Stephen B. Weisberg, Nina Bednaršek, Richard A. Feely, Francis Chan, Alexandria B. Boehm, Martha Sutula, Jennifer L. Ruesink, Burke Hales, John L. Largier, Jan A. Newton. 2016. Water quality criteria for an acidifying ocean: Challenges and opportunities f

The West Coast Ocean Acidification and Hypoxia Science Panel has released a new publication assessing the current dissidence between the scientific criteria for researching the effects of ocean acidification and the criteria laid out in the Clean Water Act 303(d) for classifying bodies of water as impaired. The authors discuss the scientific challenges in classifying impairment for both pH and biological criteria. First, pH criteria is challenging because the current acceptable range includes acidity levels that have been known to cause significant ecological damage. Many states also discuss pH change as relative to a natural standard which has been difficult to define because of the lack of coastal monitoring data. In addition to pH science, the authors discussed the challenges facing biological research due to the difficulty in deciphering the specific phenomena causing biological declines. Without sufficient coastal monitoring of both pH levels and biological criteria, the authors stress the challenges scientists face in pinpointing ocean acidification effects. The authors concluded with proposals for improving the criteria in the Clean Water Act 303(d).