Marine scientist Gretchen Hofmann has been a leading researcher in the warming and acidification of Earth's oceans. She acknowledges that acidification may not be an issue that the public immediately associates with climate change, but the problems are serious, she says. Declining pH levels in the ocean could, in the long-run, harm living creatures with shells. 

"Coral reef biologists were the first ones to sit up and say, 'The change in the ocean pH and how it changes the chemistry could really alter the way things make their calcium carbonate hard parts,'" Hofmann explained in an interview before her presentation at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver.  "One of the most important ones from and ecosystem perspective are stoney corals that build the reefs that we all love in tropical environments."

Hofmann is a professor of ecology, evolution and marine biology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. She presented her work at a symposium on Saturday 18 February, "Acid-Washed Genes in Ocean Ecosystems: Biological Tales of Ocean Acidification."

Joining Hofmann at the symposium were:

--Sinead Collins, Royal Society University Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom;

--Jason Hall-Spencer, associate professor, School of Marine Science and Engineering, University of Plymouth, United Kingdom;

--Shallin Busch, research ecologist, NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, Washington;

--Bruce Menge, an ocean ecologist, Oregon State University; and

--Chris Langdon, a biological oceanographer, University of Miami in Florida.