By Kathleen M. Wong

Two banana-yellow buoys anchored along the Tiburon shore will be San Francisco Bay’s sentinels against shifts in water chemistry due to climate change. Known as the Bay Ocean Buoy (BOB) and the Marine Acidification Research Inquiry (MARI), the permanent moorings will provide long-term monitoring of acidity and carbon dioxide levels—key indicators of how the changing ocean will impact Bay chemistry. “It’s taken over three years of perseverance and partnership building to get these instruments into the water, but now we’ll be able to reveal how ocean acidification may be influencing SF Bay now and in the future,” says Karina Nielsen, a San Francisco State Professor of Biology and Director of the Estuary and Ocean Science Center, where the one of the buoys is moored. “It will enable us to make better investments to promote the environmental health of the Bay.”

 

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SF State Launches New Floating Sentinel

By Kathleen M. Wong

Two banana-yellow buoys anchored along the Tiburon shore will be San Francisco Bay’s sentinels against shifts in water chemistry due to climate change. Known as the Bay Ocean Buoy (BOB) and the Marine Acidification Research Inquiry (MARI), the permanent moorings will provide long-term monitoring of acidity and carbon dioxide levels—key indicators of how the changing ocean will impact Bay chemistry. “It’s taken over three years of perseverance and partnership building to get these instruments into the water, but now we’ll be able to reveal how ocean acidification may be influencing SF Bay now and in the future,” says Karina Nielsen, a San Francisco State Professor of Biology and Director of the Estuary and Ocean Science Center, where the one of the buoys is moored. “It will enable us to make better investments to promote the environmental health of the Bay.”

 

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About the author

Bay Area native Kathleen M. Wong is a science writer specializing in the natural history and environment of California and the West. With Ariel Rubissow Okamoto, she coauthored Natural History of San Francisco Bay (UC Press, 2011), for which she shared the 2013 Harold Gilliam Award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting. She reports on native species, climate change, and environmental conditions for Estuary, and is the science writer of the University of California Natural Reserve System.

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