UKOARP Theme D: Improved understanding of population, community and ecosystem impacts of ocean acidification for commercially important species
The essence of the subject area is the impact of ocean acidification upon higher trophic level species, especially as they impact directly on human society.
The theme has four science objectives:
- To examine the physiological and behavioural responses of commercial fish and shellfish to ocean acidification and their capacity to resist and adapt
- To 'scale up' from laboratory studies to population and stock level responses to ocean acidification including an analysis of possible socio-economic consequences
- To examine how changes in planktonic and benthic food-webs, as a result of ocean acidification, impact upon the production and yields of commercial fish and shellfish stocks
- To investigate the possible socio-economic consequences relating to ocean acidification at an ecosystem level
The theme will combine experimental, modelling work with socio-economic analyses of not only commercial species but also generic ecosystem impacts. The emphasis of the experimental work being towards the generation of data to support the construction and parmaterisation of mechanistic models, whilst additionally providing physiological and biochemical mechanistic understanding of OA responses in the commercial species studied.
Weblink: http://www.ocean-acidification.org.uk/research_programme/commercial_species.aspx
