imagine a similar course of ecosystem changes, albeit more slowly and perhaps not as pronounced.

In fact, a recent study of ecosystem shifts around underwater volcanic carbon dioxide vents confirm that calcifying organisms, in particular, are progressively displaced by algae and other non-calcifying organisms along the gradient of decreasing

pH.18

C. Other Impacts

The effects of ocean acidification reach beyond the impacts on organisms. pH is

a fundamental property of seawater that governs innumerable chemical reactions

and equilibria. Acidity and oxidation state are the two phenomena that modulate

all of ocean chemistry and biochemistry. The speciation (the chemical form) of many

elements and nutrients in seawater changes in response to pH. These include many

common elements (e.g., iron, copper, zinc) and nutrients such as phosphate, silicate

and ammonia, all of which are essential to biological processes. Very few studies

have looked into the biogeochemical consequences of changing pH on nutrients, although changes in the speciation of phosphate, silicate, iron and ammonium will be

significant in response to the expected ocean acidification conditions of this cenVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
26

19 Royal Society. 2005. Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, The

Royal Society, London. 20 Raven JA. 1986. Physiological consequences of extremely small size for autotrophic organisms in the sea. In Photosynthetic Picoplankton ed. T Platt, WKW Li, pp. 1–70. Ottawa: Can.

Bull. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 21Kleypas JA, Feely RA, Fabry VJ, C. Langdon CL, Sabine CL, Robbins LL. 2006. Impacts

of Increasing Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A Guide for Future Research: NSF, NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey. 88 pp. http://www.isse.ucar.edu/

florida/ 22Fabry VJ, C. L, Balch WM, Dickson AG, Feely RA, et al. 2008a. Ocean acidification’s effects

on marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry. Eos, Transactions of the American Geophysical

Union 89:143–144. 23Kleypas JA, Feely RA, Fabry VJ, C. Langdon CL, Sabine CL, L.L. Robbins. 2006. Impacts

of Increasing Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A Guide for Future Research: NSF, NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey. 88 pp.

tury.19 For example, in regions with high nutrient concentrations, a decrease in pH

from 8.1 to 7.8 causes the proportion of ammonium (NH4

∂ ) to ammonia (NH3) to

increase,20 and can potentially affect important metabolic processes like nitrification

(the conversion of ammonium and ammonia to nitrate, the form of nitrogen that is

used in photosynthesis).

Ultimately, ocean acidification will affect the global ocean carbon cycle. Future

changes in calcium carbonate production and dissolution alone will almost certainly

have impacts on the ocean’s capacity to store carbon. If ocean acidification causes

shifts in ecosystems, particularly in microbial communities, then we can expect additional changes in marine biogeochemistry. The interplay and feedbacks between

marine biogeochemistry, ecosystem shifts, and feedbacks to the Earth system are

complex, and our ability to predict how these processes will be impacted by ocean

acidification, particularly in combination with other global climate changes, is a formidable task.

III. The need for federal research, monitoring, and assessment programs

on ocean acidification

In 2006, a report jointly sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Geological Survey21 entitled ‘‘Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A

Guide for Future Research.’’ This report was borne out of a workshop held in St.

Petersburg, Florida, and represents the consensus of more than 60 experts in the

fields of marine chemistry, physics, biology, geology and remote sensing. Following

this report, the scientific steering committee of the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program (OCB; a NSF–NOAA–NASA interagency group with the mission

to: establish the evolving role of the ocean in the global carbon cycle, in the face of

environmental change, through studies of marine biogeochemical cycles and associated ecosystems), identified ocean acidification as one of its top research priorities,

and sponsored a workshop to further recommend research strategies to investigate

the effects of ocean acidification on not only calcification, but other marine biological

and biogeochemical processes as well. That workshop convened at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in October 2007, and with the input of more than 90 scientists

in the field, produced priorities and timelines for ocean acidification research in four

major ocean environments: warm-water coral reefs, coastal margins, subtropical/

tropical pelagic regions, and high latitude regions.22

The remaining testimony draws heavily from these two workshops and reports,

because they represent several years of work to synthesize existing knowledge on

how ocean acidification affects marine ecosystems, as well as a consensus of the

many scientists who produced that research and attended the workshops.

A. Priorities in Ocean Acidification Research—A Scientific Consensus

The St. Petersburg Report23 identified the state of the current scientific knowledge (Chapters 1–3); the urgent gaps in that knowledge (Chapter 3) and how to

tackle them (Chapters 3–6); and recommended an overall phased scientific strategy

for the next 5–10 years (Chapter 7). The major scientific needs identified in this report were to:

1. Determine the calcification response of benthic calcifiers such as corals (including cold-water corals), coralline algae, foraminifera, mollusks, and

echinoderms to elevated carbon dioxide; and in planktonic calcifiers such as

coccolithophores, foraminifera, and shelled pteropods;

27

24 Andrews, R., D. Bullock, R. Curtis, L. Dolinger Few, et al., 2007. Fisheries of the United

States, 2006. National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Science and Technology, Fisheries Statistics Division, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

2. Discriminate the various mechanisms of calcification within calcifying

groups, through physiological experiments, to better understand the crosstaxa range of responses to changing seawater chemistry;

3. Determine the interactive effects of multiple variables that affect calcification and dissolution in organisms (saturation state, light, temperature,

nutrients) through continued experimental studies on an suite of calcifying

groups;

4. Establish clear links between laboratory experiments and the natural environment, by combining laboratory experiments with field studies;

5. Characterize the diurnal and seasonal cycles of the carbonate system on

coral reefs, including commitment to long-term monitoring of the system response to increases in carbon dioxide;

6. In concert with above, monitor in situ calcification and dissolution in

planktonic and benthic organisms, with better characterization of the key

environmental controls on calcification;

7. Incorporate ecological questions into observations and experiments; e.g.,

How does a change in calcification rate affect the ecology and survivorship

of an organism? How will ecosystem functions differ between communities

with and without calcifying species?

8. Improve the accounting of coral reef and open ocean carbonate budgets

through combined measurements of seawater chemistry; calcium carbonate

production, dissolution and accumulation, and bioerosion and off-shelf export;

9. Quantify and parameterize the mechanisms that contribute to the carbonate system, through biogeochemical and ecological modeling, and apply

such modeling to guide future sampling and experimental efforts;

10. Develop protocols for the various methodologies used in seawater chemistry

and calcification measurements.

The recommendations from the Scripps workshop expanded on the major points

listed above, but also included non-calcifying organisms and ecosystems, and focused

on four major environments: warm-water coral reefs, coastal margins, subtropical/

tropical pelagic regions, and high-latitude regions. In addition to establishing research plans in each of these environments, overall recommendations from this

workshop were to:

1. Quantify the distributions and abundances of calcareous organisms, particularly in regions projected to undergo substantial changes in carbonate chemistry over the next decades;

2. Develop autonomous systems for measurement of the seawater CO2 system

(pH, pCO2, total dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity);

3. Establish a U.S. national program on ocean acidification that will coordinate

research activities among federal agencies, and leverage existing infrastructure and programs, as well as establish sites for monitoring and process

studies aimed explicitly at ocean acidification; and

4. Develop a coordinated, global network of ocean observations and studies

through close partnerships with our international colleagues.

B. The Need for a Federal Program on Ocean Acidification

Ocean acidification is an emerging scientific issue; the issue is of high uncertainty

but also high risk. Evidence from multiple scientific disciplines indicate that ocean

acidification will cause changes in marine organisms, ecosystems and biogeochemistry, as well in the overall functioning of the ocean and global carbon cycles.

However, our ability to forecast these changes is severely limited by a lack of data

and scientific understanding of oceanic and ecosystem processes. Given that so much

of the U.S. economy draws from ocean and coastal resources (e.g., the value of U.S.

commercial fisheries is more than $35 billion per year24 ), the establishment of a

federal program to research the potential impacts of ocean acidification is a sound

economic investment.

The need for this understanding has prompted scientists both nationally and

internationally to accelerate ocean acidification research. Many U.S.-based and

international workshops on ocean acidification have highlighted the need to coordiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00031 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
28

25 U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global

Warming, 29 April 2008 Hearing on ‘‘Global Warming’s Impact on the Oceans.’’ 26 NSTC Joint Subcommittee on Ocean Science and Technology (2007) Charting the Course

for Ocean Science in the United States for the Next Decade, An Ocean Research Priorities Plan

and Implementation Strategy, January 26, 2007, 84 pp.

nate this research at both the national and international levels. The coordination

is necessary to avoid duplication of efforts, and have the international community

join forces in ways that are both necessary to answer the most pressing scientific

and management questions, and to improve the efficiency of translating research results to support decision-makers. Some of the U.S.’s international colleagues have

already established their own government-funded programs (e.g., European Program

on Ocean Acidification) or are in the process of doing so (Australian Institute of Marine Science).

One of the reasons for an integrated and coordinated federal program supporting

ocean acidification research is that no single federal agency can adequately tackle

the breadth of the research needed to understand ocean acidification, its impacts,

and its feedbacks on the Earth. Four federal agencies have so far been actively engaged in planning discussions for ocean acidification research: NOAA, NSF, NASA,

and USGS. Each agency brings different and valuable expertise to address the problems and questions on ocean acidification, and is an essential component of a federally funded research program. NOAA primarily brings expertise in terms of ocean

observing systems and physiological responses of commercially important fish and

shellfish species. NSF supports academic, hypothesis-driven research in ocean chemistry, the physiology of ocean organisms and understanding of ecological systems,

fostered around the world in field settings or in the laboratories of American institutions. NASA provides the capacity to remotely sense the effects of ocean acidification

on ocean biology and chemistry, and/or scale up from in-water measurements to regional and global scales to address appropriate research questions. The USGS has

the history and expertise in examining the interactions between coastal marine ecosystems and seawater carbonate chemistry. Together these agency areas of expertise

fit together to form the foundation of an integrated and coordinated research program to understand a changing ocean system.

H.R. 4174 (FOARAM Act) addresses the above recommendations to establish as

U.S. research program on ocean acidification that includes monitoring; laboratory

and field investigations of ocean acidification impacts on organism, ecosystems, and

biogeochemistry; studies on the interactions with other environmental changes in

the ocean; environmental and ecosystem modeling; and studies on the socioeconomic

impacts. I have encouraged the passing of H.R. 4174 in recent testimony to the

House Select Committee on Energy and the Environment.25 I continue to support

the passage of this bill, with several recommended changes.

IV. Recommendations for strengthening and improving federal research on

ocean acidification

A. Coordination among federal agencies and with international partners

The Ocean Research Priorities Plan (ORPP) and Implementation Strategy26 lists

20 national ocean research priorities for the coming decade, and ocean acidification

is an issue that cuts across many of these priorities. The ORPP Implementation

Strategy established a strong basis for carrying out these priorities by including: 1)

use of existing mechanisms to address ocean research priorities, 2) partnerships

(local, tribal, State, federal, international, etc.), 3) peer-review, 4) balancing sustained effort with new initiatives, and 5) accounting for different scales of research

efforts and needs. A new governance structure established under the Committee on

Ocean Policy expands the capacity for coordinating efforts across various federal

agencies.

H.R. 4174 currently authorizes the allocation of funds to one agency (NOAA),

which must then allocate to other departments and agencies. A more prudent approach is to directly allocate federal funds to each agency partner, and to take advantage of existing cross-agency groups to coordinate and manage activities between

agencies. Given that ocean acidification was recognized as an important issue only

within the last several years, there is still considerable basic research to be done

on the impacts of changing chemistry on the oceans and its ecosystems. Ocean acidification is proving to be a far-reaching issue, and one that will almost certainly yield

new discoveries, which calls for supporting unsolicited research proposals on ocean

acidification that are unconstrained by questions predefined by federal agencies.

This is the very heart of basic research and of discovery of the unknown dimensions

29

27http://www.nopp.org/ 28GLOBal Ocean ECosystem Dynamics http://www.usglobec.org/

of ocean acidification. I therefore recommend that H.R. 4174 more explicitly delineate the roles of the relevant agencies and allocate resources accordingly.

However, there is a need for interagency coordination. To ensure that basic as

well as applied research is carried out in a prompt and timely way, there must be

a funding mechanism that entrains the academic research community in a competitive, peer-reviewed program of extramural funding (the National Ocean Partnership

Program27 (NOPP) Broad Agency Announcement provides an example of how to design such a mechanism). Establishing an interagency funding mechanism builds on

the interagency cooperation on science funding and workshop support that led to the

recognition that ocean acidification is an urgent issue and merits further research.

The same interagency cooperation led to the establishment of the Ocean Carbon and

Biogeochemistry (OCB) office to facilitate sustained science planning on ocean acidification and other pressing ocean research priorities. To sustain significant progress

on the basic and applied research outlined above I recommend that this legislation

establish a consultative interagency body focused on the science of ocean acidification.

For scientific oversight, a scientific steering committee that includes scientists

funded from each of the participating agencies would oversee the scientific decisions,

similar to how the scientific steering committee oversaw the U.S. Joint Global

Ocean Flux Study (U.S. JGOFS) Program. (OCB) Scientific Steering Committee, for

example, which is jointly supported by NSF, NOAA, and NASA, is already well informed and supportive of ocean acidification research, and could naturally take on

the scientific guidance of an ocean acidification research program.

Finally, the objectives to understand the effects of ocean acidification are universal with our international colleagues, and much good will has been forged between scientists in the last few years toward maintaining international partnerships. The EPOCA program, for example, includes several U.S. scientists on its external advisory board. The global nature of ocean acidification certainly calls for increasing mechanisms to increase coordination of research with our international colleagues.

B. Costs

The authorization of appropriations in H.R. 4174 for fiscal years 2009, 2010, and

2011, is $6 million, $8 million, and $11 million, respectively, and $30 million per

year for each year thereafter. It is useful to compare this appropriation to that of

similarly tasked interagency ocean research programs in the late 1990s. For example, the NSF (only) contributions to JGOFS and GLOBEC28 totaled about $17–$22

million per year. The broad nature of an ocean acidification program will require

both a biogeochemical emphasis (similar to U.S. JGOFS) as well as the effects on

high-order organisms and ecosystems (similar to U.S. GLOBEC). The additional contributions from NOAA, NASA, and DOE to these programs are estimated to have

doubled the total funding to around $40–$45 million per year. The FOARAM Act

appropriations are therefore quite modest compared to similarly sized programs of

10 years ago. In order to obtain timely information relevant to managers and decision-makers, we realistically need $50–$55 million per year. The $30 million per

year may be appropriate for the first two to three years, while large-scale efforts

are still being planned, but once the program is fully engaged, $50–$55 million is

considered the minimum if scientists are to provide useful information regarding

how the oceans are responding to acidification, and how we should change our mitigation and adaptation policies.

Summary

Ocean acidification is an emerging scientific issue, and one of high uncertainty

but high risk. Evidence from multiple scientific disciplines indicate that ocean acidification will cause changes in marine organisms, ecosystems and biogeochemistry,

as well as in the overall functioning of the ocean and global carbon cycles. However,

our ability to forecast these changes is severely limited by a lack of data and scientific understanding of oceanic and ecosystem processes. Two important U.S.-led

workshops on ocean acidification have already identified the major gaps in our understanding of the consequences of ocean acidification for marine life, and have set

priorities to guide a national research program on this topic.

H.R. 4174 (the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act) enables

such a national research program through the establishment of an interagency committee to oversee the planning, establishment, and coordination of ocean acidificaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00033 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
30

tion research; the establishment of reporting procedures; the development of a strategic research and implementation plan; and an authorization of appropriations to

carry out the plan.

I have recommended a few important changes to H.R. 4174, but otherwise fully

support this bill that is so urgently needed to ensure proper stewardship of our

oceans and protection of the abundant natural resources they provide.

Chairman Lampsom, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the Subcommittee:

thank you once again for the opportunity to provide this testimony about ocean

acidification, and to provide recommendations toward accelerating the scientific

process of understanding its impacts quickly and in ways that will help inform future policy and management decisions.

BIOGRAPHY FOR JOAN A. KLEYPAS

Education

1992—Ph.D., Tropical Marine Studies, James Cook University of North Queensland,

Australia, Thesis: ‘‘Geological development of fringing coral reefs in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia.’’ Thesis Advisor: Professor David Hopley.

1980—M.S., Marine Science, University of South Carolina, Thesis: ‘‘Migrations and

feeding of predatory fish in an intertidal creek, with special reference to the silver perch (Bairdiella chrysura L.).’’ Thesis Advisor: Professor John Mark Dean.

1978—B.S., Oceanography/Marine Biology, Lamar University, TX.

Work History (post-Master’s degree)

Scientist III, NCAR, 2008–present; Institute for the Study of Society and Environment

Scientist II, NCAR, 2004–present; Institute for the Study of Society and Environment

Scientist I, NCAR, 2003–2004; Environmental and Societal Impacts Group (now Institute for the Study of Society and Environment)

Associate Scientist, NCAR, 1998–2003; U.S. JGOFS Synthesis & Modeling Project

Visiting Scientist, NCAR, 1996–1998; Climate and Global Dynamics

Visiting Assistant Professor, Geosciences, Colorado College, 1995–1996; (also taught

courses in 1997, 1998, 2005)

Postdoctoral Research Scientist, NCAR, 1993–1995; Advanced Study Program

Senior Scientist, Walsh & Associates, Boulder, CO, 1992–1993; Environmental consulting; marine impact assessments

Research Assistant and Fulbright Scholar, Australia; James Cook University, 1987–

1991; Ph.D. research on Great Barrier Reef

Research and Teaching Assistant, Texas A&M University, Oceanography and Geology Departments, College Station, TX 1984–1987 (Ph.D. program in Geology)

Research Scientist, TerEco Corporation, College Station, TX 1982–1984; EPA contracts to determine marine biological distributions of deep-sea fauna, and impacts of oil drilling, brine disposal, etc., in the Gulf of Mexico

Honors and Awards

• Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow, 2008

• Best Paper Award, Coral Reefs, 2003

• Advanced Study Program Fellowship, NCAR, 1993–95

• Jerald J, Cook Memorial Award for best Paper, 8th Thematic Conf. Geol. Remote Sensing, 1991

• Fulbright Scholarships, 1987, 1988

• Getty Oil Co. Scholarship, 1984

• Texas A&M Univ. Faculty Scholarships, 1982, 1983

• Undergraduate awards: Summa cum laude, 1978; Merit Scholarship, 1977;

Phi Beta Honor Society; Sigma Xi Honor Society; Sigma Gamma Epsilon Geological Honor Society

31

Research Grants

• NSF grant ‘‘A Workshop on Impacts of Increasing Atmospheric CO2 on Marine Calcifiers,’’ 2005, lead PI: Kleypas, Amount: $34,904 (Co-PIs: Vicki

Fabry, Chris Langdon, Richard Feely, Chris Sabine)

• NCAR Opportunity Fund ‘‘Implementing seawater chemistry measurements

within the NOAA Coral Reef Early Warning System,’’ 2004, main PI: Kleypas,

Amount: $54,865 (Co-PIs: James Hendee, Rik Wanninkhof, Chris Langdon)

• Australian Science Society ‘‘Geological Development of coral reefs in the

southern Great Barrier Reef,’’ 1990, $65,000 (Co-PI with lead PI: David

Hopley)

Professional Affiliations

American Geophysical Union; Geological Society of America; AAAS; ASLO; International Society for Reef Studies; Australian Coral Reef Society; Fulbright Association

Publications

Theses

MS thesis title: Kleypas, JA 1980. Migration and feeding of predatory fish in an

intertidal creek, with special reference to the silver perch (Bairdiella chrysura

L.), Marine Science Program, University of South Carolina. (Advisor: Professor

John Mark Dean)

Ph.D. thesis title: Kleypas, JA 1992. Geological development of fringing coral reefs

in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia, James Cook University of North

Queensland, Australia.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications

Kleypas, JA and JM Dean, 1983: Migration and feeding of the predatory fish,

Bairdiella chrysura Lacepede, in an intertidal creek. J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol.,

72: 199–209.

