Fish

‘Hooked on OA’ – Hannes talks about fish CO2 sensitivity to recreational anglers

25 February 2021. The Mid-Atlantic Ocean Acidification Network (MACAN) organized a four-part webinar series on Ocean Acidification geared specifically towards recreational anglers and shellfish collectors in the Mid-Atlantic region. The series is called “Hooked on OA” and invited Hannes on this February Thursday to explain the state of OA science particularly for fishes. A big thanks to the organizers and the more than 50 people who participated in this webinar.

HookedonOA

If you missed it and are still interested, you can watch the Zoom webinar here:

[Publication] “Offspring sensitivity to ocean acidification changes seasonally in a coastal marine fish”

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Novel experiments on wild Atlantic silversides Menidia menidia suggest that parents are capable of pre-conditioning their offspring to the naturally occurring, seasonal acidification in their spawning habitat (shape depicts the annual pattern of pH mean, minimum and maximum.)
How vulnerable are marine organisms to unfolding ocean acidification? Apart from being species- and habitat-specific, the answer may even differ between times of the year. Other than open ocean species, most coastal organisms naturally experience large seasonal pH fluctuations, to which they have adapted. Murray and co-workers monitored pH conditions in the spawning habitat of a common coastal marine fish, while sampling wild spawning adults repeatedly over the season and conducting standardized CO2 exposure experiments on their offspring. This demonstrated that offspring CO2 sensitivity is not constant, but decreases seasonally with the increasing acidification in their habitat. These findings imply that realistic assessments of species CO2 sensitivities should account for the pH/CO2 variability in the parental environment.
Murray, C.M., Malvezzi, A., Gobler, C.J., and Baumann, H.(2014) Offspring sensitivity to ocean acidification changes seasonally in a coastal marine fish. Marine Ecology Progress Series 504: 1-11 (Open Access)