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Carbon dioxide doesn't just warm the atmosphere. When it dissolves into seawater, it triggers a chemical reaction that increases acidity. Since the Industrial Revolution, ocean pH has dropped by about 0.1 units — a figure that sounds modest but represents roughly a 26% increase in acidity.⁴ That shift has already pushed Earth past one of the planetary boundaries scientists use to measure whether global systems remain stable and life-sustaining.⁴ This is not a projection. It is where we are today.

The rate of change makes the situation more alarming still. The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide faster than at almost any point in Earth's deep geological record.¹

Marine Life Is Paying the Price

Oysters, clams, mussels, sea urchins, and corals all depend on calcium carbonate to build their shells and skeletons. More acidic water erodes that ability.¹ For coral reefs, acidification compounds the damage already caused by warming and bleaching. For the shellfish industry — a multi-billion-dollar sector along American coasts — the chemistry is an existential threat. Hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest have documented larvae die-offs tied directly to acidified water conditions.

The harm extends far beyond seafood. Coastal fishing families, Indigenous communities with deep ties to the sea, and workers across the marine economy did not cause this problem. They are among the first to absorb its consequences.

Monitoring Is the First Line of Defense

You cannot manage what you cannot measure. Right now, the United States has significant gaps in its understanding of how acidification is unfolding differently across its coastlines. The Atlantic and Pacific behave differently from each other. Near-shore waters — already stressed by agricultural runoff and nutrient pollution — face pressures that open-ocean sites do not. Deep waters and surface waters tell different stories.

This summer, NOAA took an important step by launching simultaneous research cruises along both the East and West Coasts — the first coordinated, dual-coastwide survey the agency has ever conducted.² The West Coast mission alone is collecting water chemistry data across hundreds of stations to map where conditions are most severe and how they are trending.³ This is exactly the kind of systematic science that resource managers, fishing industries, and policymakers need.

The problem is that one-time surveys have limited value. Ocean chemistry shifts seasonally, annually, and in response to events like El Niño. Only permanent, continuously maintained monitoring networks — tracked year after year — can reveal the true trajectory and give decision-makers the data they need to act in time.^2,3

Federal Investment Must Match the Scale of the Threat

Expanding permanent monitoring networks along every major U.S. coastline, funding research into regional variation, and equipping managers with real-time data all require sustained federal commitment. America's reefs, fisheries, and coastal communities cannot wait for these data gaps to close on their own.

Sign the petition now to urge the head of NOAA to champion expanded, long-term ocean acidification monitoring — because protecting America's coasts starts with understanding what is happening to them.