Ocean Acidification Impacts on Shellfish Aquaculture Productivity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22802929Keywords:
ocean acidification, aragonite saturation state, shellfish aquaculture, larval calcification, Crassostrea gigas, Mytilus edulis, Mercenaria mercenaria, hatchery production, coastal upwelling, shellfish economicsAbstract
Coastal upwelling and freshwater discharge are intensifying the exposure of nearshore shellfish aquaculture to
low-aragonite-saturation-state seawater well ahead of open-ocean acidification timelines, but the extent to which
this translates into measurable hatchery and grow-out production losses remains incompletely quantified across
species and life stages. We combined a controlled hatchery dosing experiment on three commercially important
bivalves, the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas), the blue mussel (Mytilus edulis), and the northern quahog
(Mercenaria mercenaria), exposed to four pCO2 treatments (400, 800, 1200 and 1600 microatm, spanning
aragonite saturation states of 3.1 down to 0.6) through the 48-hour veliger stage, with five years (2019-2023) of
paired seawater carbonate chemistry and spat-collection records from six commercial and research shellfish farms
spanning a natural aragonite saturation gradient. Larval survival to the D-hinge stage declined monotonically with
increasing pCO2 in all three species, from a control-treatment mean of 83% to 31% at 1600 microatm, with C. gigas
showing the steepest decline and M. edulis the shallowest; shell length at 48 hours was reduced by up to 24% at
the highest pCO2 treatment relative to controls, and net calcification, estimated from paired alkalinity anomaly
incubations, became indistinguishable from zero once aragonite saturation state fell below approximately 1.2.
Across the farm monitoring dataset, annual spat collection per unit larval input declined by an estimated 3.8% for
every 0.1-unit reduction in mean spring aragonite saturation state, and the three farms most exposed to seasonal
upwelling-driven undersaturation reported a combined mean production shortfall of 22% relative to farms in less
exposed embayments over the study period, a pattern consistent with the hatchery dose-response results.
Discrepancies between hatchery-derived sensitivity thresholds and observed farm-level outcomes were
nonetheless substantial at individual sites, reflecting the influence of temperature, food availability and
buffering-based hatchery mitigation that the controlled experiment did not capture. These findings indicate that
ocean acidification is already a measurable constraint on shellfish aquaculture productivity in upwelling-exposed
regions and support continued investment in real-time carbonate chemistry monitoring and hatchery water
treatment as near-term adaptation measures.
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