FSML: Instrumentation at UW Friday Harbor Laboratories for Studies of the Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification and Ocean Change

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

Investigators

Abstract

The UW Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL) currently supports a fully functional NSF-funded (FSML) Ocean Acidification Experimental Laboratory and in-water mesocosm facility, available to researchers from any institution. Under the new award, FHL will install an instrument array to monitor local ocean changes, and to provide data to help design ongoing experiments. UW has already installed a submarine cable system (spring 2013) that will allow real-time monitoring and testing of scientific devices. The test-bed infrastructure includes two electro-optical cables, bundled together on the seafloor, extending 600 feet from shore, and a third shallower cable will be added in 2014. Instruments connected to each cable will provide unprecedented data access to scientists and the general public via the FHL and NANOOS websites. At the end of two cables (7m, 30m) FHL will install real-time instruments to monitor ocean chemistry, physics and biological processes in the water column. At the end of the other cable (40m), a shallow and a deep profiler of the UW OOI Regional Scale Node (RSN) system will be tested (UW School of Oceanography & Applied Physics Lab); the profilers will eventually be removed and UW will continue to use this cable and connectors as a test-bed facility for future instrument development. Ocean change, including ocean acidification (OA), poses an unprecedented threat to oceanic and coastal ecosystems and to the societies that depend on them. The scale and complexity of the OA problem requires new spatially distributed data collection, and an integrated programmatic approach to OA research. The Salish Sea region, fed by waters of the Northeast Pacific, is particularly vulnerable to OA events associated with ocean upwelling and is already experiencing pH ranges that other areas will not see for many decades; commercial fisheries and shellfish aquaculture already appear to be affected or at risk. OA is further complicated in estuaries such as the Salish Sea by local processes including respiration, production, anoxia and mixing, resulting in wide pH and pCO2 variation in time and space. Long-range plans for ocean change research at FHL focus on integrated ocean carbonate system observations, utilizing new advances in the development of ocean sensors and instruments, and incorporating biological response studies under laboratory and field conditions. Field conditions will be simulated using environmental and ecosystem modeling studies, and our findings will provide information for assessment of policy, and socio-economic responses. Societal needs will be fully integrated with our research, merging the relevance of the problem and the need for human adaptation to OA. FHL will engage in knowledge transfer, with data and information flowing to and from policy makers, affected communities, scientists, and the general public. The shellfish aquaculture community will benefit economically from the new data and tribal governments will accrue benefits that could help sustain traditional food sources. The public will benefit through targeted education activities that improve general understanding of ocean processes and especially ocean acidification. UW and FHL will train a workforce that is ready to discover and deal with the impacts of OA and to realize adaptive responses that will allow affected industries and communities to thrive in the presence of this threat. Users include groups engaged in marine resource-based economies, members of coastal tribes, managers of marine resources, researchers in academic and government laboratories, and both formal and informal educators. FHL education programs reach broadly, from high school teachers and their students to undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. At the graduate level, FHL will prepare students for careers inside and outside of academia. Under represented minorities (URM) are fully integrated into FHL activities, with the objective of increasing their representation in oceanography, biology, fisheries and other OA and ocean-related fields. We will leverage existing programs (UW IGERT in Ocean Change, FHL Blinks and REU site programs, FHL Research Apprenticeships, NSF BEACON at UW) and create new programs to recruit, mentor, and prepare a community of URM students both on and off the university campus. We will expand our ongoing engagement of Native American students in ocean change research and education, near their own college campus (NWIC) and with their own instructors, in a culturally respectful way.