Ocean Acidification: Monitoring and Measuring the Physiological and Population Response of Living Marine Resources in Alaska

In the United States and other coastal nations, ocean acidification has quickly become a common topic of scientific research. Ocean acidification also has become a public concern as news headlines warn of this potentially threatening byproduct of global climate change. In March 2009, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Ocean Acidification Research Monitoring Act, a bill to establish an interagency committee to develop an ocean acidification research and monitoring plan and to establish an ocean acidification program within NOAA. NOAA accordingly developed the NOAA Ocean and Great Lakes Acidification Research Plan in 2010, a plan to improve monitoring capacity, assess organismal response, forecast biogeochemical and ecological responses, provide data synthesis, develop management tools, and provide public outreach and education about ocean acidification in the open and coastal oceans and the Great Lakes.