Kleypas, JA and DM Burrage, 1994: Satellite observations of surface circulation patterns in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Int. J. Remote Sensing, 15:

2051–2063.

Burrage, DM, CR Steinberg, W Skirving and JA Kleypas, 1996: Mesoscale circulation features of the Great Barrier Reef region inferred from NOAA satellite imagery. Remote Sens. Env., 56: 21–41.

Kleypas, JA, 1996: Coral reef development under naturally turbid conditions: fringing reefs near Broad Sound, Australia. Coral Reefs, 15: 153–167.

Kleypas, JA, 1997: Modeled estimates of global reef habitat and carbonate production since the last glacial maximum. Paleoceanography, 12: 533–545.

Kleypas, JA, J McManus, and L Men ̃ ez, 1999: Using environmental data to define

reef habitat: Where do we draw the line? Am. Zool., 39: 146–159.

Kleypas, JA, RW Buddemeier, D Archer, J–P Gattuso, C Langdon and BN Opdyke,

1999: Geochemical consequences of increased atmospheric CO2 on coral reefs.

Science, 284: 118–120.

Moore, JK, SC Doney, JA Kleypas, DM Glover and IY Fung, 2001: An intermediate

complexity marine ecosystem model for the global domain. Deep Sea Research

II, 49: 463–507.

Kleypas, JA, RW Buddemeier, J–P Gattuso, 2001: The future of coral reefs in an

age of global change. Int. J. Earth Sci., 90: 426–437.

Doney, SC, JA Kleypas, JL Sarmiento and PG Falkowski, 2001: The U.S. JGOFS

Synthesis and Modeling Project—An introduction. Deep Sea Research II, 49: 1–

20.

Iglesias-Rodriguez, MD, CW Brown, SC Doney, J Kleypas, D Kolber, Z Kolber, PK

Hayes, PG Falkowski, 2002: Representing key phytoplankton functional groups

in ocean carbon cycle models: coccolithophorids. Global Biogeochem. Cycles,

16(4): art. no. 1100.

Hughes, TP, AH Baird, DR Bellwood, M Card, SR Connolly, C Folke, R Grosberg,

O Hoegh-Guldberg, JBC Jackson, J Kleypas, JM Lough, P Marshall, M

Nystrom, SR Palumbi, JM Pandolfi, B Rosen and J Roughgarden, 2003: Climate

change, human impacts, and the resilience of coral reefs. Science, 301: 929–933.

32

Doney, SC and JA Kleypas, Eds., 2003: The U.S. JGOFS Synthesis and Modeling

Project: Phase II, Deep-Sea Res. II, vol. 50.

Guinotte, JM, RW Buddemeier and JA Kleypas, 2003: Future coral reef habitat

marginality: temporal and spatial effects of climate change in the Pacific basin.

Coral Reefs, 22: 551–558.

Sarmiento, S, R Barber, L Bopp, S Doney, AC Hirst, J Kleypas, R Mater, U

Mikolajewicz, P Monfray, V Soldatov, S Spall, R Slater and R Souffer, 2004: Response of ocean ecosystems to climate warming. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 18:

GB3003, doi:10.1029/2003GB002134.

Kleypas, JA, RW Buddemeier, CM Eakin, J–P Gattuso, J Guinotte, O HoeghGuldberg, R Iglesias-Prieto, PL Jokiel, C Langdon, W Skirving and AE Strong,

2005: Comment on ‘‘Coral reef calcification and climate change: The effect of

ocean warming,’’ Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L08601, doi:10.1029/2004GL022329.

Gattuso, J–P, B Gentili, CM Duarte, JA Kleypas, JJ Middelburg and D Antoine,

2006: Light availability in the coastal ocean: impact on the distribution of

benthic photosynthetic organisms and their contribution to primary production,

Biogeosciences, 3: 489–513.

Kleypas, JA and CM Eakin, 2007: Scientists’ perceptions of threats to coral reefs:

results of a survey of coral reef researchers, Bull. Mar. Sci., 80, 419–436.

Caldeira, K, D Archer, JP Barry, RGJ Bellerby, PG Brewer, L Cao, AG Dickson, SC

Doney, H Elderfield, VJ Fabry, RA Feely, J–P Gattuso, PM Haugan, O HoeghGuldberg, AK Jain, JA Kleypas, C Langdon, JC Orr, A Ridgwell, CL Sabine,

BA Seibel, Y Shirayama, C Turley, AJ Watson, RE Zeebe, 2007: Comment on

‘‘Modern-age buildup of CO2 and its effects on seawater acidity and salinity’’ by

Hugo A Loa ́iciga, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L18608, doi:10.1029/2006GL027288.

Kleypas, JA, G Danabasoglu, and JM Lough. 2008. Potential role of the ocean thermostat in determining regional differences in coral reef bleaching events.

Geophys. Res. Lett., 35:L03613, doi:10.1029/2007GL032257

Fabry, VJ, C Langdon, WM Balch, A Dickson, R Feely, B Hales, D Hutchins, J

Kleypas, and C Sabine, (2008): Present and future impacts of ocean acidification

on marine ecosystems and biogeochemical cycles (workshop report), Eos Trans.

Am. Geophys. Soc.

Manzello, DP, JA Kleypas, D Budd, CM Eakin, PW Glynn, and C Langdon (in

press): Fragile reefs of the Eastern Pacific: a model for reefs in a high CO2

world, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci.

Fortier, L, S. Hawkins, J Kleypas, H–O Po ̈rtner, and Y Shirayama, Eds. (in prep.):

Effects of Climate Change on Marine Ecosystems, Special Issue in Climate Research.

Other External Refereed Publications

Darnell, RM, JA Kleypas, and RE Defenbaugh, 1987: Eastern Gulf shelf bio-atlas:

a study of the distribution of demersal fishes and penaeid shrimp of soft bottoms

of the continental shelf from the Mississippi River Delta to the Florida Keys,

Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico Outer Continental Shelf Region,

U.S. Dept. of the Interior.

Kleypas, JA, 1991: Use of AVHRR data to assess environmental controls on reef development in the southern Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Proc., 8th Thematic

Conf. Geol. Remote Sensing, 265–276.

Kleypas, JA and D Hopley, 1994: Reef development across a broad continental shelf,

south-central Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Proc. 7th Int. Coral Reef Symp.,

Guam, 2: 1129–1141.

Kleypas, J, 1995: A diagnostic model for predicting global coral reef distribution. Pacific Congress on Marine Science and Technology (PACON) ‘94 Proc.: Recent Advances in Marine Science and Technology, Townsville, Australia, 211–220.

Kleypas, JA and BN Opdyke, 1998: Symposium participants assess future of coral

reefs. Meeting report to Eos, Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union. 79(21): 249, 251,

253.

Kleypas, JA and SC Doney, 2001: Nutrients, Chlorophyll, Primary Production and

Related Biogeochemical Properties in the Ocean Mixed Layer—A Compilation of

Data Collected at Nine JGOFS (Joint Global Ocean Flux Survey) Sites. NCAR

Technical Note NCAR/TN–447+STR, 55 pp.

33

Iglesias-Rodriquez, MD, R Armstrong, R Feely, R Hood, J Kleypas, JD Milliman, C

Sabine and J Sarmiento, 2002: Progress made in study of ocean’s calcium carbonate budget. Eos, Trans. Amer. Geophys. Union, 83(34): 365, 374–375.

Kennedy, VA, RR Twilley, JA Kleypas, JH Cowan, Jr. and SR Hare, 2002: Coastal

and Marine Ecosystems and Global Climate Change: Potential Effects on U.S.

Resources. Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Arlington, VA, 52 pp.

Kleypas, JA and C Langdon, 2002: Overview of CO2-induced changes in seawater

chemistry. Proc. 9th Int. Coral Reef Symp., Bali, Indonesia, 2: 1085–1089.

Buddemeier, RW, JA Kleypas and R Aronson, 2004: Coral Reefs and Global Climate

Change. Potential Contributions of Climate Change to Stresses on Coral Reef

Ecosystems, Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Arlington, VA, 42 pp.

Kleypas, JA, 2005: Coral Reefs and Climate, The Encyclopedia of World Climates,

J Oliver, Ed., Kluwer Press, 305–306.

4leypas, JA, 2006: Predictions of climate change in the tropical oceans, and how

that should shape reef conservation efforts, in Proc. World Marine Technology Conf.,

London, 8pp (CD-ROM only, ISBN no. 1–902536–54–1).

Kleypas, JA, 2006: Constraints on predicting coral reef response to climate change,

Geological Approaches to Coral Reef Ecology, R Aronson, Ed., Springer-Verlag,

386–424.

Kleypas, JA (Lead Author); J–P Gattuso (Topic Editor), 2006: Coral Reefs, Encyclopedia of Earth, (Ed. CJ Cleveland), (Wash., DC: Env. Inform. Coal., Nat. Council Sci. and Env.). [First published Oct. 18, 2006]. http://www.eoearth.org/article/Coral¥reefs

Kleypas, JA, RA Feely, VJ Fabry, C Langdon, CL Sabine and LL Robbins, 2006: Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers. A

Guide for Future Research, Report of a workshop sponsored by NSF, NOAA and

the USGS. 88 pp.

Kleypas, JA and C Langdon, 2006: Coral reefs and changing seawater chemistry,

Chapter 5 in Coral Reefs and Climate Change: Science and Management, JT

Phinney, O Hoegh-Guldberg, J Kleypas, W Skirving and A Strong, Eds., AGU

Monograph Series, Coastal and Estuarine Studies, Am. Geophys. Union, Vol. 61,

73–110.

Phinney, JT, O Hoegh-Guldberg, J Kleypas, W Skirving, and A Strong, Eds., 2006:

Coral Reefs and Climate Change: Science and Management. AGU Monograph

Series, Coastal and Estuarine Studies, Am. Geophys. Union, Vol. 61, 350 pp.

Feely, RA, JC Orr, VJ Fabry, JA Kleypas, CL Sabine and C Langdon, (in press):

Present and future changes in seawater chemistry due to ocean acidification.

AGU Monograph on The Science and Technology of Carbon Sequestration.

Hendee, JC, L Gramer, JA Kleypas, D Manzello, M Jankulak, and C Langdon, 2008:

The integrated coral observing network: Sensor solutions for sensitive sites,

Proc., 3rd Int. Conf., Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks, and Information

Processing, Melbourne, Australia.

Kleypas, JA, and O Hoegh-Guldberg, 2008: Coral reefs and global climate change,

Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005, C

Wilkinson, Ed., Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network.

Non-Refereed Publications

Buddemeier, RW, J–P Gattuso and JA Kleypas, 1998: Rising CO2 and marine calcification. LOICZ (Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone) Newsletter 8: 1–

3.

Doney, SC, and JA Kleypas, 2000: Expanding scope of U.S. JGOFS SMP shown at

annual meeting. U.S. JGOFS Newsletter, Aug. 2000, p. 3, 5.

Iglesias-Rodriguez, D, R Armstrong, R Feely, R Hood, and J Kleypas, 2001: SMP

workshop assesses role of calcification in ocean carbon cycle, U.S. JGOFS Newsletter, Nov. 2001, p. 9–10.

Doney, SC, and JA Kleypas, 2001: U.S. JGOFS SMP investigators gather for summer meeting, U.S. JGOFS Newsletter, Nov. 2001, p. 7, 8, 15.

Doney, SC, and JA Kleypas, 2002: Advances highlighted at summer meeting of U.S.

JGOFS SMP investigators. U.S. JGOFS Newsletter, Oct. 2002, p. 3–4.

Doney, SC, Ed., and 18 members of the Carbon Cycle Science Ocean Interim Implementation Group, 2004: Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC): An Implementation Strategy for U.S. Ocean Carbon Research. Prepared for the U.S. CarVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
34

bon Cycle Science Scientific Steering Group (CCSSG) and Inter-agency Working

Group (CCIWG), 108 pp.

Caldeira, K, H Elderfield, JA Kleypas, U Riebesell, 2006: Ocean acidification—modern observations and past experiences, Workshop report for the IGBP–SCOR

Fast Track Initiative on Ocean Acidification.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Dr. Kleypas.

Dr. Doney, you are recognized.

STATEMENT OF DR. SCOTT C. DONEY, SENIOR SCIENTIST, DEPARTMENT OF MARINE CHEMISTRY AND GEOCHEMISTRY,

WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION

Dr. DONEY. Thank you, Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member

Inglis, and Subcommittee Members. Thank you for giving me the

opportunity today to talk about the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act.

The rapid rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels due to deforestation and fossil fuel burning is fundamentally changing the

chemistry of the sea, pushing surface waters towards more acidic

conditions. The physics and chemistry of this process are well understood, and ocean acidification is now confirmed by real-world observations.

Unless carbon dioxide emissions are curbed, acidification will accelerate over the next several decades. Laboratory experiments

show that acidification directly harms many marine plants and animals by reducing calcium carbonate shell and skeleton formation,

slowing growth rates, and hindering reproduction.

Acidification thus directly threatens a wide range of marine organisms, from microscopic plankton and shellfish to massive coral

reefs. Acidification will affect the food webs that depend upon those

shell-forming organisms for both food and habitat, as well as the

oceanic economic and ecosystem functions that we depend upon.

About half the dollar value of U.S. fishery landings comes from

species that are directly sensitive to ocean acidification. The

present national investment in ocean acidification research is inadequate to address these challenges. As a result, the U.S. research

community is not providing the information needed by stakeholders

and policy-makers and is falling behind our European and Japanese colleagues.

Major gaps exist in our current scientific understanding, limiting

our ability to forecast the consequences of ocean acidification and

hindering the development of adaptation approaches for marine resource managers.

Rising carbon dioxide will affect many ocean processes beyond

just shell formation. And recent results suggest that there may be

biological winners as well as losers as some organisms benefit from

elevated carbon dioxide levels. Expanded ocean and satellite-based

observations are needed to monitor ocean acidification and its biological impacts, particularly in our coastal waters, where acidification is already occurring as Dr. Feely has mentioned, in very important ecosystems.

Innovative ecosystem scale field experiments are required to

characterize ocean acidification and the changes they have, it has

on marine food webs. The science must also be better connected

with stakeholder needs with more applied research targeting reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
35

1The views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

source management, conservation, and the socioeconomic impacts

from damaged fisheries and coral reefs.

The FOARAM Act is an important step towards a comprehensive

U.S. ocean research program on acidification. The proposed funding

level ramping up to $30 million in fiscal year 2012 will greatly enhance U.S. research capabilities, but as mentioned by Dr. Kleypas,

even this level may fall short of the true needs, which we have estimated at closer to $50 to $55 million a year.

There is much that we don’t know about acidification, and the research program should leave wide latitude for exploratory and discovery-based science investigations, such as those supported by the

National Science Foundation and NASA. The bill should also include a substantial portion of funding that is not just competitive

but also extramural to harness the tremendous capacity of our academic research community. Considering the scope of the ocean

acidification problem, we need to bring all available resources to

bear on developing the science quickly and efficiently.

Direct authorizations of funds to NASA and NSF rather than directing it through NOAA would streamline the distribution and the

planning effort and take better advantage of the new capabilities

of our main ocean agencies on science, NASA and remote sensing,

NSF on process studies and chemical and biological dynamics, and

NOAA on ocean monitoring and fisheries.

The bill should support a strong interagency consultative process

on the science of ocean acidification, but this may be best accomplished through successful existing and often informal partnerships

among the agencies rather than creating a new interagency committee specifically directed on ocean acidification.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address the Subcommittee, and I look forward to answering your questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Doney follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SCOTT C. DONEY1

Introduction

Good morning Chairman Lampson, Ranking Member Inglis and Members of the

Subcommittee. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today

on ocean acidification and the proposed Federal Ocean Acidification Research and

Monitoring Act, H.R. 4174. My name is Scott Doney, and I am a Senior Scientist

at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole MA. My research focuses on interactions among climate, the ocean and global carbon cycles, and marine

ecosystems. I have published more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles

and book chapters on these and related subjects. I serve on the U.S. Carbon Cycle

Science Program (CCSP) Scientific Steering Group and the U.S. Community Climate

System Model (CCSM) Scientific Steering Committee. Currently I am the Chair of

the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) Scientific Steering Group and

the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Scientific Steering Committee.

For today’s hearing, you have asked me to discuss the strengths and weaknesses

of the current interagency effort to monitor and research ocean acidification and to

assess its potential impacts on marine organisms and marine ecosystems, and in addition, to provide recommendations for strengthening individual programs of the

federal agencies participating in the interagency committees focusing on ocean

issues.

Current Scientific Understanding

My comments on our state of knowledge about ocean acidification are based on

a broad scientific consensus as represented in the current scientific literature and

36

recent in scientific assessments compiled by the scientific community, in particular

the United Kingdom Royal Society (Royal Society, 2005), the German Advisory

Council on Global Change (WBGU) (Schuster et al., 2006), and a U.S. science workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United States Geological Survey (Kleypas et al.,

2006).

The current rapid rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, due to our intensive

burning of fossil fuels for energy, is fundamentally changing the chemistry of the

sea, pushing surface waters toward more acidic conditions. Greater acidity slows the

growth or even dissolves ocean plant and animal shells built from calcium carbonate, the same mineral as in chalk and limestone. Acidification thus threatens a

wide-range of marine organisms, from microscopic plankton and shellfish to massive

coral reefs, as well as the food webs that depend upon these shell-forming species.

Rising CO2 levels will also alter a host of other marine biological and geochemical

processes, often in ways we do not yet understand. Ocean acidification is a critical

issue for the 21st century impacting on the health of the ocean, the productivity of

fisheries, and the conservation and preservation of unique marine environments

such as coral reefs.

Over the last 250 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) increased by nearly 40

percent, from pre-industrial levels of about 280 ppmv (parts per million volume) to

nearly 384 ppmv in 2007 (Solomon et al., 2007). This rate of increase, driven by

human fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, is at least an order of magnitude

faster than has occurred for millions of years, and the current concentration is higher than experienced on Earth for at least the last 800,000 years and likely the last

several tens of millions of years (Doney and Schimel, 2007). About one-third of this

excess, anthropogenic carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean, where it forms carbonic

acid and a series of dissociation products. The release of hydrogen ions from the

breakdown of carbonic acid lowers the pH of seawater, shifting the normally somewhat alkaline seawater (surface pH about 8.2) toward more acidic conditions. As important for many organisms is the simultaneous reduction in carbonate ion concentration, which is used in the construction of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) shells.

Ocean acidification is a predictable consequence of rising atmospheric CO2 and does

not suffer from uncertainties associated with climate change forecasts. Absorption

of anthropogenic CO2, reduced pH, and lower calcium carbonate saturation in surface waters, where the bulk of oceanic production occurs, are well-verified from models, hydrographic surveys and time series data (Feely et al., 2004; Orr et al., 2005).

Since preindustrial times, the average ocean surface water pH has fallen by about

0.1 units, from about 8.21 to 8.10 (Royal Society, 2005), and is expected to decrease

a further 0.3–0.4 pH units (Orr et al., 2005) if atmospheric CO2 concentrations

reach 800 ppmv (the projected end-of-century concentration according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) business as usual emission scenario;

Solomon et al., 2007). The most sensitive areas may be the sub-polar North Pacific,

the Southern Ocean, and along the Pacific continental shelf and margin where waters are already near or at corrosive levels for some carbonate shells (Feely et al.,

2008). The problem of ocean acidification will be with us for a long time because

it takes centuries to thousands of years for natural processes, primarily mixing into

the deep-sea and increased dissolution of marine carbonate sediments, to remove excess carbon dioxide from the air.

