Climatide

Nancy Copley / WHOI

Shelled pteropods come in many shapes. All of them are threatened by ocean acidification.

Chances are, you’ve never heard of pteropods (you don’t pronounce the ‘p’), but a few scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are trying to raise the profile of these tiny floating snails. Why?

Well, they’re cute. Actually, pretty, or beautiful, would be more accurate. Most are just millimeters long. Their shells come in a variety of shapes, from the typical snail spiral, to cones, to triangles tinged with delicate spines. Some have even dropped their shells altogether. Then there are their ‘wings’ – a split version of the foot on which most snails glide that pteropods use to ‘fly’ through the water at an estimated six times Michael Phelps’ top speed. Pteropods have been nicknamed sea butterflies or sea angels, a testament to their somewhat haunting aesthetic appeal.

Being easy on the eyes doesn’t hurt when picking a poster child. But poster child for what? Ah, there’s the rub.

As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, so too in the ocean. Scientists estimate the ocean has absorbed a quarter to a third of human carbon dioxide emissions over the past two hundred years. Once in the water, that carbon dioxide undergoes some chemical transformations, the end results of which include a drop in ocean pH (known as ocean acidification) and a decrease in the availability of carbonate that many animals use to build calcium carbonate shells or skeletons.

Ocean acidification already has poster children, most notably corals and oysters. But, as Dr. Gareth Lawson is quick to point out, many of the most dramatic impacts of ocean acidification will happen in the coldest parts of the open ocean, far from the prying eyes of coastal dwellers and recreational SCUBA divers.

That’s where pteropods come in. Pteropods are abundant in the high latitudes of both the Atlantic and Pacific. They are an important food source for fish, from herring to salmon, mackerel to cod. Scientists worry that a collapse in pteropod numbers could mean the collapse of entire food chains. And a collapse may be possible. Pteropods thrive in the cold, Arctic waters where climate change and ocean acidification are making themselves felt most rapidly. They also make daily excursions down to depths of 500 meters or more, where waters can already border on corrosive to their delicate shells.

When science fails

But compelling science and a beautiful creature still may not be enough to capture public attention. Art, on the other hand, may. Art can provide a powerful avenue for connecting people to some of these abstract or difficult to imagine, let alone experience, phenomena. That’s why Lawson’s lab has started working with sculptor Cornelia Kubler Kavanagh, as Lawson wrote a few weeks ago on his blog:

Our group has also recently started a collaboration with Cornelia Kavanagh, a sculptor who often takes inspiration from nature and who is currently working on a series of pieces on pteropods, interpreting via the medium of sculpture the impacts of ocean acidification on these animals. Cornelia will be showing these works in her gallery in spring of 2012, and the plan is for us to provide some materials providing a scientific background on pteropods and their place in the food web.

Lawson shared some advance renderings with the Ocean Science Journalism Fellows earlier today, but they’re not publicly available yet (her interpretations of Arctic ice melt are, though).

But Lawson also pointed me in the direction of another artist’s interpretation of ocean acidification – Sam Lardner’s pteropod song, which Lawson says has become the unofficial anthem of his lab. It’s catchy. And you have to hear the kids break it down around two minutes.

If this doesn’t get people thinking about pteropods and ocean acidification, I don’t know what will.