Task Force on Marine Acidification
Scientific data collected over many years are conclusive that oceanic absorption of atmospheric CO2 is causing chemical changes in seawater, making them more acidic (i.e. lowering pH). Increasing levels of anthropogenic CO2 are causing this process to accelerate. The average pH of the world’s oceans has dropped by about 0.1 pH units since the beginning of the industrial age. If global carbon emissions are not substantially reduced, oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon will result in a further drop 0.3 to 0.7 pH units by the year 2100. This degree of change in ocean chemistry has not occurred in hundreds of thousands of years, and probably never on as rapid a timeframe as is currently occurring. Early data is highly suggestive that marine acidification (MA) will negatively impact many important marine organisms, ecosystems, and by extension the human societies and economies that depend on them. Given the critical ecological, economic, and social function of oceans in the Asia-Pacific Rim, nowhere is the need for additional research greater than the Pacific region.
The Pacific Science Association (PSA) is establishing a Task Force on Marine Acidification in the Pacific (TAFMAP). TAFMAP will provide an institutional framework and coordination for regional collaborative scientific research to examine the MA issue. The goals of the task force will be to identify knowledge gaps in scientific understanding of the MA phenomenon, including assessment of possible social and economic impacts. TAFMAP will produce a report, arising from a session that will take place at the 21st Pacific Science Congress in Okinawa in June 2007, that will discuss these various aspects of MA. This document will also be an importance source for educating the policy community and public in the region about MA and the potential threat it poses to the marine ecological systems upon which those societies depend.
PSA serves as a regional institutional venue to facilitate international research partnerships in the study of MA and its implications in the Pacific, and to promote policy-relevance and greater awareness of the importance of the phenomenon. PSA is a virtual hub as well as a facilitator underpinning these efforts, but is not an actual implementer of research.
TAFMAP will be carried out by an international network of geochemists, biologists, and social scientists and their home institutions, as a series of linked and coordinated projects focusing on the issue of marine acidification (MA) in the Asia-Pacific region. TAFMAP will coordinate among a variety of leading scientific institutions, such as the Seto Marine Biological Laboratory at Kyoto University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), and others. It will coordinate closely with related efforts the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR).
TAFMAP will examine the MA phenomenon and provide new and critical scientific data that are needed to ascertain the implications that it has for species, ecosystems, and the human societies that depend on them. Making this information available and accessible to decision-makers and the public is essential to facilitate informed policy judgements, including possible mitigation strategies. TAFMAP will accomplish these various tasks through smart coordination of projects, research funding facilitation, and by creating economies of scale. The program will feature development of targeted research, field and laboratory experiments, monitoring regimes, a web portal, publications, and a network of experts examining the issue both globally and regionally.
Co-Chairs:
Dr. Yoshihisa Shirayama
Director and Professor
Seto Marine Biological Laboratory, Graduate School of Science
Kyoto University
Japan
email: yshira@seto.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Dr. Peter Brewer
Senior Scientist
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
7700 Sandholdt Road
Moss Landing, CA 95039
USA
email: brpe@mbari.org