Ocean acidification appears to have a significant, and often negative impact on

many ocean plant and animal species. The magnitude and even the sign of the biological effects, however, differ from organism group to group and on the specific biological processes involved. Rising atmospheric CO2 alters seawater chemistry in several different ways—reducing pH, increasing the partial pressure of dissolved CO2

gas (pCO2), increasing total dissolved inorganic carbon, and reducing carbonate ion

and the saturation state of calcium carbonate minerals. Because of the reduction in

calcium carbonate saturation state, much of the research emphasis has been on

shell-forming plants and animals that use calcium carbonate including some plankton (coccolithophorids, foramaniferia, and pteropods), benthic mollusks (clams, oysters and mussels), echinoderms (sea urchins), corals and coralline algae. Laboratory

experiments show that ocean acidification and changes in ocean carbonate chemistry

directly harms many of these calcifying species by reducing shell formation, slowing

growth rates and hindering reproduction (Fabry et al., 2008a). The degree of sensitivity varies among species, however, and some organisms may show enhanced calcification at CO2 levels projected to occur over the 21st century (Iglesias-Rodrı ́guez

et al., 2008). However, calcification-CO2 response studies exist for a limited number

of species in many calcifying groups, and currently, we lack sufficient understanding

of calcification mechanisms to explain species-specific differences observed in manipulative experiments.

37

The consequences of acidification will extend well beyond the fate of any particular marine species. Acidification impacts on processes fundamental to the overall

structure and function of marine ecosystems. Any significant changes could have far

reaching impacts for the future of ocean food-webs. Many marine animals prey on

calcifying organisms or utilize their skeletons for habitat. Tropical corals are the

backdrop for rich and diverse reef environments, and many fish species would disappear along with the corals. Others such as clams, scallops, oysters and sea urchins are important sources of seafood. Less familiar are the many shell-forming

planktonic organisms, including plants like coccolithophores and marine snails

called pteropods, which are an important food source for salmon and whales. Recent

discoveries indicate the presence of extensive deep-water coral reefs around the edge

of continents and on seamounts, which may decline before we fully understand their

contribution as a habitat for fish. Some preliminary experiments suggest that larval

and juvenile fish may also be at risk.

Human and Economic Dimensions of Ocean Acidification

Ocean acidification will also impacts the millions of people that depend on its food

and other resources for their livelihoods. Fish and marine organisms provided, on

average, 15.5 percent of the world’s protein in 2003 (FAO, 2007); losses of crustaceans, bivalves, their predators, and their habitat (in the case of reef-associated fish

communities) would particularly injure societies that depend heavily on consumption, export, and tourism of marine resources. Reef losses would also expose lowlying settlements and biologically diverse regions to storm and wave damage, multiplying economic hardships (Anderson et al., 2006).

U.S. commercial fisheries depend on calcifying species and their predators, making economic effects from ocean acidification a likelihood over the next several decades. Acidification effects likely will be most directly felt on mollusk fisheries (e.g.,

clams, scallops, oysters and mussels), which provide 18 percent of total revenue

(Figure 1, red tones). Crustaceans (e.g., lobsters, crabs, shrimp) may also be sensitive and contribute an additional 32 percent of total revenue. The possible indirect

impacts through reduced food supply for commercial fish species is not well understood yet. For scale, in 2006 the total landing value (what is paid for a boat’s catch

at the dock) of the U.S. commercial fisheries was about $4 billion, and subsequent

seafood processing, wholesale and retail activities added a net $35.1 billion to the

gross national product (Andrews et al., 2007). Domestic commercial marine fisheries

directly support a larger number of jobs in the fishing fleet, the exact number not

well reported because many fishers are self-employed; wholesaling and seafood processing generates an additional nearly 70,000 jobs nationwide; including seafood retailing and food services expands that number substantially. Meanwhile, U.S. recreational saltwater fishing generated $12 billion of direct, indirect, and induced income (Steinback et al., 2004) and supported 350,000 jobs in 2004, many of them related to recreational boat sales and maintenance.

Scientific Knowledge Gaps and Future Research Directions

The U.S. research community has recently hosted two major scientific meetings

to identify knowledge gaps and discuss future research needs in ocean acidification.

The first meeting of 60 experts in the field was held in 2005 in St. Petersburg, FL

and sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS); the

workshop developed a consensus set of recommendations related to ocean acidification and calcifying organisms (Kleypas et al., 2006). Building on that report, the

U.S. Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program (http://us-ocb.org/), supported NSF, NASA, and NOAA, hosted a planning workshop for 90 U.S. and international ocean scientists in La Jolla, CA in the Fall of 2007. The recommendations

from the OCB workshop were similar to those of the St. Petersburg meeting but extended as well more broadly to acidification impacts on non-calcifying organisms

and ocean biogeochemistry (Fabry et al., 2008b).

Major gaps exist in our current scientific understanding, limiting our ability to

forecast the consequences of ocean acidification and hindering the development of

adaptation approaches for marine resource managers. Thus far, most of the elevated

CO2 response studies on marine biota, whether for calcification, photosynthesis or

some other physiological measure, have been short-term laboratory or mesocosm experiments ranging in length from hours to weeks. Chronic exposure to increased

CO2 may have complex effects on the growth and reproductive success of calcareous

and non-calcareous plants and animals and could induce possible adaptations that

are not observed in short-term experiments. Our present understanding also stems

largely from experiments on individual organisms or a species in isolation; conVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
38

sequently, the response of populations and communities to more realistic gradual

changes is largely unknown.

Other aspects of ocean biogeochemistry may be strongly influenced by rising CO2

levels. Recent experiments with one of the most abundant types of phytoplankton,

Synechococcus, showed significantly elevated photosynthesis rates under warmer,

high CO2 conditions. Elevated CO2 also enhanced nitrogen fixation rates (production

of biologically useful nutrients from dissolved nitrogen gas) for a key tropical marine

cyanobacteria, which would in effect fertilize the surface ocean and offset predicted

reductions in tropical biological production due to climate warming and stratification. Further, a major but under-appreciated consequence of ocean acidification will

be broad alterations of inorganic and organic seawater chemistry beyond the carbonate system. Acidification will affect the biogeochemical dynamics of calcium carbonate, organic carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in the ocean as well as the seawater chemical speciation of trace metals, trace elements and dissolved organic matter.

A fully-integrated research program with in-water and remote sensing observing

systems on multiple-scales, laboratory, mesocosm (large volumes of seawater either

in tanks or plastic bags), and field process studies, and modeling approaches is required to provide policy-makers with informed management strategies that address

how humans might best mitigate or adapt to these long-term changes. This program

should emphasize how changes in the metabolic processes at the cellular level will

be manifested within the ecosystem or community structure, and how they will influence future climate feedbacks. A program should include the following components:

• Systematic monitoring system with high resolution measurements in time

and space of atmospheric and surface water carbon dioxide partial pressure

(pCO2), total dissolved inorganic carbon, alkalinity, and pH to validate model

predictions and provide the foundations for interpreting the impacts of acidification on ecosystems;

• In regions projected to undergo substantial changes in carbonate chemistry,

tracking of abundances and depth distributions of key calcifying and non-calcifying species at appropriate temporal and spatial scales to be able to detect

possible shifts and distinguish between natural variability and anthropogenic

forced changes;

• Standardized protocols and data reporting guidelines for carbonate system

perturbation and calcification experiments;

• Manipulative laboratory experiments to quantify physiological responses including calcification and dissolution, photosynthesis, respiration, and other

sensitive indices useful in predicting CO2 tolerance of ecologically and economically important species;

• New approaches to investigate address long-term subtle changes that more

realistically simulate natural conditions;

• Manipulative mesocosm and field experiments to investigate community and

ecosystem responses (i.e., shifts in species composition, food web structure,

biogeochemical cycling and feedback mechanisms) to elevated CO2 and potential interactions with nutrients, light and other environmental variables;

• Integrated modeling approach to determine the likely implications of ocean

acidification processes on marine ecosystems and fisheries including nested

models of biogeochemical processes and higher trophic-level responses to address ecosystem-wide dynamics such as competition, predation, reproduction,

migration, and spatial population structure;

• Robust and cost effective methods for measuring pH, pCO2, and dissolved

total alkalinity on moored buoys, ships of opportunity, and research vessels,

floats and gliders;

• Studies on the human dimensions of ocean acidification including the socioeconomic impacts due to damaged fisheries and coral reefs;

• Assessment of potential adaptation strategies needed by resource managers

including reducing other human stresses (over-fishing, habitat destruction,

pollution) to increase ecosystem resiliency as well as local-scale mitigation efforts.

Current National Research Effort on Ocean Acidification

Over the last several years, a growing U.S. research effort on ocean acidification

has emerged. The research is supported by several federal science agencies and

builds from two major oceanographic research programs one on ocean biogeoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00042 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
39

chemistry, the U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS; http://

www1.whoi.edu/), which ran from the late 1980s through the mid-2000s, and one

of marine plankton ecology, U.S. Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics (GLOBEC;

www.usglobec.org), which is in it’s concluding synthesis phase. Each of the federal

science agencies involved brings a specific approach and research emphasis to the

problem of ocean acidification.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) supports observational networks for ocean CO2, pH and seawater carbonate system through a combination research ship based surveys (CLIVAR/CO2 Repeat Hydrography Program;

ushydro.ucsd.edu) and autonomous instruments on volunteer merchant vessels and

moorings (http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/ocd/gcc/index.php). NOAA also is involved in

biological impact assessment of acidification on corals and coral reefs and more recently fish and invertebrates. Most of NOAA funding supports scientists internal to

NOAA, though there is some extramural funding of university researcher through

the Climate Program Office and Sea Grant.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) supports unsolicited, hypothesis driven

research on a wide range of relevant topics, from ocean chemistry and physics to

organism biology and genomics. NSF and NASA jointly fund, along with NOAA, the

CLIVAR/CO2 Repeat Hydrography Program, which is directly documenting the decrease in ocean pH and changes in seawater carbonate chemistry. NSF has also supported the two longest running, continuous ocean carbon time-series, one off of Hawaii (http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/hot/hot¥jgofs.html) and the other off of Bermuda, (http://bats.bios.edu). These sustained time-series were begun in 1988 under

the JGOFS program and are key elements in directly demonstrating acidification

trends. All NSF funding is extramural to the university academic community. As

the only non-mission science agency, NSF has built in flexibility to adapt rapidly

to new ideas as they arise from the research community and to fund higher risk,

discovery driven investigations.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration supports satellite and airborne remote sensing, ship-based process studies and field validation and numerical

modeling relevant to ocean ecology and biogeochemistry. Much of the research is extramural and hypothesis driven. Satellite ocean color data from NASA’s MODIS sensor and from GeoEYE and NASA’s Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor

(SeaWiFS) (http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/) have been used to characterize the

global distributions calcareous plankton and coral reefs. NASA will also launch the

Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO; http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov) this December, a twoyear exploratory mission to measure the vertical average atmospheric CO2 concentration; this data can be combined with numerical models to estimate global patterns of the exchange of carbon dioxide from the ocean and atmosphere. Much of

the NASA funded ocean ecology and biogeochemistry research is relevant to ocean

acidification, and the funding specifically focused on acidification it is expected to

grow in the future.

The Department of Energy (DOE) does not have an active ocean biogeochemical

research program at the moment; in the past, it has supported relevant work on

measuring and modeling ocean CO2 uptake, methods of deliberate ocean carbon sequestration, and ocean environmental genomics. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) co-sponsored a recent major ocean acidification workshop and report

(Kleypas et al., 2006) that has expertise on ocean carbonate systems and coastal ecosystems, and is supporting currently a limited research effort on acidification effects

on coral reefs. Other federal science agencies with potential interest and expertise

relevant to the acidification problem and its biological repercussions include the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Strengths and Weaknesses of Present Interagency Effort

Despite some prominent successes, the present national investment in ocean acidification research is inadequate to address the research challenges described above

and is not creating the required comprehensive research program integrating the

chemical, biological and human dimension aspects of the acidification problem.

There are issues involving the direction and funding level for both basic science,

which provides information on the extent of ocean acidification, and applied science,

which addresses adaptation strategies and solutions. Research and training go hand

in hand, and more resources need to be devoted to undergraduate and graduate student training to ensure and strong scientific base for the future. Further, basic

science efforts within the U.S. are often poorly connected with stakeholders and

more applied research targeting coral reef and fisheries management and conservation. As a result, the U.S. research community is falling behind our European and

40

Japanese colleagues, who are already moving forward on coordinated ocean acidification initiatives.

The current funding level for ocean acidification research does not support the deployment of sufficient ocean monitoring capabilities, particularly in coastal waters

where economically important ecosystems are at risk. New findings just released

last week in Science magazine (Feely et al., 2008) of corrosive, acidified ocean waters on the continental shelf along the U.S. west coast indicate that acidification is

a problem we face now, not decades in the future. But these results from the first

systematic survey of seawater CO2 and acidification in North American coastal waters also highlight the difficulties in monitoring ocean chemistry from slow moving

and expensive ships. New robust chemical sensor technologies exist or are being developed, and an ocean acidification observing system needs to be deployed combining

instrumented autonomous platforms (moorings, gliders, floats) supported by shipboard surveys and process studies.

The NSF supported ocean carbon time-series stations at Hawaii and Bermuda are

pivotal to the U.S. and international research community, the ocean equivalent of

the iconic Mauna Loa atmospheric CO2 record. But such long records over time, critical for identifying trends due anthropogenic CO2 and acidification, are the exception not the rule. With our present funding mechanisms, it is difficult to maintain

and support long-term, sustained time-series. Each three- to five-year funding cycle,

the principal investigators need to create a new scientific justification for making

continued measurements when in fact the unique value of time-series is their continuity over time, the value growing dramatically as the records extend over multiple decades (and funding cycles). The research community continues to struggle

with simply maintaining current capabilities, and few new time-series are being established in different ocean environments.

In a similar vein, satellite measurements provide an unprecedented view of the

temporal variations in ocean ecology. The ocean is vast, and the limited number of

research ships move at about the speed of a bicycle, too slow to map the ocean routinely on ocean basin to global scales. By contrast, a satellite can observe the entire

globe, at least the cloud free areas, in a few days. The detection of gradual trends

such as those due to ocean acidification is challenging. Currently remote sensing can

be used to estimate a number of biological and chemical properties of the ocean (e.g.,

particulate calcite, pCO2) relevant to understanding the impacts of an acidifying

ocean on ocean ecology and chemistry. Finding trends in these records requires long,

coherent and internally consistent, high-quality global time series. Potential gaps in

data coverage between satellite missions are particular worrisome; each sensor has

its own unique calibration issues, and without overlap of missions in orbit, it is

often impossible to construct a climate quality time record the extends over multiple

missions. At present, the on-going availability of high-quality, climate data records

is not assured during the transition of many satellite ocean measurements from

NASA research to the NOAA/DOD operational NPOESS program. For example, the

present NASA satellite ocean color sensors, needed to determine ocean plankto, are

nearing the end of their service life, and the replacement sensors on NPOESS may

not be adequate for the climate community. Further, refocusing of NASA priorities

away from Earth science may dramatically limit or full preclude new ocean satellite

missions need to characterize ocean biological dynamics.

U.S. ocean acidification research is also limited, at present, by the size and scope

of potential field research projects. In particular, the current funding environment

does not encourage the next generation of mesocosm (large enclosed tanks or floating bags of water) and ecosystem-scale field experiments where scientists manipulate environmental conditions (e.g., CO2, pH) and then examine how ocean biology

changes. Many of the major unresolved questions concerning ocean acidification involve impacts on scales too large to test in the laboratory and on communities of

organisms and species. The infrastructure and logistics for manipulative experiments is costly, but the scientific payoff can be substantial, and for some problems

manipulation of the ecosystem provides new scientific insights that are not easily

attained in other ways. Deliberate ocean iron release experiments are one such example. European scientists have made considerable headway on ocean acidification

using a dedicated mesocosm facility for water-column plankton studies, and design

studies are underway for manipulative coral reef acidification experiments, similar

in concept to terrestrial Free Air Carbon Experiment (FACE) system used to study

CO2 fertilization effects on terrestrial grasses, shrubs and trees. The University of

Washington is moving forward, with State and private foundation support, on plans

for an ocean mesocosm system, which could be expanded into a facility broadly

available to the U.S. research community.

There are also a number of issues with the coordination and management across

science agencies. Interagency coordination on U.S. ocean acidification research ocVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00044 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
41

curs via several related pathways involving both program managers from the federal science agencies and federal and university scientists. The U.S. Carbon Cycle

Science Program (CCSP) is an interagency partnership (http://

www.carboncyclescience.gov/) focused broadly on the global carbon cycle in the

ocean, on land, and in the atmosphere and the interactions with climate. The CCSP

is part of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, and it has an Interagency

Working Group (agency representatives from NOAA, NASA, NSF, DOC, USGS and

a number of other, more terrestrially oriented agencies) and a Scientific Steering

Group. The Carbon Cycle Science Program initiated an ocean research program, the

Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC) Program, focused on monitoring the

ocean carbon system and predicting its future behavior.

A key issue with regards to ocean acidification is that the Carbon Cycle Science

Program covers only a portion of the ocean acidification problem, namely the controls on the oceanic uptake of CO2, resulting changes in seawater chemistry and

ocean mechanisms that could damp or accelerate climate change by altering atmospheric CO2 levels. Key aspects of the acidification problem on ecological and socioeconomic impacts extend well beyond the purview of the Carbon Cycle Science Program, however. While there are elements of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program that could address ecological research and coordination needs on ocean acidification, the interactions have been minimal and disjoint to date reflecting the conflicting demands of a Program covering such a wide research domain and not focused specifically on the ocean.

There is also an existing, informal interagency effort on ocean biogeochemistry

and ocean acidification, the Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry (OCB) Program

(http://us-ocb.org/), which is supported by federal program managers at the NSF,

NASA, and NOAA and assisted by input from a scientific steering committee consisting of academic and government scientists. The OCB Program encompasses the

scientific direction of the OCCC program and also expands into ocean ecology to the

degree that it interactions with biogeochemical cycling. The OCB and OCCC scientific steering groups overlap in membership and meet jointly. The OCB has taken

the lead on organizing a recent major U.S. ocean acidification workshop last Fall

in La Jolla, CA (Kleypas et al., 2008b), and is also working to ensure the appropriate international linkages with emerging and existing ocean acidification programs supported by the European Union, Australia and Japan. The informal interactions facilitated by OCB are working well but do not cover the full scope of acidification research, for example the more fisheries and coral reef oriented work currently supported internally within NOAA or socioeconomic components of the problem.

Recommendations on the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act

The Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, H.R. 4174, is an

important step toward a comprehensive U.S. ocean research program. The proposed

funding level ramping to $30 million in FY 2012 will greatly enhance U.S. research

capabilities. But even this level may fall short of true needs, which are estimated

at closer to $50–$55 million a year based on recent scientific community-wide planning efforts. To put this in context, one can compare against the funding levels of

prior major oceanographic research programs. The U.S. JGOFS and U.S. GLOBEC

programs in the 1990s involved large-scale field research on ocean biogeochemistry

and ecology, similar to what is envisioned in a new ocean acidification program. In

the late 1990s the NSF component of those two programs totaled about $24 million

a year. Adding the contributions from NOAA, NASA and DOE approximately doubled the total funding to about $40–$45 million per year in late 1990s dollars

unadjusted for inflation and the rising ship operation costs. This cost estimate does

not consider that a comprehensive acidification program will include additional research components on coral reef, fisheries, and human dimensions.

• The total authorization for FORAM (H.R. 4174) should be increased to $50–

$55 million per year, a reasonable minimum to conduct the required basic

and applied research and deliver those results in a timely fashion to stakeholders, resource managers and policy-makers.

The U.S. scientific community is well poised to take advantage of increased funding on ocean acidification. As demonstrated by the consensus recommendations from

two recent major U.S. ocean acidification science workshops (Kleypas et al., 2006;

Fabry et al., 2008b), a roadmap for a coherent acidification program is in place and

the community could move quickly toward implementing these research plans as increased funding becomes available. Forward progress on an expanded U.S. ocean

acidification research program should not be delayed waiting for the completion of

42

the proposed National Academy of Sciences study on ocean acidification research

priorities.

• The ramp-up in research funding in H.R. 4174 should be accelerated in order

to more quickly get needed information into the hands of stakeholders and

decision-makers.

Other recommendations on funding approaches for ocean acidification include:

• Funds should be directly authorized to the major ocean science agencies (NSF

and NASA), rather than distributed to NOAA; this would streamline planning, speed research progress, and take better advantage of the unique capabilities of the other agencies.

