Chair: Thomas Trull

James C. Hendee ^(1)*, Derek Manzello ⁽¹⁾, Adrienne Sutton ⁽²⁾

¹ Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division, Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Miami, FL USA 33149
² NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, 98115, USA and University of Washington, Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

Background
Even though studies over the last two decades have demonstrated that reef-building corals are sensitive to changes in carbonate chemistry, ocean acidification research and monitoring in tropical coral ecosystems is lacking.

Methods
To address this need, researchers at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML), of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Miami, FL (USA), have devised and deployed in situ monitoring stations (Coral Reef Early Warning System, or CREWS) for purposes of determining long-term environmental changes at various coral reef habitats since 2000 and are now building off these efforts to address ocean acidification. The Caribbean Community Climate Change Center has recently entered into a collaboration with AOML to assist in the deployment and information management (including ecological forecasting) of CREWS stations at many countries throughout the Caribbean, through funding by the European Union. AOML has recently in turn collaborated with researchers from the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) to devise a new buoy that has the standard CREWS-type of monitoring elements plus ocean acidification monitoring instruments. These newly designed stations are slated for deployment at a minimum of six new countries over the next several years and will represent the beginning of a Caribbean-wide ocean acidification monitoring network to inform coral reef research and management communities seeking to understand the impacts of ocean acidification.

Findings
Ocean acidification monitoring requires sophisticated monitoring equipment and methods. Providing near real-time monitoring of ocean acidification provides researchers a unique look at witnessing diurnal and seasonal events in near real-time and provides them the feedback to witness and sample events as, or shortly after, they occur. The instrumental architecture and information system also provides meteorological data to help interpret the oceanographic events.

Conclusions
Implementation of a Caribbean-wide network provides a large regional look at the process of ocean acidification.