PRESENTER 1: Next we have Adrienne-- or Simone Alin, sorry-- Living with Ocean Acidification in the Pacific Northwest. 

SIMONE ALIN: Thank you. Good morning. In the Pacific Northwest we sit at the intersection of an eastern boundary current upwelling system, major river inputs, and productive coastal ecosystems. Each of which on its own, they contribute CO2 to coastal waters. Consequently, we're vulnerable, naturally, to ocean acidification through the uptake of anthropogenic carbon and we've been living with the biological effects of ocean acidification on resources in our region already for years 

Thus we have worked with many partners to both understand the progression of ocean conditions and their evolution in our region, as well as our regional vulnerability and potential for adaptation and mitigation strategies in the face of ocean acidification and other stresses. 

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Washington's finfish and shellfish industries bring in on the order of $200 million per year for the economy, and we've work with industry and NOAA fisheries for over a decade to understand the impacts to commercially important species here. More recently we've turned our attention to other forms of social vulnerability as well as ecosystem vulnerability for not just livelihoods, but also subsistence and cultural value [INAUDIBLE] resources that we depend on. 

Recently, we were funded by the NOAA Ocean Acidification program to work with the Washington Coastal Treaty Tribe and other regional institutions to do a regional vulnerability analysis on the effects of ocean acidification to the resources that the Makah, Quileute, Hoh, and Quinault tribes have depended on since time immemorial. And so this really gives the project an environmental justice angle as well. 

These are some of the species that are important to the tribes and the coastal ecosystems. Olive snails-- I'm going to describe some of the impacts to them since the last [INAUDIBLE]. Olive snails are important to the Makah tribe for cultural purposes. They suffered a massive mortality event in 2014. 

The Dungeness crab, those are [INAUDIBLE] developed on our coasts in some parts of the shoal. Sea stars had a massive die-off. Red and purple urchin abundances are changing. Both of these stand to really changed the structure of coastal ecosystems, as well as availability of resources to tribes. 

All of the species here--except salmon have some form of calcium carbonate at some life stage that may be vulnerable to changing saturation states of calcium carbonate. Sockeye salmon have-- more than half of the stocks in the region are at significant to moderate conservation concerns. And of course, we've also had a massive harmful algal bloom and unprecedented heatwave since the last review. So we've really become sort of an epicenter for understanding the impacts of rapidly changing ocean conditions on resources and ecosystems. 

Fortunately, a regional marine sanctuary has been monitoring, through a series of bottom water moorings, conditions related to hypoxia since 2006, and I will show you data from these two sites to show you what we've learned from the data synthesis associated with this project. 

Here are oxygen data from the northern and the southern sites. I calculated aragonite saturation state from the oxygen and temperature data using empirical relationships I derived. We use commonly accepted thresholds for hypoxia, and other saturation for aragonite. All the dots found below the lines are hypoxic or corrosive, respectively. And you can see that conditions in the southern sanctuary are worse than those in the northern sanctuary. 

Further, conditions in the northern sanctuary are pretty stable through the upwelling season when these moorings are out. In the southern sanctuary, they progressively worsen through the upwelling season. So there's significant spatial variability. And then finally, aragonite saturation-- undersaturation occurs far more frequently than hypoxia throughout the sanctuary. 

Adult Dungeness crab live in these habitats that are affected by these time series observations, and we've created seasonal climatologies for oxygen and aragonite saturation states. You can see here that in the present day, oxygen dips below the hypoxia threshold, on average, every August and September. 

For saturation state, we're able to use some of the anthropogenic carbon estimates Tim talked about yesterday to also estimate pre-industrial saturation states in blue. And what I want you to notice is that, while undersaturation occurred in the pre-industrial, it starts earlier, lasts longer, and is more severe in the present day than it was in the pre-industrial. 

Looking at projections for the end of the century suggests that hypoxia will increase in prevalence during the upwelling season from about 40% of the time to 60% of the time. While we see a smaller percentage change because it's already so prevalent there for aragonite undersaturation, however, of course, you might expect it to become more severe. 

We're working with regional ocean modelers to provide forecasts and projections to tribal and other resource managers to help facilitate fisheries management decisions, as well as adaptation planning. These are on timescales from daily to end of century. 

OK. In conclusion, in addition to helping the tribes prepare for rapidly changing ocean conditions, our regional vulnerability analysis is providing a template to other regions such as Alaska that are vulnerable to ocean acidification, such that they might use the same approach we've used. 

We're also working with the partners that are shown here to develop information and indicators on acidification status and trends that are being included in various assessments from regional to international. And thank you.