• A substantial portion of the authorized funding should be not just competitive

but also extramural, to harness the tremendous capacity of our university

academic research community—considering the scope of this problem, we

need to bring all available resources to bear on developing the science quickly

and efficiently.

The structure of the ocean acidification research program should remain adaptive

and encourage exploration of a broad range of scientific areas. Ocean acidification

is a new area of research, and many surprises remain ahead. This is illustrated by

dramatic findings announced just in the last few weeks on accelerated acidification

along the U.S. west coast (Feely et al., 2008) and increased calcification by some

phytoplankton under high CO2, counter to our expectations about an increasing corrosive ocean (Iglesias-Rodriguez et al., 2008). Ocean acidification research is at

present multi-faceted and fast-moving, and marine plants and animals and ocean

biogeochemical cycle are affected by more than simply reduced seawater pH. There

is much that we do not understand as yet about ocean acidification and the multiple

pathways by which acidification and rising CO2 will alter the marine environment.

• The current definition of ‘‘ocean acidification’’ in the bill should be expanded

from simply reduced pH to incorporate the full suite of changes in ocean

chemistry arising from increased carbon dioxide.

• The scope of the ocean acidification research program should leave wide latitude for the types of exploratory and discovery-based science investigations

generally supported by the NSF, NASA and the extramural components of

NOAA (e.g., NOAA Climate Program Office).

Strong interagency cooperation and coordination is critical to leverage the diverse

expertise and research infrastructure of the individual federal science agencies,

which tie into different parts of the U.S. ocean science community. But this may

be best accomplished through successful existing structures rather than by creating

a new interagency committee. These include the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP; http://www.nopp.org) and the NSTC Joint Subcommittee on Ocean

Science and Technology (JSOST; http://ocean.ceq.gov/about/jsost.html). There is

also considerable merit to more informal interagency partnerships, such as those

that supported the U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study and that are now supporting

the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program. A strong and on-going dialogue needs to be maintained between federal agency program managers and the

scientific community, consisting of both federal and university researchers, on the

planning, implementation and synthesis of ocean acidification research. This can be

accomplished through a variety of mechanisms including scientific steering groups

and community workshops. Finally, ocean acidification is a global problem, and the

U.S. and international research communities should work closely to increase the

pace of discovery and the development of adaptation strategies.

• The bill should support a strong, interagency consultative process on the

science of ocean acidification with substantial and ongoing input from the scientific community.

• The U.S. ocean acidification program should establish strong ties with similar

international research programs and develop mechanisms for U.S. researchers to participate freely in international research activities.

Selected References

Anderson, P., et al., 2006. Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological, and Economic Dimensions. The Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School. 136 pp.

Andrews, R., D. Bullock, R. Curtis, L. Dolinger Few, et al., 2007. Fisheries of the

United States, 2006. National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Science and

43

Technology, Fisheries Statistics Division, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

Doney SC, Schimel DS. 2007. Carbon and climate system coupling on timescales

from the Precambrian to the Anthropocene. Annual Review of Environment and

Resources 32: 31–66.

Doney, S.C. and H.W. Ducklow, 2006: A decade of synthesis and modeling in the

U.S. Joint Global Ocean Flux Study, Deep-Sea Res. II, 53(5–7), 451–458.

Fabry, V.J., B.A. Seibel, R.A. Feely, and J.C. Orr, 2008a. Impacts of ocean acidification on marine fauna and ecosystem processes. ICES J. Mar Science. 65, 414–

432.

Fabry, V.J., C. Langdon, W.M. Balch, A.G. Dickson, R.A. Feely, B. Hales, D.A.

Hutchins, J.A. Kleypas, and C.L. Sabine, 2008b: Ocean acidification’s on marine

ecosystems and biogeochemistry, Eos, Trans. Americ. Geophys. Union, 89, 143–

144. (For full meeting report see also http://www.whoi.edu/sites/

OceanAcidificationMeeting)

Feely, R.A., C.L. Sabine, K. Lee, W. Berelson, J. Kleypas, et al., 2004. Impact of anthropogenic CO2 on the CaCO3 system in the oceans. Science 305:362–366.

Feely, R.A., C.L. Sabine, J.M. Hernandez-Ayon, D. Ianson, and B. Hales, 2008. Evidence for upwelling of corrosive ‘‘acidified’’ water onto the continental shelf,

ScienceExpress, doi:10.1126/science.1155676.

Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 2007. The state of

world fisheries and aquaculture, 2006. Rome. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture

Department. 180 pp.

Iglesias-Rodrı ́guez, M.D., P.R. Halloran, R.E.M. Rickaby, I.R. Hall, E. Colmenero-Hidalgo, J.R. Gittins, D.R.H. Green, T. Tyrrell, S.J. Gibbs, P. von Dassow, E.

Rehm, E.V. Armbrust, and K.P. Boessenkool. 2008. Phytoplankton calcification

in a high CO2 world. Science, 320: 336–339.

Kleypas JA, Feely RA, Fabry VJ, Langdon C, Sabine CL, Robbins LL. 2006. Impacts

of ocean acidification on coral reefs and other marine calcifiers: A guide for future research. Report of a workshop held 18–20 April, 2005, St. Petersburg, FL,

sponsored by NSF, NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey.

National Research Council, 1999: Global Ocean Science-Toward an Integrated Approach, Ocean Studies Board and Commission on Geosciences, Environment,

and Resources, National Research Council, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 165 pp.

Orr, J.C., V.J. Fabry, O. Aumont et al. (2005) Anthropogenic ocean acidification over

the twenty-first century and its impact on marine calcifying organisms, Nature,

437, 681–686, doi:10.1038/nature04095.

Royal Society (2005) Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, Policy Document 12/05, The Royal Society.

Schubert, R., H.–J. Schellnhuber, N. Buchmann, A. Epiney et al., 2006. The future

oceans-warming up, rising high, turning sour, German Advisory Council on

Global Change (WBGU) Special Report, ISBN 3–936191–14–X, http://

www.wbgu.de, Berlin, Germany, 110 pp.

Solomon S, Qin D, Manning M, Chen Z, Marquis M, et al., 2007. Climate Change

2007: The Physical Science Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth

Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. New

York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Steinback, S., B. Gentner, J. Castle, 2004. The Economic Importance of Marine Angler Expenditures in the United States. NOAA Professional Paper NMFS 2. Scientific Publications Office, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, 76 Sand

Point Way NE, Seattle, WA 98115. 184 pp.

BIOGRAPHY FOR SCOTT C. DONEY

EDUCATION

1991—Massachusetts Institute of Technology-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Joint Program in Oceanography, Ph.D. Chemical Oceanography

1986—Revelle College, University of California, San Diego, B.A. Chemistry (magna

cum laude)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2002–present—Scientist, Marine Chem. & Geochem. Dept., WHOI

44

1993–2002—Scientist, Climate and Global Dynamics, NCAR

1991–1993—Postdoctoral Fellow, Advanced Study Program, NCAR

NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL SERVICE

U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program (CCSP)

• Scientific Steering Group (2002–present)

• Chair Ocean Implementation Group (2002–2004)

Ocean Carbon and Climate Change (OCCC)

• Chair Scientific Steering Group (2005–present)

Ocean Carbon Biogeochemistry (OCB)

• Chair Scientific Steering Committee (2006–present)

• Director OCB Project Office (2006–present)

Community Climate System Model (CCSM)

• Chair Biogeochemistry Working Group (1998–2007)

• Scientific Steering Committe (2002–present)

Faculty of 1000, Ecology Section, www.facultyof1000.com, (2004–present)

Journal Editorial Boards

• JGOFS Synthesis and Modeling special issues, Deep-Sea Res. II: Volumes

49(1–3), 2002; 50(22–26), 2003; and 53(5–7), 2006.

• Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Assoc. Editor (2002–2004)

• Reviews of Geophysics, Assoc. Editor (1997–2001)

• Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeoscience, Assoc. Editor (2005–present)

• Science Board of Reviewing Editors (2007–present)

Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS)

• U.S. Scientific Steering Committee (1993–2003)

• U.S. Synthesis and Modeling Coordinator (1997–2005)

World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE)

• U.S. Scientific Steering Committee (1997–2002)

AWARDS

2007–2011—W. Van Alan Clark Sr. Chair, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

2004—Aldo Leopold Leadership Program Fellow

2000—American Geophysical Union James B. Macelwane Medal and AGU Fellow

1987–1990—National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship

1986—Urey Award, Department of Chemistry, University of California at San Diego

Selected Recent Publications (from published total of 115 peer-reviewed articles & 48 other reports and articles)

Boyd, P.W., S.C. Doney, 2002: Modelling regional responses by marine pelagic ecosystems to global climate change, Geophys. Res. Lett., 29(16), 53–1 to 53–4,

doi:10.1029/2001GL014130.

Boyd, P. and S.C. Doney, 2003: The impact of climate change and feedback process

on the ocean carbon cycle. Ocean Biogeochemistry, ed. M. Fasham, Springer,

157–193.

Fung, I., S.C. Doney, K. Lindsay, and J. John, 2005: Evolution of carbon sinks in

a changing climate, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA), 102, 11201–11206, doi:10.1073/

pnas.0504949102.

Orr, J.C., V.J. Fabry, O. Aumont, L. Bopp, S.C. Doney, R.A. Feely, et al. 2005: Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on

marine calcifying organisms, Nature, 437, 681–686, doi:10.1038/nature04095.

Doney, S.C., 2006: The dangers of ocean acidification. Scientific American, 294(3),

March 2006, 58–65.

Doney, S.C., K. Lindsay, I. Fung and J. John, 2006: Natural variability in a stable

1000 year coupled climate-carbon cycle simulation, J. Climate, 19(13), 3033–

3054.

45

Friedlingstein, P., et al., 2006: Climate-carbon cycle feedback analysis: Results from

the C4MIP model intercomparison, J. Climate, 19(14), 3337–3353.

Mikaloff Fletcher, S.E., N. Gruber, A.R. Jacobson, M. Gloor, S.C. Doney, S.

Dutkiewicz, M. Gerber, M. Follows, F. Joos, K. Lindsay, D. Menemenlis, A.

Mouchet, S.A. Muller, and J.L. Sarmiento, 2007: Inverse estimates of the oceanic sources and sinks of natural CO2 and their implied oceanic transport, Global Biogeochem. Cycles, 21, GB1010, 10.1029/2006GB002751.

Doney, S.C., N. Mahowald, I. Lima, R.A. Feely, F.T. Mackenzie, J.–F. Lamarque,

and P.J. Rasch, 2007: The impact of anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen and

sulfur deposition on ocean acidification and the inorganic carbon system, Prod.

Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 104, 14580–14585, doi:10.1073/pnas.0702218104.

Doney, S.C. and D.S. Schimel, 2007: Carbon and climate system coupling on

timescales from the Precambrian to the Anthropocene, Ann. Rev. Environ. Resources, 32, 31–66, doi:10.1146/annurev.energy.32.041706.124700.

Levine, N.M, S.C. Doney, R. Wanninkhof, K. Lindsay, and I. Fung, 2008: Impact of

ocean carbon system variability on the detection of temporal increases in anthropogenic CO2, J. Geophys. Res. Oceans, 113, C03019, doi:10.1029/

2007JC004153.

Boyd, P.W., S.C. Doney, R. Strzepek, J. Dusenberry, K. Lindsay, and I. Fung, 2008:

Climate-mediated changes to mixed-layer properties in the Southern Ocean: assessing the phytoplankton response, Biogeosciences, 5, 847–864.

Doney, S.C., V.J. Fabry, R.A. Feely, J.A. Kleypas, Ocean acidification: the other CO2

problem, Ann. Rev. Mar. Sci., submitted.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Dr. Doney.

Dr. Caldeira, you are recognized for five minutes.

STATEMENT OF DR. KEN CALDEIRA, SCIENTIST, DEPARTMENT

OF GLOBAL ECOLOGY, CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON

Dr. CALDEIRA. Good morning, and thank you for inviting me here

today to testify before you.

I am a scientist and a concerned citizen who has been studying

ocean chemistry and the carbon cycle for over 20 years. Last night

I took a taxi from Dulles to my hotel building, and outside, out of

the tailpipe of that taxi came carbon dioxide gas. Today that carbon

dioxide is probably mostly over Maryland, could be impacting the

Chesapeake Bay already. Within a few days it will certainly be impacting the chemistry of the Atlantic Ocean. Within a year that

CO2 will travel throughout the atmosphere, around the world, and

impact the chemistry of the upper ocean everywhere, from Alaska,

to Florida, from Antarctica, the North Pole.

When CO2 dissolves in seawater, it becomes carbonic acid. In

high enough concentrations carbonic acid can dissolve seashells.

Even at lower concentrations it can threaten the survival of many

marine organisms.

So far we have studied just a few species. Typically, a small coral

head or a few sea urchins are exposed to high CO2 concentrations

in a fish tank in a laboratory. It is just the beginning, but what

we have seen so far is very disturbing.

In many cases organisms show malformed or stunted growth. In

many cases we don’t know if they would be able to survive in the

wild or be able to reproduce.

We have little idea what ocean acidification will do to fish eggs

or fish larvae or how the loss of organisms at the base of the food

chain might affect the larger fish that so many people have come

to depend on.

46

We do know that ocean acidification threatens the survival of

coral reefs everywhere. If we are lucky, we will lose just coral reefs

and maybe a few other sensitive things like that. But if we are unlucky, we might see a wholesale shakeup of marine ecosystems

across the board.

At this point we just don’t know, and that is why we need to

focus significant resources to understand this issue now.

We should expect surprises, so we need to monitor what is going

on. For example, our models predicted it would take over a century

for corrosive waters to start showing up along our coasts, but just

two weeks ago Dick Feely and his colleagues reported in the prestigious journal Science that corrosive waters, burdened with fossil

fuel carbon, have already been threatening the shoreline along

parts of the west coast of the U.S. They saw water corrosive

enough to start dissolving seashells.

So we need better observations and better computer models to

help us anticipate what might occur under different policy options.

For my Ph.D. research I studied what happened to ocean chemistry when a meteorite slammed into the Earth some 65 million

years ago. At that time there was a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot

of sulfuric acid, and the oceans became acidified. Nearly everything

with a calcium carbonate shell or skeleton disappeared. Coral reefs

weren’t seen again for two million years.

You have to go back to events like this, many tens of millions of

years ago, to find anything comparable to what we are doing today

to ocean chemistry with our carbon dioxide emissions. What we do

over the next years and decades will affect ocean chemistry for tens

of thousands of years and could harm marine life for millions of

years.

So I wholeheartedly support House Resolution 4174, the Federal

Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act but wish it were

even more ambitious.

It is impossible to say what the oceans are worth to us, but it

has to be at least many tens of billions of dollars per year. We are

talking about a research investment starting at several millions of

dollars per year, so that is a ratio of about 10,000 to one. That is

like having a $20,000 car and when it starts making funny noises

and not running right, spending only $2 to find out what is going

wrong. With this level investment we shouldn’t be surprised when

it breaks down unexpectedly in the middle of the highway.

I thank you for your good work and your attention and look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Caldeira follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KEN CALDEIRA

Thank you for inviting me to testify before the Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the United States House of

Representatives. I would be happy to provide more information on any of the issues

discussed below.

I am a scientist and a concerned citizen. I have been studying ocean chemistry

and carbon cycle for over 20 years. I worked for a Department of Energy Laboratory

for 12 years, and co-led the DOE center for research on ocean carbon sequestration.

I led the writing of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chapter on

ocean carbon storage. Recently, I acted in the capacity of the representative of the

Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (a branch of the United Nations) to

international negotiations held under the London Convention and London Protocol.

47

I now work for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, a non-profit organization

dedicated to ‘‘investigation, research, and discovery [and] . . . the application of

knowledge to the improvement of mankind. . ..’’

Every time we drive a car, carbon dioxide gas comes out of the taxi tailpipe and

goes right into the air.

Within a year, that CO2 will travel throughout the atmosphere and impact the

chemistry of the ocean surface everywhere—from Alaska to Florida, from Antarctica

to the North Pole.

That CO2 will stay in the oceans, changing ocean chemistry, for tens of thousands

of years.

When CO2 dissolves in seawater, it becomes carbonic acid. In high enough concentrations, carbonic acid can dissolve sea shells. Even at lower concentrations, it

can threaten the survival of many marine organisms.

So far, we’ve studied just a few organisms—typically a small coral head or a few

sea urchins will be exposed to high CO2 concentrations in a fish tank in a laboratory. It’s just a beginning, but what we’ve seen so far is very disturbing.

In many cases, organisms show malformed or stunted growth. In many cases, we

don’t know if it would be able to survive in the wild or be able to reproduce.

We have little idea what ocean acidification will do to fish eggs, or fish larvae,

or how the loss of organisms at the base of the food chain might affect the larger

fish that so many people have come to depend on.

In general, we have little idea what the ecosystem-scale consequences of ocean

acidification might be.

Corals are perhaps the best studied kind of organism.

Several of us use computer models to predict how future CO2 would affect ocean

chemistry. If carbon dioxide emissions continue along current trends, within a few

decades there will be no water left anywhere in the ocean with the kind of chemistry that has supported coral growth over the past thousands and even millions of

years.

CO2 threatens the survival of coral reefs everywhere.

If we’re lucky, we’ll lose just coral reefs and maybe a few other things. If we’re

unlucky, we might see a wholesale shake-up of marine ecosystems across the board.

At this point, we just don’t know, and that’s why we need to focus significant resources to understand this issue now.

We should expect surprises, so we need to monitor what is going on.

For example, our models predicted it would take over a century for corrosive

water to start showing up along our coasts.

But, just two weeks ago, Dick Feely and his colleagues reported in the prestigious

journal Science, that corrosive waters, burdened with fossil-fuel carbon, have already been threatening the shoreline along parts the west coast of the U.S.

They saw water corrosive enough to start dissolving sea shells.

We need better observations and better computer models to help us anticipate

what might occur under different policy options.

Our computer models must get much better at representing the coasts and representing what goes on in ecosystem dynamics. These models must be based on and

tested with careful observations, made both by scientists on ships in the oceans and

by scientists working in the laboratory.

For my Ph.D. research, I studied what happened to ocean chemistry when a meteorite slammed into the Earth some 65 million years ago. At that time, there was

a lot of carbon dioxide and a lot of sulfuric acid, and the oceans became acidified.

Nearly everything with a calcium carbonate shell or skeleton disappeared. Coral

reefs weren’t seen again for two million years.

You have to go back to events like this, many tens of millions of years ago, to

find anything comparable to what we are doing to ocean chemistry today with our

carbon dioxide emissions.

What we do over the next years and decades will affect ocean chemistry for tens

of thousands of years and could harm marine life for millions of years.

Ocean acidification will stress ecosystems. One important thing we can do now is

to reduce other stresses on ecosystems, including over fishing, coastal pollution, loss

of coastal wetlands, and so on, so we can give the oceans a fighting chance while

we figure out how to address the underlying problem.

There may be engineering options to help protect small bays or semi-enclosed marine sanctuaries, but the only way to really save the oceans is to greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions soon.

We have investigated the potential to dissolve minerals that would add alkalinity

to the oceans, counteracting the acidity from the carbon dioxide. This is essentially

accelerating a process that would occur naturally over many thousands of years.

DOE patented the idea, but hasn’t pursued a careful assessment or its development.

48

It looks feasible from an engineering standpoint, but at this point it is little more

than an idea and a few preliminary calculations. My guess is that it may only prove

feasible at the scale of a small bay or other semi-enclosed area, but other people

think it may prove feasible at much larger scales.

Again, we don’t really know. This is another area in which the research is just

waiting to be done.

We need to investigate what mitigation options might be available to reduce the

impacts of carbon dioxide on the marine environment.

I would like to see every federal agency that might get funded under this H.R.

4174 send a signal through the bureaucracy to their scientists and technicians asking them what capabilities and ideas they might have to bring to bear on this important problem.

