This is how ocean acidification occurs. The amount of CO2 in the oceans is occurring in large enough amounts to shift the pH.

HCO3 is a biocarbonate ion that prevents calcification of shellfish.

Calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) is the building blocks for the skeletons and shells of many marine organisms. As the CO2 saturation increases there is less carbonate molecules available for ocean species.


Calcareous plankton are the primary producers of the fisheries. Reefs serve a vital part of many fisheries. Reefs are literally incubators and nurseries for fish species.

This plankton is the very basis of the food chain that feeds the fisheries. These vital organisms are also a carbon sink unto themselves. A different name for acidification of the oceans is decalcification of ocean organisms. When these species are lot, there will be no more fish.

Don't take my word for it.

By: Dan Vergano

Published: March 28, 2013

The tide rolls out on a chilly March evening, (click here) and the oystermen roll in, steel rakes in hand, hip boots crunching on the gravel beneath a starry, velvet sky.

As they prepare to harvest some of the sweetest shellfish on the planet, a danger lurks beyond the shore that will eventually threaten clams, mussels, everything with a shell or that eats something with a shell. The entire food chain could be affected. That means fish, fishermen and, perhaps, you.

"Ocean acidification," the shifting of the ocean's water toward the acidic side of its chemical balance, has been driven by climate change and has brought increasingly corrosive seawater to the surface along the West Coast and the inlets of Puget Sound, a center of the $111 million shellfish industry in the Pacific Northwest.

USA TODAY traveled to the tendrils of Oyster Bay as the second stop in a year-long series to explore places where climate change is already affecting lives...