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Contributed Talk

Session: : Environmental Impact And Risk Assessment

COS 197-4 - Hypoxia and Ocean Acidification Vulnerability Assessment of California Benthic Invertebrates: Insights from an Oceanographic Data Synthesis

Wednesday, August 9, 2023
2:15 PM – 2:30 PM PDT
Location: B114
Abstract: As oceans warm, stratify and absorb a third of carbon emissions, marine environments experience increasingly frequent and pervasive low oxygen and pH conditions, threatening marine organisms of ecologic and economic interest (e.g., crab, urchin). To sustainably and effectively manage marine resources, managers must understand baseline exposure to ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH) and how these populations respond to increased environmental stress. To this end, we leverage a novel synthesis of 4 million publicly available pH and oxygen observations from California monitoring networks to assess the vulnerability of ecologically and economically important benthic invertebrate species: Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister), pink shrimp (Pandalus jordani), California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus), red urchin (Mesocentrotus franciscanus), purple urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) and warty sea cucumber (Aposticopus parvimensis). We find that few species experience hypoxia (< 2.6 mg/L). Deep-dwelling pink shrimp are the exception to this, whose high exposure to low pH (< 7.65) and hypoxia seemingly agrees with assumptions from modeling studies; that maximum OAH exposure occurs at maximum depth. Contrasting results from modeling studies, oceanographic data indicate larval red urchin and Dungeness crab frequently experience low pH conditions (~13% at pH < 7.65), suggesting significant exposure to low pH in offshore surface waters at locations with pervasive spatiotemporal monitoring gaps. Dungeness crab and pink shrimp vulnerability to low pH are mostly consistent with baselines for modeled vulnerability trajectories unlike pink shrimp eggs, juveniles, and adults whose pH vulnerability here meets or exceeds modeled vulnerabilities for the year 2100. Our future work will explore how additional monitoring could target seasons and locations and fill the gaps in data needed to constrain key uncertainties in life stage and population vulnerability, for future ecological risk assessments.