And then I would like to see the agencies coordinate their activities, taking advantage of existing structures.

I wholeheartedly support House Resolution 4174, the Federal Ocean Acidification

Research and Monitoring Act, but wish it were even more ambitious.

It’s impossible to say what the oceans are worth to us, but it has to be at least

many tens of billions of dollars per year. We are talking about a research investment starting at several millions of dollars per year. So that’s a ratio of about ten

thousand to one.

That’s like having a 20,000 dollar car and when it starts making funny noises and

not running right, spending only two bucks to find out what’s going wrong. We

shouldn’t be surprised when it breaks down unexpectedly in the middle of the highway.

BIOGRAPHY FOR KEN CALDEIRA

EDUCATION

Ph.D., 1991, New York University, Atmospheric Sciences, Department of Applied

Science

M.S., 1988, New York University, Atmospheric Sciences, Department of Applied

Science

B.A., 1978, Rutgers College, Philosophy

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Staff Scientist (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Department of Global Ecology,

2005–present)—Research controls on long-term geochemical cycles, chemical

oceanography, climate, and energy systems.

Professor [by courtesy] (Stanford University, Department of Environmental Earth

System Science, 2006–present)—Originally appointed to Dept. of Geological and

Environmental Sciences in 2006; founding member of Department of Environmental Earth System Science, 2007). Appointment allows teaching at Stanford.

Physicist/Environmental Scientist (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1995–

2005)—Research ocean carbon cycle, atmospheric CO2, ocean/sea-ice physics, climate, and energy systems.

Post-doctoral Researcher (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; 1993–1995)—

Research the ocean carbon cycle, atmospheric CO2 and climate.

NSF Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow (Earth Systems Science Center & Dept. of

Geosciences, The Pennsylvania State University; 1991–1993)—Role of the carbonate-silicate cycle in long-term atmospheric CO2 content and climate.

GENERAL RESEARCH INTERESTS

Climate/carbon-cycle interactions; numerical simulation of climate and biogeochemistry; marine biogeochemical cycles; global carbon cycle; long-term evolution of

climate and geochemical cycles; energy technology and policy.

SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTIONS

Among Caldeira’s scientific contributions are:

(1) Ocean Acidification. Caldeira was lead author of the first publication in which

the term ‘‘ocean acidification’’ appeared (Caldeira and Wickett, Nature, 2003), showing that anticipated changes in ocean chemistry are large when compared with the

range of change in ocean chemistry experienced in the geologic past. This work has

been followed up by more detailed investigation for a range of CO2 emission and

49

stabilization scenarios (e.g., Caldeira and Wickett, JGR, 2005) and analysis of combined threats to corals (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., Science, 2007).

(2) Land-cover change and climate. Caldeira has participated in studies showing

that growing forests can warm the Earth by absorbing solar radiation, and that

these effects can be much larger than cooling effects of carbon dioxide storage (Bala

et al., PNAS, 2007; Gibbard et al., GRL, 2005).

(3) Energy systems and climate modelling. Caldeira has investigated the amount of

carbon-emission-free energy that would be required to prevent further climate

change under a range of assumptions, and investigated what types of energy systems could supply this power (Caldeira et al., Science, 2003; Hoffert et al., Science,

2002; Hoffert et al., Nature, 1998).

(4) Intentional climate modification. Caldeira has participated in studies on the possible effects of intentional climate modification on Earth’s climate system and biosphere (Govindasamy and Caldeira, GRL, 2000; Govindasamy et al., GRL, 2002;

Govindasamy et al., Glob. Planet. Chg., 2003; Matthews and Caldeira, PNAS, 2007).

(5) Ocean carbon storage. Caldeira was coordinating lead author of an IPCC report

on carbon storage in the ocean (Caldeira et al, IPCC, 2005). He has investigate how

long carbon is retained in the ocean (Caldeira et al., GRL, 2002) and proposed ways

of reducing the ocean chemical effects of ocean carbon storage (e.g., Caldeira and

Rau, GRL, 2000).

(6) Coupled atmosphere/ocean carbon-cycle modelling. Caldeira was part of the research team that produced the first studies by an American group on the three-dimensional interactions of Earth’s climate and carbon cycles. Caldeira was responsible for the ocean biogeochemical components of this modelling effort and proposed

the overall experimental design (Bala et al., Tellus B, 2006; Bala et al., J. Climate,

2005; Govindasamy et al., Tellus, 2005; Thompson et al, GRL, 2004).

(7) Calcification and long-term ocean chemistry. Caldeira has shown that both shallow-water calcifiers (Caldeira and Rampino, Paleoceanography, 1993) and deepwater calcifiers (Ridgwell, Kennedy, and Caldeira, Science, 2003) play important

roles stabilizing the global carbon cycle and climate.

(8) Ocean uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide. Caldeira and Duffy (Science,

2000) showed that transport along surface of constant density was the primary

mode of uptake of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the Southern

Ocean.

(9) Ocean observations as tests of models. Caldeira has been a pioneer of using observations of tracers such as CFCs and radiocarbon in the ocean and marine organisms

(e.g., corals) to test ocean models (Doney et al., GBC, 2004; Matsumoto et al., GRL,

2004; Grumet et al., GBC, 2005; Fallon et al., 2003).

ADVISORY PANELS

UNESCO International Oceanography Commission, Chair, ad hoc Consultative

Group on Ocean Fertilization and representative to the London Convention/London Protocol (2008)

IPCC Special Report on CO2 Capture and Storage, Oceans Chapter, Coordinating

Lead Author (2005)

U.S. Climate Change Science Program SAR 2.2, Lead Author (approaches to reduce

CO2 and CH4 sources) (2007)

American Geophysical Union Meetings Committee, member

AGU Biogeochemistry Section Meetings Committee, member

Dissertation Committees of students at Stanford, MIT, and University of Illinois

UNESCO International Oceanography Commission CO2 Panel of Experts (2002–

2004)

IGBP Global Analysis Integration and Modeling (GAIM) Task Force (2002–2004)

U.S. Global Carbon Cycle Scientific Steering Group (2001–2004)

AWARDS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Caldeira was invited by the National Academy of Sciences Ocean Studies Board

to deliver the 2007 Roger Revelle lecture, ‘‘What coral reefs are dying to tell us

about CO2 and ocean acidification.’’ Caldeira was a lead author of the ‘‘State of the

Carbon Cycle Report,’’ an interagency report of the U.S. Government requested by

the U.S. Congress. Caldeira was one of two technical advisors accompanying the

50

U.S. Government delegation in climate change negotiations leading up to the 2005

G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. Caldeira was a member of the U.S. Carbon

Cycle Steering Group (2001–2004), an advisory panel to U.S. agencies involved in

carbon cycle funding. Caldeira was chosen to be Coordinating Lead Author of an

IPCC report on carbon storage in the ocean (2005). He was a member of the

UNESCO International Oceanography Commission CO2 Panel of Experts (2002–

2004). While at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he was awarded the Edward Teller Fellowship (2004), the highest award given by the laboratory.

Caldeira’s work has been discussed widely in major media outlets such as the

New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, U.S. News and World

Report, and USA Today. He has appeared on radio many times, most often on NPR

(Science Friday, Bryant Park Project) and BBC World Service Radio (Business

Daily). He has also discussed his work on television (BBC World, The Weather

Channel, The Discovery Channel, etc.), both on news programs and in documentaries.

Caldeira now has a highly privileged position at the Carnegie Institution, wherein

his only job responsibility is ‘‘to make important scientific discoveries.’’ His salary

is covered for the length of his career by the Carnegie Institution endowment and

other private foundation sources. Caldeira also holds the position of Professor (by

courtesy) in the Stanford University Department of Environmental Earth System

Science.

PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS

Archer CL, Caldeira K, Historical trends in the jet streams, Geophysical Research

Letters 35, L08803, 2008.

Hoegh-Guldberg O, Mumby PJ, Hooten AJ, et al. Coral adaptation in the face of climate change—Response, Science 320, 315–316, 2008.

Matthews HD, Caldeira K, Stabilizing climate requires near-zero emissions, Geophysical Research Letters 35, L04705, 2008.

Schwartzman D, Caldeira K, Pavlov A, Cyanobacterial emergence at 2.8 gya and

greenhouse feedbacks, Astrobiology 8, 187–203, 2008.

Buesseler, K.O., S. C. Doney, D.M. Karl, P.W. Boyd, K. Caldeira, F. Chai, K.H.

Coale, H.J.W. de Baar*, P.G. Falkowski, K.S. Johnson, R.S. Lampitt*, A.F. Michaels, S.W.A. Naqvi, V. Smetacek*, S. Takeda and A.J. Watson. Ocean Iron

Fertilization—Moving Forward in a Sea of Uncertainty, Science 315, .612, DOI

10.1126/science.1154305, 2008.

Bala G, Caldeira, K., Wickett M, et al. Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects

of large-scale deforestation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of

the United States of America 104 (16): 6550–6555, 2007.

Caldeira, K., What corals are dying to tell us about CO2 and ocean acidification,

Oceanography 20(2), 2007.

Caldeira, K., The maximum entropy principle: A critical discussion, Climatic Change

85 (3–4): 267–269, 2007.

Caldeira, K., D. Archer, J.P. Barry, et al. Comment on ‘‘Modern-age buildup of CO2

and its effects on seawater acidity and salinity’’ by Hugo A. Loaiciga, Geophysical Research Letters 34 (18): Art. No. L18608, 2007.

Cao L., K. Caldeira and A.K. Jain, Effects of carbon dioxide and climate change on

ocean acidification and carbonate mineral saturation, Geophysical Research Letters 34 (5): Art. No. L05607, 2007.

Hoegh-Guldberg, O., P.J. Mumby, A.J. Hooten, R.S. Steneck, P. Greenfield, E.

Gomez, D.R. Harvell, P.F. Sale, A.J. Edwards, K. Caldeira, N. Knowlton, C.M.

Eakin, R. Iglesias-Prieto, N. Muthiga, R.H. Bradbury, A. Dubi and M.E.

Hatziolos. Coral reefs under rapid climate change and ocean acidification,

Science 318, 2007.

Lutz, M.J., K. Caldeira, R.B. Dunbar and M. J. Behrenfeld, Seasonal rhythms of net

primary production and particulate organic carbon flux to depth describe the efficiency of biological pump in the global ocean, Journal of Geophysical Research

(Oceans) 112 (C10): Art. No. C10011, 2007.

Matthews, H.D., and K. Caldeira, Transient climate-carbon simulations of planetary

geoengineering, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United

States of America 104 (24): 9949–9954, 2007.

Najjar, R.G., X. Jin, F. Louanchi, O. Aumont, K. Caldeira, S.C. Doney, J.-C. Dutay,

M. Follows, N. Gruber, F. Joos, K. Lindsay, E. Maier-Reimer, R.J. Matear, K.

Matsumoto, P. Monfray, A. Mouchet, J.C. Orr, G.–K. Plattner, J.L. Sarmiento,

51

R. Schlitzer, R.D. Slater, M.–F. Weirig, Y. Yamanaka, and A. Yool, Impact of

circulation on export production, dissolved organic matter, and dissolved oxygen

in the ocean: Results from Phase II of the Ocean Carbon-cycle Model Intercomparison Project (OCMIP–2). Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 21, GB3007,

doi:10.1029/2006GB002857, 2007.

Rau, G.H. and K. Caldeira, Coal’s future: Clearing the air, Science 316 (5825): 691–

691, 2007.

Rau, G.H., K.G. Knauss, W.H. Langer and K. Caldeira. Reducing energy-related

CO2 emissions using accelerated weathering of limestone, Energy 32 (8): 1471–

1477, 2007.

Roberts, B.W., S.H. Shepard, K. Caldeira, M.E. Cannon, D.G. Eccles, A.J. Grenier

and J.F. Freidlin, Harnessing high-altitude wind power, IEEE Transactions on

Energy Conversion 22 (1): 136–144, 2007.

Alendal, G., P.M. Haugan, R. Gangsto, K. Caldeira, E. Adams, P. Brewer, E. Peltzer,

G. Rehder, T. Sato and B.X. Chen, Comment on ‘‘Fate of rising CO2 droplets

in seawater.’’ Environmental Science and Technology 40 (11) 3653–3654, 2006.

Bala, G., K. Caldeira, A. Mirin, M. Wickett., C. Delire and T.J. Philips, Biogeophysical effects of CO2 fertilization on global climate. Tellus B 58 (5) 620–627,

2006.

Caldeira, K., Forests, climate, and silicate rock weathering. Journal of Geochemical

Exploration 88 (1–3) 419–422 Special Issue, 2006.

Pagani, M., K. Caldeira, D. Archer and J.C. Zachos, An ancient carbon mystery.

Science 314, 1556–1557, 2006.

Bala, G., K. Caldeira, A. Mirin, M. Wickett and C. Delire, Multicentury changes to

the global climate and carbon cycle: Results from a coupled climate and carbon

cycle model. Journal of Climate 18 (21) 4531–4544, 2005.

Caldeira, K., M. Akai, P. Brewer, B. Chen, P. Haugan, T. Iwama, P. Johnston, H.

Kheshgi, Q. Li, T. Ohsumi, H. Poertner, C. Sabine, Y. Shirayama, J. Thomson.

Ocean storage. In: IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage.

Prepared by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change [Metz, B., O. Davidson, H.C. de Coninck, M. Loos, and L.A. Meyer

(eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New

York, NY, USA, 442 pp.

Caldeira, K., and M.E. Wickett, Ocean model predictions of chemistry changes from

carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere and ocean. Journal of Geophysical

Research (Oceans) 110, C09S04, doi:10.1029/2004JC002671, 2005.

Covey C., K. Caldeira, M. Hoffert, M. MacCracken, S.H. Schneider and T. Wigley,

Comment on ‘‘Thernal pollusion causes global warming.’’ Global and Planetary

Change 47 (1) 72–73, 2005.

Gibbard, S., K. Caldeira, G. Bala, T.J. Philips and M. Wickett, Climate effects of

global land cover change. Geophysical Research Letters 32 (23) L23705, 2005.

Govindasamy, B., S. Thompson, A. Mirin, M. Wickett, K. Caldeira and C. Delire Increase of carbon cycle feedback with climate sensitivity: results from a coupled

climate and carbon cycle model, Tellus B 57 (2) 153–163, DOI: 10.1111/j.1600–

0889.2005.00135.x, 2005.

Grumet, N.S., P.B. Duffy, M.E. Wickett, K. Caldeira, and R.B. Dunbar, Intrabasin

comparison of surface radiocarbon levels in the Indian Ocean between coral

records and threee-dimensional global ocean models. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 19 (2) GB2010, 2005.

Rampino, M.R., and K. Caldeira, Major perturbation of ocean chemistry and a

‘‘Strangelove Ocean’’ after the end-Permian mass extinction, Terra Nova 17 (6)

554–559, 2005.

Doney S.C., K. Lindsay K., Caldeira, J.–M. Campin, H. Drange, J.–C. Dutay, M. Follows, Y. Gao, A. Gnanadesikan, N. Gruber, A. Ishida, F. Joos, G. Madec, E.

Maier-Reimer, J.C. Marshall, R.J. Matear, P. Monfray, A. Mouchet, R. Najjar,

J.C. Orr, G.–K. Plattner, J. Sarmiento, R. Schlitzer, R. Slater, I.J. Totterdell,

M.–F. Weirig, Y. Yamanaka, and A. Yool. Evaluating global ocean carbon models: The importance of realistic physics. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 18 (3):

Art. No. GB3017, 2004.

Mueller K, L. Cao, K. Caldeira and A. Jain. Differing methods of accounting ocean

carbon sequestration efficiency. Journal of Geophysical Research—Oceans 109

(C12): Art. No. C12018, 2004.

52

Matsumoto K, Sarmiento JL, Key RM, Aumont O, Bullister JL, Caldeira, K.,

Campin JM, Doney SC, Drange H, Dutay JC, Follows M, Gao Y, Gnanadesikan

A, Gruber N, Ishida A, Joos F, Lindsay K, Maier-Reimer E, Marshall JC,

Matear RJ, Monfray P, Mouchet A, Najjar R, Plattner GK, Schlitzer R, Slater

R, Swathi PS, Totterdell IJ, Weirig MF, Yamanaka Y, Yool A, Orr JC. Evaluation of ocean carbon cycle models with data-based metrics, Geophysical Research

Letters 31, Art No. L007303, 2004.

Thompson SL, Govindasamy B, Mirin A, K. Caldeira, C. Delire, J. Milovich, M.

Wickett, and D. Erickson. Quantifying the effects of CO2-fertilized vegetation on

future global climate and carbon dynamics. Geophysical Research Letters 31

(23): Art. No. L23211 DEC 11 2004.

Caldeira, K., G. Morgan, D. Baldocchi, P. Brewer, C.–T. Arthur Chen, G.–J.

Nabuurs, N. Nakicenovic, P. Robertson, A portfolio of carbon management options, in Towards CO2 Stabilization: Issues, Strategies, and Consequences, A

SCOPE report (Scientific Committee on Problems in the Environment), C. Field

and M. Raupach, editors (pp. 103–129, Island Press, Washington DC) 2004.

Hoffert, M.I., and K. Caldeira, Climate change and energy—An overview, Encyclopedia of Energy, C. Cleveland, ed., Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 359-380,

2004.

Caldeira, K., and M.E. Wickett, Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH, Nature 425,

365–365, 2003.

Caldeira, K., Simulating ocean fertilization: Effectiveness and unintended consequences, in The Carbon Dioxide Dilemma: Promising Technologies and Policies, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC, 53–58, 2003.

Caldeira, K., A.K. Jain, and M.I. Hoffert, Climate sensitivity uncertainty and the

need for energy without CO2 emission, Science 299, 2052–2054, 2003.

Fallon, S.J., T.P. Guilderson, and K. Caldeira, Carbon isotope constraints on vertical

mixing and air-sea CO2 exchange, Geophysical Research Letters 30, Art No.

2289, 2003.

Govindasamy, B., K. Caldeira, and P.B. Duffy, Geoengineering Earth’s radiation balance to mitigate climate change from a quadrupling of CO2, Global and Planetary Change 37, 157–168, 2003.

Herzog, H., K. Caldeira, and J. Reilly. An issue of permanence: Assessing the effectiveness of ocean carbon sequestration, Climatic Change 59, 293–310, 2003.

Ridgwell, A.J., M.J. Kennedy, and K. Caldeira, Carbonate deposition, climate stability, and Neoproterozoic ice ages, Science 302, 859–862, 2003.

Wickett, M.E., K. Caldeira and P.B. Duffy, Effect of horizontal grid resolution on

simulations of oceanic CFC–11 uptake and direct injection of anthropogenic

CO2, Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans) 108, Art. No. 3189, 2003.

Caldeira, K., What has posterity done for us? It’s not the point (letter), Nature 420,

605–605, 2002.

Caldeira, K., Monitoring ocean storage, Proceedings, IPCC Workshop on Carbon

Capture and Storage 2002 (available at: http://arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/

ccs2002.html), 2002.

Caldeira, K., M.E. Wickett, and P.B. Duffy. Depth, radiocarbon and the effectiveness

of direct CO2 injection as an ocean carbon sequestration strategy. Geophysical

Research Letters, 10.1029/2001GL014234, 2002.

Duffy, P.B., M.E. Wickett, and K. Caldeira, Effect of horizontal grid resolution on

the near-equilibrium solution of a global ocean/sea-ice model, Journal of Geophysical Research (Oceans), 10.1029/2000JC000658, 2002.

Dutay, J.–C., J.L. Bullister, S.C. Doney, J.C. Orr, R. Najjar, K. Caldeira, J.–M.

Champin, H. Drange, M. Follows, Y. Gao, N. Gruber, M.W. Hecht, A. Ishida,

F. Joos, K. Lindsay, G. Madec, E. Maier-Reimer, J.C. Marshall, R.J. Matear, P.

Monfray, G.–K. Plattner, J. Sarmiento, R. Schlitzer, R. Slater, I.J. Totterdell,

M.–F. Weirig, Y. Yamanaka, and A. Yool, Evaluation of ocean model ventilation

with CFC–11: comparison of 13 global ocean models. Ocean Modelling 4, 89–

120, 2002.

