| Summary: | Coastal margins are under increasing human-induced pressures including eutrophication and ocean acidification, which interact with natural environmental fluctuations in ways that can exacerbate calcium carbonate (CaCO3) mineral corrosivity. The temporal and spatial patterns of these pressures are in general very under-studied. Ocean acidification negatively impacts a range of species, especially those dependent on CaCO3 saturation states for shell formation like marine shellfish. Marine shellfish are socio-economically important as worldwide aquaculture organisms and bioindicator species, used for generating indicators of coastal health. The capacity for marine populations to adapt to these changes is unknown, and the loss of dominant coastal and estuarine organisms such as shellfish may significantly alter marine ecosystem structure and function, as well as threaten food security. This research combines lower trophic level monitoring (plankton analysis), physiological responses (functional genomics of multiple species of shellfish) and oceanographic monitoring at a field site in the northern Salish Sea in British Columbia (BC), Canada. This initial project is a novel pairing of these technologies in situ, and provides information on coastal variability and impacts on ecosystem productivity in a poorly sampled portion of the BC coastal margin. This work is currently ongoing, but preliminary results of gene expression studies of multiple commercial shellfish species and accompanying plankton work will be discussed. In addition linkages of the biological research to variability of coastal carbonate chemistry will be discussed, with a view to determining the impact of ocean acidification on the long-term health and productivity of coastal ecosystems in BC.
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