10 years in the making: An inside look at NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program with Director Libby Jewett

10 years in the making: An inside look at NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program with Director Libby Jewett NOAA ocean acidification program

Libby Jewett, Ph.D., Director of the NOAA Ocean Acidification Program, provides insight into ocean acidification. Jewett highlights how she became involved in ocean acidification work, how NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) started, and how we all can personally contribute to combatting this threat to our ocean.

What brought you to this position?

After receiving my Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in biology, focusing on marine ecology in the Chesapeake Bay, I was hired by NOAA to work on harmful algal blooms and hypoxia, or low oxygen levels in seawater. Colleagues started talking about ocean acidification around 2006 as a new important topic that was not well understood and a considerable potential threat to marine ecosystems.

In 2007, I became a founding member of NOAA's Ocean Acidification Steering Committee. I also became the point of contact for ocean acidification in the National Ocean Service, where I was at the time, and initiated, with other members of the Steering Committee, drafting NOAA's first comprehensive ocean acidification research plan. When NOAA's OAP was created, I applied and became the founding director, where I have been since May 2011.

What have been the main accomplishments of NOAA OAP in the past 10 years?

We have created an organized and collaborative program in the past 10 years. Overall, the program is very integrated. Ocean acidification work is done across many of the NOAA line offices. From the beginning, we were determined not to re-create research efforts, but rather build on efforts which were relevant for our collective ocean acidification mission. I feel super proud of our commitment to partnership. We knew that ocean acidification affects the mission of all these other parts of NOAA, so working collectively just made sense.

Monitoring the environment:

I am proud of the observing strategies that we've implemented. NOAA OAP has built a monitoring network which includes state of the art moorings outfitted with sensors which take measurements every three hours and transmit the data via satellite. We underwrite research cruises on global class NOAA ships which rotate coasts each year. We also fund instruments deployed on private freight ships which take measurements as they move from port to port. Even more than the equipment, I am SO proud of the scientists across NOAA and our academic and regional Integrated Ocean Observing System partners who do the hard work to build, deploy and maintain these systems and ensure that the data collected is publicly available.

Species sensitivity:

I firmly believe that the greatest uncertainty in the field of ocean acidification lies in how marine species and ecosystems will respond to this stressor. NOAA OAP has made headway on understanding some species' vulnerabilities in our waters, but we know that we have a lot more to research to understand the impacts completely.

Human dimensions and vulnerability:

I am also proud that we've moved in the direction to build in social scientists' perspectives on how ocean acidification is both affecting or could affect coastal and human communities into our research portfolio. When we started, most of our understanding of ocean acidification was in the open ocean. Closer to the coast, there's much more variability in carbon chemistry and resilience in marine life; this is the complexity we must keep studying to understand how ocean acidification is and will affect both marine ecosystems and the human communities that rely on them.

Appreciate

Credits:

Title: NOAA Ocean Acidification Program Director, Dr. Libby Jewett tries her hand at lobstering. Credit: NOAA Image 1: Harmful algal blooms captured via satellite imagery. Credit: NOAA Image 2: Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA ESRL's Mauna Loa Observatory (red), the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in surface water (navy blue) and pH (teal blue) at ALOHA station adapted from Dore et al. 2009. Credit: Adapted from NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Image 3: Water sample being collected on board a NOAA Ocean Acidification Research Cruise Credit: NOAA Image 4: Aquaculture activity along the shores of Virginia Credit: Virginia Sea Grant Image 5: A NOAA team conducting a dive in Papa Bay, Hawai'i Island to install scientific observing instrumentation in the region. Credit: Paul Cox, Hawai'i Marine Education and Research Center.