Govindasamy, B., S. Thompson, P. Duffy, K. Caldeira and C. Delire, Impact of

geoengineering schemes on the terrestrial biosphere. Geophysical Research Letters, 10.1029/2002GL015911, 2002.

Hoffert, M.I., K. Caldeira, G. Benford, D.R. Criswell, C. Green, H. Herzog, J.W.

Katzenberger, H.S. Kheshgi, K.S. Lackner, J.S. Lewis, W. Manheimer, J.C.

Mankins, G. Marland, M.E. Mauel, L.J. Perkins, M.E. Schlesinger, T. Volk, and

53

T.M.L. Wigley, Advanced technology paths to global climate stability: Energy for

a greenhouse planet, Science 295, 981–987, 2002.

Lutz, M., R.L. Dunbar, and K. Caldeira, Regional variability in the vertical flux of

particulate organic carbon in the ocean interior, Global Biogeogeochemical Cycles 16, U91–U110, 2002.

Pagani, M., K.H. Freeman, N. Ohkouchi, and K. Caldeira, Comparison of water column [CO2aq] with sedimentary alkenone-based estimates: A test of the

alkenone-CO2 proxy, Paleoceanography 17, 10.1029/2002PA000756, 2002.

Randerson, J.T., I.G. Enting, E.A.G. Schuur, K. Caldeira, and I.Y. Fung, Seasonal

and spatial dynamics of troposphere ∆14CO2: Post bomb contributions from fossil fuels, oceans, the stratosphere, and the terrestrial biosphere, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 10.1029/2002GB001876, 2002.

Rau, G.H., and K. Caldeira, Minimizing effects of CO2 storage in oceans (letter).

Science 276, 275–276, 2002.

Caldeira, K., H. Herzog, and Wickett, M. Predicting and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Ocean Carbon Sequestration by Direct Injection, Proceedings, First National Conference on Carbon Sequestration, Washington, DC, May 14–17 (available at: http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon¥seq/

p48.pdf), 2001.

Govindasamy, B., P.B. Duffy, and K. Caldeira, Land use changes and Northern

Hemisphere cooling, Geophysical Research Letters 28, 291–294, 2001.

Herzog, H., K. Caldeira and E. Adams, Carbon Sequestration via Direct Injection.

In J.H. Steele, S.A. Thorpe and K.K. Turekian (eds) Encyclopedia of Ocean

Sciences Vol. 1, pp. 408–414. London, UK: Academic Press, 2001.

Caldeira, K., and P.B. Duffy, The role of the Southern Ocean in uptake and storage

of anthropogenic carbon dioxide, Science 287, 620–622, 2000.

Caldeira, K., M.I. Hoffert, and A. Jain, Simple ocean carbon cycle models, in The

Carbon Cycle, T.M.L. Wigley and D.S. Schimel, eds., Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 199–211, 2000.

Caldeira, K., and G.H. Rau, Accelerating carbonate dissolution to sequester carbon

dioxide in the ocean: Geochemical implications, Geophysical Research Letters,

27, 225–228, 2000.

Govindasamy, B., and K. Caldeira, Geoengineering Earth’s radiation balance to

mitigate CO2-induced climate change, Geophysical Research Letters 27, 2141–

2144, 2000.

Guilderson, T.P., K. Caldeira, and P.B. Duffy, Radiocarbon as a diagnostic tracer in

ocean and carbon cycle modeling, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 14, 887–902,

2000.

Caldeira, K., and Berner, R., Seawater pH and atmospheric carbon dioxide (Technical comment), Science 286, 2043a–2043a, 1999.

Duffy, P.B., and Caldeira, K.G. Sensitivity of simulated salinities in a three dimensional ocean general circulation model to vertical mixing of destabilizing surface

fluxes, Climate Dynamics 15, 81–88, 1999.

Hoffert, M.I, Caldeira, K., Covey, C., Duffy, P.B., and Santer, B., Solar variability

and anthropogenic climate change (reply), Nature 401, 764–764, 1999.

Kerrick, D.M., and Caldeira, K., Was the Himalayan orogen a climatically-significant coupled source and sink for atmospheric CO2 during the Cenozoic? Earth

and Planetary Science Letters 173, 195–203, 1999.

Rau, G.H., and Caldeira, K. Enhanced carbonate dissolution: A means of sequestering waste CO2 as ocean bicarbonate. Energy Conversion and Management 40,

1803–1813, 1999.

Caldeira, K. Too intelligent for our own good (letter). Nature 395, p. 9, 1998.

Caldeira, K., and R.A. Berner, The need for mass balance and feedback in the geochemical carbon cycle: Reply, Geology 26, 478–478, 1998.

Caldeira, K., and P.B. Duffy, Sensitivity of simulated CFC–11 distributions in a

global ocean model to the treatment of salt rejected during sea-ice formation,

Geophysical Research Letters 25, 1003–1006, 1998.

Caldeira, K., G.H. Rau, and P.B. Duffy, Predicted net efflux of radiocarbon from the

ocean and increase in atmospheric radiocarbon content, Geophysical Research

Letters 25, 3811–3814, 1998.

Kerrick, D.M. and K. Caldeira, Metamorphic CO2 degassing from orogenic belts,

Chemical Geology 145, 213–232, 1998.

54

Hoffert M.I., K. Caldeira, A.K. Jain, E.F. Haites, L.D.D. Harvey, S.D. Potter, M.E.

Schlesinger, S.H. Schneider, R.G. Watts, T.M.L. Wigley, and D.J. Wuebbles. Energy implications of future stabilization of atmospheric CO2 content. Nature

395, 881–884, 1998.

Stephens, B.B., Keeling, R.F., Sarmiento, J., Six, K., Murnane, R., and K. Caldeira,

Atmospheric oxygen as a test of ocean carbon cycle models, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 12, 213–230, 1998.

Berner, R.A., and K. Caldeira, The need for mass balance and feedback in the geochemical carbon cycle, Geology 25, 955–956, 1997.

Duffy, P.B., and K. Caldeira, Sensitivity of simulated salinity in a three-dimensional

ocean model to upper-ocean transport of salt from sea-ice formation, Geophysical Research Letters 24, 1323–1326, 1997.

Duffy, P.B., K. Caldeira, J. Selvaggi, and M.I. Hoffert, Effect of subgrid scale mixing

parameterizations on simulated distributions of natural 14C, temperature, and

salinity in a three-dimensional ocean general circulation model, Journal of

Physical Oceanography 27, 498–523, 1997.

Wehner, M.F., P.G. Eltgroth, A.A. Mirin, P.B. Duffy, K.G. Caldeira, J.H. Bolstad,

H. Wang, C.M. Matarazzo and U. Creach, Comprehensive climate system modeling on massively parallel computers, Mission Earth: Modeling and Simulation

for a Sustainable Global System, 37–142, M.G. Clymer and C.R. Mechoso, eds.,

Society for Computer Simulation International, San Diego, California, 1997.

Caldeira, K., Late Permian extinctions (corr.), Science 274, 1550–1551, 1996.

Caldeira, K., IPCC report, chapter and verse (corr.), Nature 383, 214–214, 1996.

Caldeira, K., Long-term control of atmospheric carbon dioxide: low temperature seafloor alteration or terrestrial silicate-rock weathering?, American Journal of

Science 295, 1077–1114, 1995.

Duffy, P.B., and K. Caldeira, A three-dimensional model calculation of ocean uptake

of bomb 14C and implications for the global budget of bomb 14C, Global Biogeochemical Cycles 9, 373–375, 1995.

Duffy, P.B., P. Eltgroth, A.J. Bourgeois, and K. Caldeira, Effect of improved subgrid

scale transport of tracers on uptake of bomb radiocarbon in the GFDL ocean

general circulation model, Geophysical Research Letters 22, 1065–1068, 1995.

Kerrick, D.M., M.A. McKibbon, T.M. Seward, and K. Caldeira, Convective hydrothermal CO2 emissions from high heat flow regions, Chemical Geology 121,

285–293, 1995.

Kerrick, D.M. and K. Caldeira, Post-125 Ma carbon storage associated with continent-continent collision—comment. Geology 22, 381–382, 1994.

Rampino, M.R. and K. Caldeira, The Goldilocks problem: climatic evolution and

long-term habitability of terrestrial planets, Annual Review of Astronomy and

Astrophysics 32, 83–114, 1994.

Caldeira, K., Arthur, M.A., Berner, R.A. and Lasaga, A.C., Cooling in the late Cenozoic (sci. corr.), Nature 361, 123–124, 1993.

Caldeira, K. and J.F. Kasting, Insensitivity of global warming potentials to carbon

dioxide emission scenarios, Nature 366, 251–253, 1993.

Caldeira, K. and M.R. Rampino, Aftermath of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction—

possible biogeochemical stabilization of the carbon cycle and climate,

Paleoceanography 8, 515–525, 1993.

Kerrick, D.M. and K. Caldeira, Paleoatmospheric consequences of CO2 released during Eocene regional metamorphism in the Tethyan orogen, Chemical Geology

108, 201–230, 1993.

Rampino, M.R. and Caldeira, K., Major episodes of geologic change—correlations,

time structure and possible causes, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 114,

215–227, 1993.

Caldeira, K., Enhanced Cenozoic chemical weathering and the subduction of pelagic

carbonate, Nature 357, 578–581, 1992.

Caldeira, K. and Kasting, J.F., Life span of the biosphere revisited, Nature 360,

721–723, 1992.

Caldeira, K. and Kasting, J.F., Susceptibility of the early Earth to irreversible glaciation caused by CO2 clouds, Nature 359, 226–228, 1992.

Caldeira, K. and Rampino, M.R., Mount Etna CO2 may affect climate (sci. corr.),

Nature 355, 401–402, 1992.

55

Rampino, M.R. and Caldeira, K., Antipodal hotspots on the Earth, Geophysical Research Letters 19, 2011–2014, 1992.

Rampino, M.R. and Caldeira, K., Episodes of terrestrial geological activity during

the past 260 million years: A quantitative approach, Celestial Mechanics and

Dynamical Astronomy 54, 143–159, 1992.

Caldeira, K., Evolutionary pressures on planktonic dimethylsulfide production, in,

Schneider, S.H. and Boston, P., eds., Scientists on Gaia, MIT Press, Cambridge,

MA, 153–158, 1991.

Caldeira, K., Continental-pelagic carbonate partitioning and the global carbonatesilicate cycle, Geology 19, 204–206, 1991.

Caldeira, K. and Rampino, M.R., The mid-Cretaceous super plume, carbon dioxide,

and global warming, Geophysical Research Letters 18, 987–990, 1991.

Caldeira, K. and Rampino, M.R., Carbon dioxide emissions from Deccan volcanism

and a K/T boundary greenhouse effect, Geophysical Research Letters 17, 1299–

1302, 1990.

Caldeira, K., Evolutionary pressures on planktonic production of atmospheric sulphur, Nature 337, 632–634, 1989.

PUBLICATIONS IN POPULAR PRESS

Caldeira, K., When being green raises the heat (Op-Ed), The New York Times, 16

January 2007.

Caldeira, K., How to cool the globe (Op-Ed), The New York Times, 24 October 2007.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. Warren, you are recognized.

STATEMENT OF MR. BRAD WARREN, DIRECTOR, PRODUCTIVE

OCEANS PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM, SUSTAINABLE FISHERIES

PARTNERSHIP

Mr. WARREN. Thank you. I am very pleased to be here, and I appreciate very much the opportunity. It is an honor, and it is heartening to see the problem drawing real attention.

The scientists who are here today and some of their colleagues

deserve medals I think. I very much agree with Jay Inslee on that

point. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t know this were coming.

We might have driven right off the cliff without knowing it was

there.

The early warning that these guys have made possible through

developing the technologies and the monitoring tools and through

literally volunteer efforts in some cases, uncompensated, make it

possible for us to be literally the first generation in human history

that had a chance against a problem of this magnitude. No prior

generation could have taken this on. We might just be able to do

it. We’ve got a fighting chance.

My background, 25 years as a journalist and consultant working

in fisheries and oceans. I was the editor of Pacific Fishing Magazine for eight years, built the Productive Oceans Partnership, a

program of SFP, because acidification looks to be an overriding sustainability challenge for fisheries.

I believe the seafood industry will play a major role in defending

the ocean that feeds us from this problem, and that is the centerpiece of my work.

Disclaimers are important here. We advise but do not represent

the industry. They speak for themselves. Most of them listen, some

agree, some don’t, to the kinds of things we put in front of them.

There is generally strong agreement on the importance of this

56

problem, but there are differences of opinion about how urgent it

is.

Our view, not necessarily those of the folks we know in the industry and work with, we support emissions reduction policies in

the U.S. and globally. We support national investment in research

like this. This is an example of the sort of thing. We don’t endorse

particular bills. We encourage the people we work with to do that.

We are not a lobby group.

Acidification is a more clear-cut problem for fisheries than is

global warming, and that makes it a lot easier to communicate

about with this industry.

Early impacts of acidification for fisheries are in the sort of

vague area. More still, there may be some that are becoming more

clear, but mostly it is a new source of uncertainty concerning fishery productivity and for the financial planning of enterprises in

fisheries.

For some it may possibly be an immediate threat. Some of the

oyster farmers have raised issues that make it sound pretty urgent

now.

Acidification risks for the seafood industry. Obviously, the first

risk is reduced productivity in fish stocks. If we have reduced productivity of key plankton species that they eat, we would expect to

see fewer fish. We would expect to see things like recruitment failures in stocks. That is where the young fail to grow up because

there is not enough food for them. Reduced productivity in shellfish

is another of the possibilities.

Risk of market confusion. Although supply will likely diminish if

this problem continues unabated, there is pretty strong sciencebased governance of fisheries in a lot of places, for example, in

Alaska, and that will likely ensure that you can eat the fish on

your plate in good conscience. There is some concern that consumers might not be able to keep track of that fact and might just

panic.

Then there is a third risk, that is a significant risk, that the industry faces in this, and that is really panic-button management.

If we don’t know enough about the problem, we have little to do

that amounts to a rational, firm-minded management. Management of fisheries is a little like monetary policy. You don’t want

Bernanke having a panic-button response to minor changes in the

inflation rate or, in the case of fisheries, if you have an over-fishing

problem, well, you cut back on fishing. In this case under-reaction

is probably worse than overreaction, but there is still an underlying

difference that is very important to bear in mind here. The risks

that fishery managers are used to facing are mostly reversible. You

can, if you over-fish once, you slow down, you fish less later. The

fish generally come back. This in human terms is an irreversible

change. When this happens, we can’t take it back.

Is acidification hurting fisheries now? There is very, very little

research on this. Fundamentally we don’t have very good answers

on that. It may possibly be hurting oysters right now. There is testimony on May 27 from Brett Bishop representing West Coast

Growers, and we will get to that in a little bit. I recommend highly

looking at the testimony he submitted last week.

57

Other potential signs of known change that have not yet been

studied for relation to acidification include scallops in some areas

show slow growth, fragile shells. We don’t know the cause. Reduced

forage abundance in places like the Bering Sea and I think many

others as well. We don’t know the cause. That is the stuff that fish

eat.

West Coast hypoxic dead zone, and there are salmon effects

going on. We don’t know whether this is driven by greenhouse

gases or not. There are a lot of people who think it is. There is

some scientific discussion of that question. I think it deserves closer look.

Fish stocks that show long-term declines despite very low fishing

pressure. There are some of those around. We don’t know they are

declining. Some of them look like they might be candidates for an

acidification affect. We just don’t know. There are likely to be multiple effects causing these things, and it is worth bearing in mind

acidification is not the only one that can do it. But we have never

looked, so we don’t know.

Shellfish farmers, hypoxia contributed to greenhouse gas emissions by many. This is a quote from Brett Bishop from Little

Skookum Shellfish, who delivered this in testimony last week. ‘‘The

current situation puts both the marine ecosystem and shellfish

growers in extreme jeopardy.’’ And then regarding acidification,

which is a longer-term issue for him still, ‘‘This acidity dissolves

calcium carbonate, the stuff that shells are made of. If diatoms,

corals, and shellfish succumb to this, it might collapse not only the

shellfish industry but also the entire marine food chain.’’

Now, this is a question. This is not a statement that we know

what is happening to Greenland turbot. Greenland turbot has

shown recruitment failures for many years. There are some signs

recently that they are coming back a little bit, but if you look at

this graph, it goes back to 1964, if I recall, and goes forward to

2007. You can see that there used to be a lot of them. The amplitude of those bumps was high, and there were lots of fish. You go

forward in time, and you get less fish, and they show some signs

of recovery recently, but it is a generally downward trend, and the

overall biomass index is sharply down.

We really don’t know why. It is probably not because of fishing.

Fishing rates have been, harvest rates have been below seven percent since 1984, and they are currently below 1.8 percent. Those

are extremely low harvest rates. This is almost certainly not

caused by fishing.

So it is an interesting case. It is a fish that lives pretty deep.

Deep water would be more likely to be affected. It might be a candidate to look at.

Some info fisheries will need. People are going to need to know

which commercial species are more vulnerable, which ones are less

so, how fast is this happening, will fish abundance change quickly

or slowly? How do we estimate sustainable yields when the ocean

is changing in these ways? That is a critical question. You got to

figure it out to be able to manage fisheries.

Adaptive seafood production methods. Is there anything we can

do to keep growing things we like to eat as the ocean changes? In

a high CO2 ocean there are a lot of questions around that.

58

And then, obviously, we are going to need, and this is going to

be true in the industry and the management community, technical

and policy tools to address the root problem of high CO2.

Industry perspectives that we have picked up from people we

talk to about FOARAM, these are not our own views. I am just relaying what I pick up from people we talk to all the time. The need

for research is very well accepted. People agree, and they support

this thing in principle.

They do have some reservations. A major one is the potential for

robbing Peter to pay Paul. It is already the case that regular fish

stock surveys are being suspended in some cases for budgetary reasons. That is a real-time, current need. We need that information

to manage fisheries. If we suspend more of them in order to put

money into this, it will be very much robbing Peter to pay Paul.

You kind of have to know how many fish you have to be able to

catch them responsibly. And figuring that out on a regular basis

is also one of the ways we will know whether fish stocks are being

affected by this. This is a monitoring tool that should be maintained.

And so people are very strongly in favor of more research on this

problem and doing it not by whacking sort of the obvious candidate

to whack in the budget, which would be surveys. We really need

both.

And with that I thank you for your time, and I think we are open

for questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Warren follows:]

59

60

61

BIOGRAPHY FOR BRAD WARREN

Brad Warren directs the Productive Oceans Partnership, a program of the nonprofit Sustainable Fisheries Partnership that works to inform and advise the seafood industry in addressing the problem of ocean acidification. He has worked for

25 years as a journalist and consultant in fisheries. He edited the trade journal Pacific Fishing Magazine for eight years, founded the National Fisheries Conservation

Center (a California-based think tank) and has served as a consultant to NMFS and

the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. His books on fisheries include ‘‘Win-Win

Bycatch Solutions,’’ ‘‘The Rise of Icicle Seafoods,’’ and ‘‘Conserving Alaska’s Oceans.’’

His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe, Audubon Magazine, the

Seattle Times, and numerous other business and general interest publications. He

lives in Seattle.

DISCUSSION

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Warren. I appreciate that.

At this point we will go into our first round of questions. I will

recognize myself for the first five minutes, and I will start with

you, Dr. Doney.

INTERAGENCY COORDINATION

H.R. 4174 establishes a new interagency committee to develop a

research and monitoring program for ocean acidification studies.

You indicate we should use the existing interagency committees to

coordinate the program. It seems the Joint Subcommittee on Ocean

Science and Technology, JSOST, and the Interagency Committee

on U.S. Global Change Research Program, I tried to make a word

out of that but it doesn’t fit, are both involved in this issue.

Would you recommend we direct one of these to take the lead in

developing a plan for the program with a budget to support the

program activities?

