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Critical/Foundational support for this service is provided by the Leon Levy Foundation as part of the Shelby White & Leon Levy Archive Initiative at the American Museum of Natural History Library
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https://digitalcollections.amnh.org/asset-management/2URM1T193FBO
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Title
Acid Oceans (captioned)
Agent (Role)
American Museum of Natural History
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Collection/Work Relation
Education
Repository
American Museum of Natural History
Description
If you’re an ocean creature with a hard shell—like a sea urchin, a hermit crab, or a coral polyp—you prefer ocean water with a pH of about 8.2. This chemistry makes it easy to assemble your armor from carbon-based building blocks dissolved in the ocean. Since the beginning of the industrial age, though, the ocean has been absorbing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air. The increase in carbon dioxide has made the oceans pH more acidic, dropping to 8.05 on average. Biologists like Gretchen Hofmann are realizing that this tiny change is hampering the development of hard-shelled marine creatures, leaving them more vulnerable to environmental stressors. To learn more, Hofmanns team has recreated an acidic ocean in a lab at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is testing how the change affects sea urchins.
Duration: 6:38 min
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Acid Oceans
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