in the last 200 years our global oceans have silently absorbed more than one-quarter of the carbon dioxide that people generate the chemistry of seawater is rapidly changing in the process called ocean acidification ocean acidification has the potential to fundamentally change the oceans its inhabitants the food webs and marine life we need to better understand how acidification affects our oceans so that we can develop tools to slow the rate of change the u.s. integrated ocean observing system or iOS uses real-time data to signal the approach of acidified seawater one or two days prior to its arrival providing shellfish farmers with the tools to save their crops this is neat arts Bay Oregon and we have a shellfish hatchery here what happens in the oceans really affects what happens to my business the iOS data helps us to manage our hatchery we pump in 75 to 100 thousand gallons of seawater Dave we've got twenty thousand gallon tanks as we drain tanks we fill tanks we never stop filling tanks it looks like dirt but what you're looking at is 100 million larvae right here it's it's a huge responsibility to try to produce shellfish larvae what you grow not only affects your business but families out there depend on this larvae to seed their ground and if you're not producing you're affecting their lively so there's a balancing act here and everything's got to be just right to get these larvae through we bought them to out in production in 2008 we would bring the water in put the larvae in it and they would die mysteriously died in the back of your mind you're thinking maybe it doesn't work anymore maybe we lost our mojo my wife said you gotta throw the book out on how you used to grow lar because it's a new ocean it's a changing ocean I pretty much thought we were gonna lose the business we never had no survival that was the difference we had zero survival what drives the pH down is the amount of co2 that's in the water on a scientific level they'd call it acidification the larvae hated it they either slowed down their growth or they died this is where IO steps in these guys have the ability to monitor the ocean so this is what helps us run our business dealing with these changing ocean chemistry we used to never treat any water with anything and now we filter skim treat with carbonate add air and oxygen without the monitoring we'd be driving blind at night run off the road immediately in the ditch we'd be out of business this is not a localized problem it goes beyond what we're doing right here don't make it a party issue or anything like that we're talking about the ocean we're talking about something bigger than all of us put together [Music] you