Dr. DONEY. Yes. I have talked to a number of people across the

federal agencies on this, and one of the problems with the Global

Change Research Program is they have a lot of other things on

their plate. They have to look at the atmosphere, the land, and climate. This is a very focused ocean program, and we need to basically look at it from the basic science end all the way up to fisheries and human impacts.

62

So given the current structures, I think JSOST would be the

most likely candidate, but that would have to be something that

would have to be worked out in detail with them if this moves forward.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION MONITORING

Chairman LAMPSON. Dr. Feely, how extensive is the corrosive

acidified water that you found during your research last summer

along the West Coast? Are there other coastal regions in the world

that could be experiencing ocean acidification as well?

Dr. FEELY. This effort, we thought we might see it somewhere

along our coast, and what surprised us the most about the study

is that going from Queen Charlottetown in Canada through all the

Washington, Oregon, California, and into Baja, California, we saw

it everywhere. It ranged in depth from near the surface off of California to depths around 40 to 80 meters everywhere we looked.

What this implies is that we need to look further. It probably occurs all the way down through South America and probably up into

Alaskan coastal waters, which are naturally shallower in the waters than anywhere on the planet.

Chairman LAMPSON. Well, now that you know that this exists,

what strategies are being put into place to continue monitoring it?

Dr. FEELY. Well, we have been working with our State and local

agencies as well as the Federal Government, put together a coalition of efforts to have a monitoring effort along the Continental

Shelf, particularly a series of moorings, and we are recommending

that we would also have continued surveys. I have a proposal for

a survey again next summer, and we would like to continue that

on a more regular basis. And we are hoping with new technologies

such as gliders and floats, that we could put carbon system monitoring instruments on the gliders and floats and have regular surveys with the gliders and floats, which would provide us the right

kind of observational data to allow us to monitor this in real time.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

Chairman LAMPSON. What cooperation are you finding, particularly among other places in the world? Are our scientists working

together with other folks in other countries?

Dr. FEELY. Oh, absolutely. Several of us are on the advisory

panel for the POKA Program, which is a European program, and

I have been participating in their national program development efforts. We are working directly with the Canadians and the Mexicans on our Continental Shelf programs, and I am also working

with the Japanese and the Koreans on this effort.

Chairman LAMPSON. Are we pretty much up to speed with them,

or are there some areas that may be more advanced in support of

this than what we in America are?

Dr. FEELY. Generally speaking our international colleagues are

looking to us for leadership in developing the monitoring activities

because we have some of the best instrumentation for monitoring

this problem within the United States. But our colleagues in other

countries have done a very nice job of looking at physiological responses, particularly for phytoplankton and zooplankton, corals. So

63

we want to interact with our colleagues that have a great deal of

experience in this arena.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. Inglis, I will recognize you for five minutes.

Mr. INGLIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

MORE ON INTERAGENCY COORDINATION

I think each of you mentioned something about who is best

equipped to help lead this effort, but I admit to being somewhat

mystified at the conclusion of that. I am not sure I am drawing any

real conclusions about how best to organize this effort.

Anybody want to take a shot at telling me, giving us the specific

proposal? If you don’t like the bill, and apparently each of you had

some criticisms of the bill in your testimony, as to how it should

be structured. I mean, if you—is it, first of all, is it a good idea to

try to orchestrate this effort? And if so, then who is the best conductor of the symphony?

Dr. DONEY. I will take a crack at that. I think one of the problems with the way we have looked at the bill is that the funds and

the leadership are all directed at NOAA, where the expertise within the Federal Government is really spread over multiple agencies

with NSF and NASA having an equal role on many of these problems.

And I think the perception of the community is that we just want

to make sure that those agencies have an equal seat at the table,

and one of the ways to do that is to authorize funds directly to

those agencies rather than having the funds sent to NOAA and

then have it trickle out to the other agencies.

Mr. INGLIS. And so, Dr. Feely, what was your reaction to that?

It is a challenge to you being the conductor, I suppose.

Dr. FEELY. Well, I think it is NOAA’s viewpoint that they would

be very happy to coordinate the interagency activities through the

JSOST Subcommittee has been recommended. Dr. Spinrad is one

of the co-chairs of the JSOST Committee, and he was very comfortable with that position, and we feel very strongly that NOAA

should be playing a leadership role in this process and are willing

to do so. But we fully agree that we have to do this in a cooperative

manner with our sister agencies, as we have always done in the

past and are very comfortable with that relationship.

Mr. INGLIS. And speaking of which, that happens now, right? In

other words, I imagine there is informal contact among the agencies on these kind of questions. And so if the bill is mostly helpful

in that it provides additional funding for support staff or somebody

that is going to actually run the symphony or what? I mean, what

role would the bill play in helping what already goes on, I suppose,

with some contact between the agencies?

Dr. FEELY. Well, certainly there is a lot of coordination activities,

and that takes personnel to handle those coordination activities.

And I think some of the support would have to go into coordinating

activities, developing research priorities, making sure that there

are gaps that are being filled, and that the individual agencies

carry out their roles in a cooperative manner.

64

And this type of interagency cooperation takes a lot of coordination and therefore, some support to carry that out. This is what we

are looking for with this bill in particular.

The second point is that the amount of resources that are presently available to do ocean acidification research as Scott has pointed out certainly is not adequate to the task at hand, and we suspect that the requests for funds that have been laid out by Dr.

Doney is certainly appropriate for the research that we are looking

to see happen.

Mr. INGLIS. Yes. Dr. Caldeira.

Dr. CALDEIRA. There is another dimension to this coordination,

and that is to make sure that the people representing each of the

agencies really understand the capabilities and resources that each

agency has to bring to bear on this problem. This is a problem that

spans from biology to oceanography to physics and so on.

So it would be very useful if the civil servants at the top of these

organizations would send a signal down through the bureaucracies

to ask the scientists working, you know, in the field exactly what

are the various skills, capabilities, resources within the agencies

that could be brought to bear on this problem. Because I have a

feeling that there are people at the top of the agencies that don’t

really understand what their capabilities really are in this area.

Mr. INGLIS. Very helpful. One thing I might point out, Dr. Feely,

on the excellent trip that Dr. Baird led to Antarctica that included

the stop in Australia, we saw wonderful cooperation between

NOAA and the Australians with the Great Barrier Reef, and it

really is, I think, tremendously helpful to our position in the world

to be involved in that way. And so I am particularly pleased to see

NOAA doing that and working so closely with the Australians. Actually, a couple of Australians who worked for you, that work for

NOAA in Townsville. So that is really neat.

Dr. FEELY. Yes. In fact, they have invited us to participate with

them even further as of two weeks ago.

Mr. INGLIS. That is very helpful.

Chairman LAMPSON. Mr. McNerney, you are recognized.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION MODELS

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Caldeira, my background is in modeling, computer modeling.

How sophisticated would you say the models of ocean acidity are

in comparison to the atmospheric CO2 models that are out there

now?

Dr. CALDEIRA. I would say they are approximately at a similar

level of development. The open oceans near surface environment,

very simple models, are adequate in the sense that for, at least to

understand the chemistry. In fact, you could take a bucket of water

and put it under a bell jar and change the CO2 and get a pretty

good estimate of how the surface chemistry would change.

But the kind of stuff that Dick Feely observed off the west coast

of the U.S. involves very detailed processes along coastal environments and the current generation of models is typically very coarse

and does not represent the kind of features that Dick and his colleagues were observing. And so the representation of coastal processes is very primitive.

65

Furthermore, the representation of ecosystem processes is nearly

non-existent, and part of that is due to the lack of fundamental

science and our lack of understanding of ecosystem processes, but

also there is just a lack of modeling in there.

And so I would say that the representation of coastal environments and ecosystem properties, maybe Scott would like to amplify

it.

Dr. DONEY. Yeah. I suggest, one of the key things that we need

to do is bridge between the basic science and the basic modeling

that Ken and I do and the kind of models that resource managers

need. You know, they need specific models for specific species; oysters, clams, scallops. And so there is a big gap right now on the

biological side, you know, of how to go from what we are seeing in

sort of the fish tank experiments to something that a resource

manager could use to set sustainable limits or set up marine-protected areas, things like that.

Mr. MCNERNEY. So it is not the computer resources that is limiting you. It is the basic science.

Dr. DONEY. You know, we could always use a bigger computer.

Every modeler will tell you that, but right now I think we are fundamentally limited by our scientific understanding.

Mr. MCNERNEY. So you don’t have enough, not you personally,

but there is not enough understanding to understand, to predict

whether there will be sort of sudden shifts or gradual shifts in

there ecosystems, say sudden being 10 years or less.

Dr. DONEY. The experience in looking back at historical data

with ecosystems is that there are often thresholds or tipping points,

and to date we typically don’t know that we are at a threshold

until it is already behind us in the rearview mirror.

And that is something we really need to be concerned about, is

are the fisheries today reaching a threshold where ocean acidification along with warming and over-fishing will tip them beyond the

spot that they can’t recover from.

THE EFFECT OF OCEAN ACIDIFICATION ON CALCIFYING

ORGANISMS

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you.

Dr. Kleypas, you said that it makes it—the acidity makes it

harder for organisms to secrete carbonate. Is that—it doesn’t just

eat it away. It makes it harder for them to secrete it biologically?

Dr. KLEYPAS. It does both, you can think that organisms, most

organisms, responds to something called the saturation level in the

oceans. That means if there is an adequate amount of calcium and

carbonate ions to build those shells. We used to think it was on/

off switch, so below that level they would stop calcifying. Above

that level they would calcify. Now we realize it is more like a dimmer switch.

So the higher the saturation rate, the more they calcify. And so

they will—many organisms will change the rate at which they calcify or the amount at which they lay down relative to that, you

know, the level of ocean acidification.

66

MITIGATION OF OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Mr. MCNERNEY. Then what we don’t have or you don’t have, is

there some idea of what mitigation is being discussed and what the

side effects of that, of those processes might be?

Dr. KLEYPAS. You are talking about local mitigation in terms of

say on a coral reef, what we can do?

Mr. MCNERNEY. Right. Local or global or any kind of mitigation.

Dr. KLEYPAS. The only way to really stop ocean acidification is

to stop CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, because the ocean at

the surface is so well mixed with the atmospheric concentration

that as long as you increase it in the atmosphere, the ocean acidification will increase as well.

Now, there have been talks at a very small scale, the scale of an

atoll or a small bay, of putting in sources of, you know, another

chemical that would raise the pH back up, like the way you change

pH in a swimming pool or an aquarium. But it is, the scale would

be very small and expensive. So we can’t do it for most of the

oceans.

Mr. MCNERNEY. And the side effects wouldn’t be understood either.

Dr. KLEYPAS. Some would and some wouldn’t. It depends on

what you put in to buffer the system.

Mr. MCNERNEY. Okay. Thank you.

I yield back.

Chairman LAMPSON. Mr. Bartlett, you are recognized for five

minutes.

Mr. BARTLETT. Thank you very much. I was very pleased to note

that almost all of you kept repeating over and over, we don’t know,

we just don’t know. People out in the working world don’t understand the scientists, and that is why we are scientists because we

just don’t know. This is why we do research. Thank you very much

for taking that position.

Dr. Kleypas, you mentioned that in your little aquarium when

the algae increased that was bad. If I was an algae-eating critter

in the ocean, I don’t think I would think that was bad. I think it

was Dr. Doney who mentioned that there will be biological winners

and biological losers, and the oceans will be very different with

higher CO2. I am not sure whether that will be bad or whether

that will be good.

But there is always a risk that it will be bad, and if you are concerned about the rising CO2 levels, I would suggest that there are

two other groups that you need to lock arms with, groups that you

may not ordinarily identify with.

One is a group that is really concerned about national security,

the fact that we have only two percent of the world’s oil, and we

use 25 percent of the world’s oil, getting much of it as the President said from countries that don’t even like us. To solve that problem what you need to do, of course, is to move away from fossil

fuels to renewables, which will, of course, stop the CO2 rate increase.

There is a second group that you need to identify with. Of course,

you are a subset of the global warming climate change group, and

so you already, I suspect, are identifying with those. The geoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 11:41 Dec 12, 2008 Jkt 042610 PO 00000 Frm 00070 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 C:\WORKD\E&E08\060508\42610 SCIENCE1 PsN: SCIENCE1
67

political concerns, the national security concerns are shared by a

lot of people in our country, and then there is a third group that

you need to identify with, and that is the group who believes that

the fossil fuels just aren’t going to be there. And that we have

known that for 28 years that we were going to be roughly here

today with oil at $120 some a barrel, because 38 years ago the

United States reached its maximum oil production. That was predicted in 1956. By 1980, we knew darn well that M. King Hubbert

was right about the United States peaking in oil production in

1970.

So now for 28 years we have done absolutely nothing, and of

course, you may argue that with global warming, our Earth will be

different, more acid ocean, our oceans will be different. That may

not be all that bad. They will be different. If I lived in Siberia, you

would have a hard time convincing me a warmer world would be

all that bad. And as far as the national security thing is concerned,

the Arabs may play nice and continue to give us the oil.

But if it just isn’t there, it just isn’t there. And there is increasing evidence that we have reached a peak oil production in the

world. It will be plateaued for a little while and then the world will

do what the United States has been doing ever since 1970, pumping even less and less at higher and higher costs.

If you are concerned about rising ocean CO2 levels, and you

should be, because it may be better and it may be worse, but, gee,

it is okay now, and why should we run the risk that it might be

worse in the future, are you reaching out to these other groups,

these other two groups, those who are concerned about national security and those who are concerned that the fossil fuels just aren’t

going to be there? Because all three of these groups have common

cause, and instead of nit-picking each other’s premise, don’t you

think we ought to be locking arms and marching together?

Yes, sir.

Dr. DONEY. Well, I am sympathetic with many of your remarks,

and I think that we haven’t done enough to bridge across communities.

With regard to the effect of the change in the oceans, that it is

true that wherever there is light and nutrient, something will

grow, and so we are not worried about sterilizing the oceans or

anything like that. But change is a significant thing, even if the

end state might not be completely terrible. But let us say that we

know now that coral reefs are at least threatened, that the levels

of acidification that we are likely to reach haven’t been experienced

for many tens of millions of years, and so there are communities

that have built up, assuming that there would be certain fish

stocks or certain resources available in coral reefs or say the salmon industry.

And you know, it might be that the salmon aren’t there and some

other fish might be there. Then there is the question, well, will we

be able to eat that fish? Yes or no? And so there is a risk, and typically what we are seeing is changes in ocean chemistry that are

about 100 times faster and bigger in magnitude than the kinds of

changes that occurred naturally.

And so, you know, the expectation is that the systems that are

adapted to very precise chemical or climatological conditions will

68

disappear and be replaced by more invasive, generalist species,

which on land we call weeds.

And so the expectation is to see a loss of diversity and essentially

increased weediness of the oceans, and it is true that we will as

humans adapt to that and find something to eat in that, but that

will be a big dislocation cost and a big loss of diversity.

And so, you know, and we can’t say exactly how bad it will be,

but I think we know that some major systems will go. I mean, I

think, just to broaden it out to the climate change, you know, there

is a question, it looks now like we are going to lose Arctic ecosystems, and we are going to lose coral reefs, and some people say,

well, if that is all it is, then let us not worry about it. But maybe

that is just the beginning, and we are starting to lose major systems, and we don’t know what other major systems we are going

to lose.

And so to a certain extent it is, what is your level of risk, of irreversible environmental risks that you are willing to take on? And

to me a precautionary approach seems prudent, and if we know

that for a relatively minor investment we could avoid this risk, it

seems reasonable, and there are other risks that can be avoided

like national security risks and risks to our economy through loss

of fossil fuels. And so the people, so addressing this carbon-based

energy system and replacing it with a system that doesn’t release

greenhouse gases to the atmosphere has multiple advantages, and

we need to work more broadly together as you suggest.

Mr. BARTLETT. Mr. Chairman, since I am not a gambler, I would

have to concur with what Dr. Caldeira says. Thank you.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you very much.

Mr. Baird, you are now recognized for five minutes.

COMMENTS ON H.R. 4174

Mr. BAIRD. Thank the Chairman and I thank our outstanding

witnesses.

Now, when you first, the first time you ever go out into an area

with a coral reef and you are walking on the surface of the water

and, or, you know, walking on a pier, and you sort of see some colored fish, you think, that is pretty interesting. There is some pretty

fish down there. And then you put on a mask and a snorkel, and

you put your head under water, and you pop up, and you think,

my God. Have you guys seen what is down here? Do you have any

idea what is down here?

And then you do more diving and things of that sort, and to that,

Dr. Caldeira, because I know from your background that when you

say, well, people might, don’t think it is a big deal to lose a coral

reef. It is a huge deal to lose coral reefs. It is unimaginably horrible

if we have done this as a species to this planet. Only people who

live on Earth solid terra firma but have never stuck their head

under water with the lens so they could actually see something

would ever imagine that we are not damaging this Earth in ways

that are unforgivable and inexcusable.

That is why we are working so hard on this. I am not saying you

are condoning that for sure, but I just want to state I sort of wish

we could take every single Member of Congress and spend a day

at a coral reef. Just start the session there. We will fly down in

69

January, we will go down to Florida, see a healthy reef, and we

will say what would happen if we lost it.

Dr. DONEY. You know, when ocean acidification happened 65 million years ago, it took two million years for the coral reefs to repopulate the coast of the continents, and so what we are doing over

the next years and the next decades is going to affect, you know,

coral reefs not just for years and decades but for millions of years,

and then so, I mean, to me the idea that we are even talking about

risking these systems is incredible.

And so, you know, what I am saying it is just, we might be lucky

and it is just coral reefs, it is not——

Mr. BAIRD. I mean, we might not lose the entire planet.

Dr. DONEY. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean——

Mr. BAIRD. Doctor told you, hey, the good news is you are only

going to lose your liver.

Dr. DONEY. Right. Right. And so, I mean, the real thing to do is

to reduce CO2——

Mr. BAIRD. Yeah.

Dr. DONEY.—emissions.

Mr. BAIRD. I get the point, and I just want to under-scribe, I sincerely mean that. I sincerely mean this Congress could do well to

go to these places. I have had the profound privilege and I went

with Mr. Inglis, of seeing the Great, the once Great Barrier Reef,

which is not so great in most of it anymore. I have been to the University Institute in Eilat and seen some of the base science being

done on acidification there and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.

And I have been to the Aquarius Lab down in Florida, and I want

to especially acknowledge all of those institutes and also the Atlantic Oceanic Meteorological Laboratory, which does phenomenal

work in these areas.

So I have managed to see different areas of reefs around the

world, and in all cases, every single case, we are facing real

threats.

The legislative process is an iterative process at its best. We

don’t have pride of ownership so much as we want to get the job

done right. The legislation we—that is the basis for this hearing is

really the basis for the hearing. It is not necessarily what we

should do. And so what we are really out with the hearing is not

to ask for kudos. We don’t really care about that. It is, really, let

us do the right thing.

And so we have heard some suggestions. I absolutely share the

belief that the magnitude of the problem warrants a much greater

and more urgent investment financially. So we will stipulate to

that.

Secondly, I am interested in this discussion of whether or not an

interagency organization is the best or whether or not targeted

funds, but at the same time how do you coordinate where the funds

best go? And I am interested in that. If we need to modify this bill

or do something completely different, tell us what you think needs

to be done.

And then the third thing I am real interested in is you look, you

know, you look at the science articles, and I have followed them

very closely over the last few years. It is great how international

70

this is. What, I don’t think our bill does enough, frankly, on the

international front by a darn sight.

What are your thoughts, if you could, if you were saying, write

the bill instead of us who don’t know what the heck we are doing,

what would you do? Each of you. What would you do differently?

And fire away. You can say this is a crappy bill. Let us throw

it out and get something better, and I am okay with that. Maybe

in more delicate language.

Dr. FEELY. I want to answer a little bit the question to Dr.

Caldeira. I just—coral reef systems provide protein and resources

to at least 500 (million) if not a billion people on Earth. So they

are a resource we can’t afford to lose. It is a really important issue

that we need to address. That is the first point.

