Limacina helicina shell dissolution as an indicator of declining habitat suitability owing to ocean acidification in the California Current
Ecosystem
By Jeremy Hance
(mongabay.com) – It could be the plot of a horror movie: humans wake up one day to discover that chemical changes in the atmosphere are dissolving away parts of their bodies. But for small marine life known as sea butterflies, or pteropods, this is what's happening off the West Cost of the U.S. Increased carbon in the ocean is melting away shells of sea butterflies, which are tiny marine snails that underpin much of the ocean's food chain, including prey for pink salmon, mackerel, and herring.
"We
did not expect to see pteropods being affected to this extent in our
coastal region for several decades," said William Peterson, Ph.D., an
oceanographer at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA)'s Northwest Fisheries Science Center who co-authored the findings
in a paper for the journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Sampling sea butterflies in the species Limacina helicina off California, Washington, and Oregon in the summer of 2011, researchers found that over 50 percent of onshore sea butterflies suffered from "severe dissolution damage," according to the paper. Offshore, 24 percent of individuals showed such damage.
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