More acidic ocean will be a challenge to the CNMI’s marine environment

Climate change and one of its associated effects, ocean acidification, will be a challenge for the CNMI’s marine environment in the years ahead, according to a federal environmental official yesterday.

John McCaroll, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9 manager for the Pacific Islands, who spoke at the weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Saipan at the Hyatt Regency Saipan yesterday, said the ocean chemistry is changing due to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

“There has been a big increase in carbon dioxide and the ocean is about 30 percent more acidic” since the start of the Industrial Revolution, he said.

According to McCaroll, ocean acidification is not good for coral, shellfish or anything that needs calcium carbonate to grow.

He cited the oyster industry in northwest side of the United States when the larvae needed to grow oysters suddenly wouldn’t grow and started dying off in 2005. Billions of larvae were lost. Then same thing started happening in the northeast coast of the U.S. and went down to the west coast as well.

Scientist figured out that the water’s chemistry had changed—it was more acidic and harder, with fewer calcium carbonate ions. That made it harder for the little creatures to grow, McCaroll said.

Scientists then looked at areas where carbon dioxide was emitted from underwater volcano vents, including the “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific Ocean just south of Japan, a place just off of New Guinea, and an island near Italy.

“They found there shellfish that only had half of their shells and missing big parts of the shell. They started recreating the situation in the labs and found the same thing, that the shell wasn’t growing,” McCaroll said.

From there, some scientists predicted that in 50 to 60 years, corals may be on a terminal decline and would all be just rubble a hundred years from now it. Other scientists, however, contend that the matter has not been studied enough.

“So maybe there are places out there that might have coral that is resistant to this kind of thing. There are some coral species resistant to some climate changes in some parts of the world. So they have been looking but there aren’t any published studies yet. But I am aware that scientists are looking at areas where types of coral are likely to be resistant. But it’s still not a good situation and a lot of the coral may be in trouble and the ocean food web may be in trouble. All this might be in trouble and the source of problem is the carbon dioxide,” he said.

What can be done?
What could be done to potentially stop this from happening is basically reduce carbon dioxide emissions nationally, McCaroll said. EPA has proposed regulations to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide from existing power plants and the regulations are supposed to become effective this June.

“There is a local component because nutrients from the land were going into the sea. That happens all over and all kinds of nutrients such as fertilizers, sewage, sediment, and animal waste go in the ocean,” McCaroll said.

This makes the role of environmental regulatory agencies doubly important. “It is important that someone will need a permit for going forward [with any project],” he said.

“There are many ways to be smart about this such as working with project engineers and project designers to build in features that protect the environment and…working with the Bureau of Environmental and Coastal Equality,” he added.

McCaroll stressed that the CNMI is an asset and should be protected.

“I’m going to say that the CNMI’s natural environment is an asset. This is a huge asset; there are a very few places like this. That is why people want to come here. So as more people do come here it is important to remember that however the CNMI grows, we need to protect this asset and we need to protect the environment,” he said.