Secondly, I think that the agencies work extremely well together.

They, the program managers work on a daily basis together, so we

are very comfortable working with the federal agencies to have an

interagency program on this issue.

And if the responsibility is given to JSOST, I am absolutely certain we can work out those details from that point on. I don’t think

that is going to be a major issue, because they are very comfortable

in doing that. And we work with all the program managers, so we

know that quite well. So I think that is the right way to go personally.

The third issue is, and something that has not come up yet, is

that there are some technological developments that have to be

part of this effort. The way we have operated with NOAA is to add

carbon measurements on the existing moorings and floats and instrumentation packages that are part of the climate program. They

are part of the National Climate Program, and we do so by adding

them to existing investments, and this is the right way to proceed

in the future. This is what allows us to get global coverage, allows

us to get regional coverage in the coastal regime.

But with ocean acidification the problem is different. We have to

develop the technologies to measure two components of the carbon

system, not just one as we are doing now. And so we have to make

an investment in those technology development to do that. This is

something that needs to be done right away, right now.

And here is where we need help to get that started, and I think

the federal agencies are well poised to move quickly on this issue,

but we need to have the resources to do so.

Dr. KLEYPAS. I would like to make a comment on two things. One

is just thanks for bringing up the level of appreciation for coral

reefs. I did my Ph.D. on the Great Barrier Reef myself. Every time

I go back I have tears in my eyes, and it is still one of the best

reef systems we have, but as you know globally they are threatened not just by ocean acidification but by coral bleaching, which

is due to global warming. And so they are hit, you know, it is a

double whammy from CO2 in the atmosphere on coral reefs.

On the international cooperation——

Mr. BAIRD. Dr. Kleypas, the way I talk to people about that is

if you had a 103 degree fever every day for the rest of your life and

to treat it they gave you acid water to drink, you might get a sense

of why this is a problem.

Dr. KLEYPAS. I am going to use that one in the future.

71

Internationally what I think has been remarkable about ocean

acidification is there has been a tremendous amount of goodwill between our international colleagues. So we have invited them to our

workshops, and they have been very helpful and very uncompetitive, very giving in terms of what they know and advice on how we

should design our reef program and vice versa. In fact, three of us

at least are going to the European Program on ocean acidification

kick-off meeting this coming week, and that is invitational. They

have put us on the board, and this is continuing, and it is growing,

and verbally we are very supportive of each other’s research.

Now, some of the work that Dick has been describing with moorings and so forth, a lot of that can be expanded and really made

efficient with our own research, but also on an international basis

by capitalizing on what they have in terms of their observing system, sharing lab facilities, but particularly these big, open ocean

experiments that will probably be very expensive, can really do

well by engaging them through some sort of exchange program,

some sort of structure for international funding that supports these

kind of things. Maybe similar to the way the ocean drilling program is operated. I am not exactly sure exactly how to do it, but

I think the goodwill is there, the need is there, and if we can put

something in that bill, I am sure many of us on this panel will help

you write that in the right way.

Dr. DONEY. If I can continue, I want to echo Dr. Feely’s comments. The front-line program managers in the ocean agencies

work very well together. I work with them on a day-to-day basis.

I am Chair of the U.S. Ocean Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program, which is an NSF, NASA, and NOAA-sponsored research program.

One of the things the bill does do, and I think is very good, is

it brings at a higher level within the agencies the priority of ocean

acidification. We do have an ocean research priority plan that is

across agencies. This is what JSOST is working off of. There are

four priorities at present, and we have been pushing them to make

ocean acidification the fifth national priority for ocean sciences.

The only reason I hesitate in establishing a new interagency

committee is that we have one in place already for ocean sciences.

We don’t need more bureaucracy. We can take advantage of what

is there right now to coordinate across the agencies.

Mr. BAIRD. Well, if we had JSOST but we directed them, for example, to make this one of their top five priorities, this is really

helpful. I appreciate your indulgence, Mr. Chairman. If we were to

say, make this one of your top five priorities, include an international component, work on the instrumentation. We are getting

towards a better bill here.

Chairman LAMPSON. Yes.

Mr. BAIRD. There are others. Mr. Chairman, may we hear from

the others?

Chairman LAMPSON. Yes. Go ahead. This is important.

Mr. WARREN. I don’t know that I am really qualified to say how

the bill should be, nor is that really what we do. I think it is a better point and really to address the question, what we would like

to see and what we think a lot of the people in the industry would

72

like to see is not specifically an issue with the bill. It is about the

process.

Everybody knows it is a tight budget time. We are dealing here

with one of the greatest problems, as has been said, that we know

about, and rather than pulling out some of the legs underneath our

system for understanding what is changing in the ocean in order

to add a new leg, we ought to keep the ones that are there because

we need them. And figure out how to do this in the best way.

What that way is I think you all are well qualified to figure out.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you very much.

Ms. Woolsey, you are recognized.

REDUCING OR REVERSING OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Last week or the week before my staff attended the Ocean

Science and Climate Change Summit in Monterey, California,

hosted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. They reported back, and these are two members of my staff that are sophisticated in all of this, and they were actually horrified to report

back that acidification is the number one concern. They knew it,

but they really heard it loud and clear down there.

So the irony is that that same week on the business page of almost every newspaper there was an article saying that the three

U.S. automobile manufacturers in this country were stunned, they

didn’t use that word, I am using it, that they were going to go out

of business because they weren’t building small, fuel-efficient automobiles. Well, you know, this is, you don’t answer this question.

What took them so long?

But the question to you is how long will it take for us to address

acidification, and how long do we have to prevent, reduce, and even

reverse the effects of ocean acidification?

Dr. CALDEIRA. As I said in my prepared testimony, the taxi—the

CO2 from the taxi I took yesterday, some of that is going into the

ocean already. And so the good side of that would be if I, you know,

had had an electric car to drive here, then that would be CO2 that

would not be going into the ocean today.

And so the surface ocean feels our CO2 emissions or our reductions in CO2 emissions right away, and if we would stop emitting

CO2 today, the oceans would start getting better right away.

On the other hand, there is a lot of inertia in our energy system,

in that power plants are typically the last 60 or more years when

you build them, and so if you build a new power plant that emits

CO2 into the atmosphere, that will damage the ocean for many decades and millennia to come. And so while coral reefs will say still

have water that they can grow well in for a few decades, if we build

those power plants today, they won’t. And so it is really essential

to have action today if we want to have healthy oceans in the future.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, I admit it isn’t just action from the United

States. It is action globally.

Dr. CALDEIRA. Yes.

Ms. WOOLSEY. I was part of a China discussion this morning at

breakfast. We have a huge role to play in the international global

warming situation.

73

Dr. CALDEIRA. We need global action, but we need American

leadership.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Absolutely.

Anybody else want to respond?

Dr. KLEYPAS. I just want to make one point that sometimes gets

lost, and that is the response of the surface ocean. That is the shallow part of the ocean where most of marine life lives. We know that

once carbon gets in the ocean that it will stay there for a long time

because of the ocean conveyor belt bringing that carbon to deeper

depths where it get stored for hundreds to thousands of years.

But that surface ocean is very responsive to the atmospheric CO2

concentration or carbon dioxide concentration. So if, you know, just

in an optimistic view, just to put this out there, and I know a lot

of people will say this is impossible, but with new technology some

of the stuff that Representative Inslee was mentioning, and American ingenuity, if we can find ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, that surface ocean will start responding immediately and

the ocean acidification will be reduced immediately as long as CO2

goes back down.

If we could do that, that would be a really remarkable thing, and

I think it is a nice star to put up there to aim for.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to brag a

little bit about my district. My district is Marin and Sonoma Counties, and we have two national marine sanctuaries. We have the

Gulf of the Farallones and the Cordell Banks National Marine

Sanctuaries, and I have legislation that will double, more than double the size of that sanctuary and reach up the entire coast of

Sonoma County into the southern part of Mendocino County. And

we have gotten that legislation through the House of Representatives. It is out of the Commerce Committee and the Senate, and we

are hoping it is going to be part of an omnibus bill coming through

the Senate Floor.

So it is, you know, not, we are not going to rob Peter to pay Paul,

but we have the many legs that we have to deal with.

Dr. CALDEIRA. I think it is important not to, you know, while

ocean acidification is a very important issue, it is an additional

stress on marine systems, and the better we can manage our fisheries or reduce coastal pollution or in other ways take care of our

marine environment, then the better, the more likely that these

ecosystems can meet the challenges posed by ocean acidification.

Ms. WOOLSEY. And if we prevent drilling for oil off of our coasts,

we will prevent CO2 in the atmosphere, I believe.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman LAMPSON. Just out of curiosity, Ms. Woolsey, how

many fifth graders visit that facility each year?

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, it isn’t a facility. It is like a whole coast, and

they have hundreds and thousands of them. It is 40 minutes from

San Francisco. You can imagine.

Chairman LAMPSON. Dr. Baird and I were talking quietly here,

as you all were going on, about perhaps us considering a requirement that every fifth grader in the world if possible, but at least

in the United States, have a course that would teach so that we

can begin now to make sure that the next generation, obviously not

enough of our generations——

74

Ms. WOOLSEY. Right.

Chairman LAMPSON.—understand these problems. There are a

handful of us who are talking, in comparison to the full population.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Right.

Chairman LAMPSON. Are you all doing anything to really get the

word out to those who are writing school curricula at the very early

level?

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, before you say that, Mr. Chairman, I would

like to respond.

I have a grandson who is in the second grade, and my grandchildren call me Alma, and we were at dinner the other night, and

he said, Alma, have you heard about the polar bears? I mean, and

he really was concerned. So, but that is Sonoma County, you know.

Maybe, we are talking about the rest of the world. Right?

Chairman LAMPSON. Well, I hope that it spreads——

Ms. WOOLSEY. Okay. Ask the question.

Chairman LAMPSON.—because if it doesn’t, then obviously we

have heard the risks.

Dr. Baird, I understand you have more questions. You are recognized for five minutes.

AN INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

Mr. BAIRD. I could go on for a long time with this panel and with

some of the others in the audience here, and so this is a continuing

process but a few other things I just want to make sure I understand.

We have had testimony in this committee, particularly from the

IPCC. What attention is IPCC giving to acidification is one part,

and do we need a comparable, I won’t call it the acronym here, but

ocean acidification, international panel of ocean acidification? Do

we need or does such a thing exist?

Dr. DONEY. The fourth assessment for the IPCC had a fairly

small discussion on ocean acidification, and I think that in part reflected, IPCC depends upon the published scientific literature, and

this is a very fast-moving and fast-evolving field. So there really

wasn’t the literature base three or four years ago when they started that.

I do think in the future that there will be a much more substantial component within IPCC addressing ocean acidification, and in

fact, I was just at a meeting yesterday with federal agency managers where we were trying to think about what would be the best

way to put the right syntheses in the literature that can reach that

step.

But I think the other thing is this is, you know, IPCC sort of

looks at the global problem, but for resource managers and stakeholders this is a local issue, and I think one of the things that we

need to do with this research program is bring this down to the

scale of individual states, individual fishery council levels and that,

the level of individual fishers and people who are using the ocean.

So I think we need to bring it into the global assessment level,

but we really need to bring it home to a much smaller scale to see

how it is actually going to affect human lives and our economic system.

75

Dr. CALDEIRA. The IPCC is a product of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and ocean acidification is really a

chemical change and not a climate change. And so the IPCC hasn’t

really felt that it was directly within its remit. But I do think rather than creating a new parallel organization it would be good if

governments would make it clear to the IPCC that they would like

ocean acidification considered to be within the remit of the IPCC

and broaden the understanding that it is not just climate change

but also chemical change.

Mr. BAIRD. Mr. Warren, I found that the National Shellfish Caucus and folks you alluded to earlier are interested in this issue, and

one of the interesting things is to what extent do the fisheries, does

the fisheries industry proactively take an active voice or should

they proactively take a more active voice in issues of ocean acidification and carbon production and change in our energy supply, et

cetera, because it is directly impacting the industry. What role are

they playing in that?

Mr. WARREN. It is an emerging role. I think we will see it expand

inevitably with time. I go around and give talks to people in fishing

communities and in the industry all the time, and what I find is

that they have moved rapidly, faster than other groups, into understanding the issue and knowing what is at stake. There is still a

lot of education to do in the community.

Some of them are already ready to wave their swords in the air.

Some are wanting to take a very circumspect approach. They have

complex economic interests, and they have to be careful in how

they address this. And that is perfectly valid.

That they will address it I am confident. How—is, for most of

them, still being worked out.

ATMOSPHERIC TRANSPORT

Mr. BAIRD. We have a number of skeptics in the Congress and

on this committee about the issue of climate change and whether

or not there is any change in temperature, and if so, the degree to

which it is human caused, and I think as a Science Committee it

is healthy to have skeptics here. I disagree with how they interpret

the evidence sometimes.

There are also some skeptics about the issue of ocean acidification, particularly the decline in carbonate levels. And at least one

gentleman I have spoken to has suggested it is a result of changing

wind patterns on the Gobi Desert not blowing minerals into the

oceans. Is there any substance to that that any of you know of?

Dr. DONEY. Actually, Dr. Feely and I have done some work on

looking at the atmospheric transport of trace gas species and dust.

The limited data that is available from rain measurements actually

suggest that the amount of base, the calcium carbonate which

would neutralize the ocean, has actually gone up, and yet we still

see the ocean being acidified.

So I don’t think that hypothesis holds weight. It is something

that we have worked a lot on looking at dust distributions, and

that doesn’t appear to be a plausible mechanism.

Dr. FEELY. I just want to add is from the ocean carbon observing

system throughout the world, our own time series stations at hot

off of Hawaii and back off of Bermuda, my own work over the last

76

30 years, we have actually measured the changes in CO2 concentrations, increase in CO2 in the surface waters, and the decrease in pH throughout the world oceans.

And so there is no doubt where this coming from.

Dr. CALDEIRA. Scott and I both run fancy models to predict surface ocean chemistry changes, but really, you don’t need them. If

you just took a bucket of water, stuck it under a bell jar, changed

the CO2 concentration, you could measure the change in pH and

measure the change in carbonate ion concentration, and if you

would stick a coral head in there, you would measure that its

growth rate declines.

And so, you know, there is no, you can demonstrate this easily

in a high school laboratory. You don’t need the fancy things to see

that this is right.

MORE ON OCEAN ACIDIFICATION MONITORING

Mr. BAIRD. I should also acknowledge, I see my good friend, Mr.

Diaz-Balart here. He has actually dived to the Aquarius Lab. That

is something we hope to do together somewhere down the road, and

of course, AOML is very closely related to Aquarius and the great

work down there. And we will go diving down there together, Mr.

Diaz-Balart.

One of the things I saw at AOML, it was very interesting, was

a Power Point, which maybe we should have done here. This would

be very interesting, Mr. Chairman, about, I think it actually not

just, it was real time log-on, it was, in fact, log-on monitoring to

the monitoring stations where, not the stations, the floats that are

distributed throughout the world, an entire global network of

floats, some maintained by commercial shipping routes, where they

drop floats off at periodic things, and they get remote sensing.

It would be very interesting for this committee to see that. Dr.

Feely, you talked about instrumentation. Is that the kind of system

where you would want to see CO2 monitors giving up intel on real

time?

Dr. FEELY. That is exactly what I have in mind. I am a colleague

of Dr. Winacoff, who carries out those measurements. I do it in the

Pacific, and he does it in the Atlantic. What we have is a series

of moorings throughout the world that we are adding carbon system monitoring instrumentations on the moorings. We couple that

with CO2 instrumentation on ships of opportunity. These are usually cargo ships throughout the world, and we hope to have CO2

instrumentation on Argo floats and gliders and things like this.

The problem we have right now is we only have one carbon

measurement, that is PCO2 at the moment. This is something we

know how to do quite well. In order to study ocean acidification,

we need two. We need PCO2 measurement and dissolved organic

or alglini, one of those two species we prefer to do that. That is a

technology we have to develop.

In our scientific community those technologies are quickly being

developed, but we have to implement them onto the moorings and

floats and ships, and that takes some effort to do the testing to do

that. That is something we have to do right now.

Mr. BAIRD. We should push for that in some way to give us much

more information.

77

Dr. FEELY. Absolutely. So one of our recommendations is to point

out very clearly that we need the development of the carbon measurements in this bill, and the carbon measurements are what is

causing this problem.

Dr. CALDEIRA. One of the reasons this research is expensive is

because ships are expensive, and the more you can invest in developing measurement tools that can be put out on unmanned drifters

or gliders, the more you can reduce the long-term costs of this research effort.

Mr. BAIRD. I don’t have, I have thousands of further questions.

In the interest of the panel I won’t ask them here.

I want to also, if I may, just personally, I know there are other

experts in the audience here who have a lot of expertise on this.

I personally would welcome if anyone wants to, in addition to the

panel, wants to direct suggestions to us about ways that this legislation or some legislation could be improved, what we ought to do,

because I want to move on this post haste, and I am very grateful,

Mr. Chairman, for your leadership and for our colleagues.

Thanks again to the witnesses.

Chairman LAMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Baird.

It is a fascinating discussion, and obviously there is an awful lot

of work that has to be done, and it would be great when we can

start hooking up any other sources of information and see how so

many other things are related.

We have got a lot to learn, and just this, as Dr. Baird was just

saying, we have got to rely on you experts. Maybe we know how

to get something through the governmental process sometimes, but

without the knowledge that you give to us we don’t know what to

put in those bills and in that language. So think about it and we

would always welcome the opportunity to have your input. We together are in this boat. It is not us. We are not the leaders. You

all are the leaders. We are the followers. We will do our best to follow what you are trying to tell us.

So I thank all of you for appearing today at this hearing. And

under the rules of the Committee the record will be held open for

two weeks for Members to submit additional statements and any

additional questions that they might have for the witnesses.

This hearing is now adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

(79)

Appendix:

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR THE RECORD

80

H.R. 4174: The Federal Ocean Acidification

Research and Monitoring Act

SECTION-BY-SECTION ANALYSIS

Section 1. Short Title and Table of Contents

Provides the short title of the legislation: The Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act of 2007.

Section 2. Findings and Purposes

Designates the purposes of the legislation: to provide for development of an interagency monitoring and research plan; establishment of an ocean acidification program at NOAA; assessment of the impacts of ocean acidification; and research on

adaptation strategies.

Section 3. Interagency Committee on Ocean Acidification

Establishes an interagency committee on ocean acidification chaired by NOAA

and designates the membership of the committee to include representatives from

the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Environmental

Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and other federal agencies. The section directs the committee to oversee the development of a plan to be submitted to

Congress to coordinate federal efforts to understand ocean acidification and its potential impacts on marine ecosystems and to develop adaptive strategies to conserve

marine organisms and marine ecosystems. Requires a report to Congress within two

years of enactment and every three years thereafter of the progress of research and

monitoring activities and recommendations for addressing impacts of ocean acidification.

Section 4. Strategic Research and Implementation Plan

Directs the Committee to develop a strategic research and implementation plan

for coordinated federal activities within 18 months of enactment. Establishes criteria and topics to be included in the interagency program and requires the plan

to include goals, priorities, and guidelines for coordinated research over a 10-year

period. Requires the Committee to consider and utilize other relevant reports and

studies in developing the research plan.

Section 5. NOAA Ocean Acidification Program

Directs the Secretary to establish an ocean acidification program within NOAA to

implement activities consistent with the strategic research and implementation

plan. Requires the program to provide grants through a competitive, merit-based

process.

Section 6. Definitions

Defines the terms Committee, Ocean Acidification, Program, and Secretary.

Section 7. Authorization of Appropriations

Authorizes appropriations that escalate each year beginning in fiscal year 2009

at a funding level of $6 million through fiscal year 2012 when the funding level

reaches $30 million. The authorization is permanent at a level of $30 million thereafter. The section also directs the Secretary to distribute sixty percent of the funds

to agencies other than NOAA to carry out the purposes of the Act and directs that

at least fifty percent of all funds be used for competitive grants.

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93