Seawater carbonate chemistry and Bathymodiolus brevior shell variables near Eifuku volcano, Japan, 2009, supplement to: Tunnicliffe, Verena; Davies, Kimberly T A; Butterfield, David A; Embley, Robert W; Rose, Jonathan M; Chadwick, William W Jr (2009): Survival of mussels in extremely acidic waters on a submarine volcano. Nature Geoscience, 2, 344-348

• Main Authors: Tunnicliffe, Verena, Davies, Kimberly T A, Butterfield, David A, Embley, Robert W, Rose, Jonathan M, Chadwick, William W Jr
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: PANGAEA - Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science 2009
• Subjects: Animalia; Bathymodiolus brevior; Benthic animals; Benthos; CO2 vent; Deep-sea; Field observation; Growth/Morphology; Mollusca; North Pacific; Single species; Tropical; Site; LATITUDE; LONGITUDE; Date; DEPTH, water; Salinity; Temperature, water; pH; Alkalinity, total; Carbon, inorganic, dissolved; Calcite saturation state; Aragonite saturation state; Carbonate system computation flag; Carbon dioxide; Partial pressure of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Fugacity of carbon dioxide water at sea surface temperature wet air; Bicarbonate ion; Carbonate ion; Hydrogen sulfide; Bathymodiolus brevior, distance from umbo; Bathymodiolus brevior, shell thickness; Bathymodiolus brevior, shell thickness, standard deviation; Bathymodiolus brevior, distance from shell edge; Bathymodiolus brevior, daily growth band, width; Bathymodiolus brevior, daily growth band, width, standard error; Bathymodiolus brevior, shell, length; Bathymodiolus brevior, shell, weight; Measured; Alkalinity, potentiometric; Calculated; Calculated using CO2SYS; Calculated using seacarb after Nisumaa et al. 2010; Electron microprobe EMP; European network of excellence for Ocean Ecosystems Analysis EUR-OCEANS; European Project on Ocean Acidification EPOCA; Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre OA-ICC; Chadwick; Pacific; Ocean acidification
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.1594/pangaea.758715; https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.758715

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are causing ocean acidification, compromising the ability of some marine organisms to build and maintain support structures as the equilibrium state of inorganic carbon moves away from calcium carbonate. Few marine organisms tolerate conditions where ocean pH falls significantly below today's value of about 8.1 and aragonite and calcite saturation values below 1. Here we report dense clusters of the vent mussel B. brevior in natural conditions of pH values between 5.36 and 7.29 on northwest Eifuku volcano, Mariana arc, where liquid carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide emerge in a hydrothermal setting. We find that both shell thickness and daily growth increments in shells from northwest Eifuku are only about half those recorded from mussels living in water with pH>7.8. Low pH may therefore also be implicated in metabolic impairment. We identify four-decade-old mussels, but suggest that the mussels can survive for so long only if their protective shell covering remains intact: crabs that could expose the underlying calcium carbonate to dissolution are absent from this setting. The mussels' ability to precipitate shells in such low-pH conditions is remarkable. Nevertheless, the vulnerability of molluscs to predators is likely to increase in a future ocean with low pH. : In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Lavigne and Gattuso, 2011) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI).