November 11, 2013 — Can sea life evolve fast enough to cope with changing ocean chemistry? That’s the question researchers like Gretchen Hofmann are trying to answer. The marine biologist is applying her years of experience with sea urchins to determining how marine animals might evolve or adapt to ocean acidification: the lowering of the ocean’s pH due to human-propelled fossil fuel emissions.
Her research is at the center of “Sea Change: Can sea life adapt?”, the latest in a series of articles on ocean acidification, published last week in The Seattle Times.
Hofmann, a scientist at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), was inspired to begin the research by a commercial urchin diver, who contacted her to ask how ocean acidification would affect his livelihood. In the lab, she exposed Pacific sea urchin larvae to more acidic water–water with a higher concentration of CO2 than usually found in most real ocean conditions. As the sea urchins grew, she found, many developed smaller bodies. But some did not.