Experimental tests of the effects of OA on early life history of marine fishes

These data characterize treatments and outcomes in laboratory-based ocean acidification experiments conducted that the NOAA NEFSC Howard Laboratory. Experiments vary by species used, scope of study (experiment duration and species’ life-stages examined), and experimental design including number of treatments, levels, and replicates, and the suite of response variables. This experiment used summer flounder (Paralichthys dentatus) as subjects, one treatment (concentration of aqueous pCO2), three treatment levels (775, 1808, and 4714 uatm pCO2, pHs of 7.8, 7.5, and 7.1, respectively), three replicates (replicated downstream from each unique CO2 source), and the following response variables: survival of embryos to hatching and of larvae to age 28 d post-hatching; size, shape, and image-based developmental features of larvae; and histopathologically determined status of key organs (eye, heart, liver, gall bladder, gastro-intestinal tract, epidermis, kidney, spinal cord, and muscles) and cranio-facial and skeletal elements.

Contribution to ocean acidification knowledge regarding biological responses to elevated CO2. Supported by NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Chambers, R.C., A.C. Candelmo, E.A. Habeck, M.E. Poach, D. Wieczorek, K.R. Cooper, C.E. Greenfield, and B.A. Phelan. 2014. Effects of elevated CO2 in the early life stages of summer flounder, Paralichthys dentatus, and potential consequences of ocean acidification. Biogeosciences, 11, 1613-1626, doi:10.5194/bg-11-1613-2014.

NEFSC Data Access Procedure:

1. Formal request in writing usually to the data owner/contact or Center Director;

2. Requester is contacted by data owner to review and verify the request content and details for data delivery options.

3. If data are confidential then owner will determine if the data may be released to the requester;

4. If data can be released, the data are downloaded and packaged for delivery electronically; or the requester may be directed to where the data is available online.

NEFSC Data Access Constraint:

If data are stored on an internal NEFSC network, the requester may not have direct access to query the data unless they are also authorized for network access.

Data entered and saved in Microsoft Excel versions 2007, 2010. Data reside on network drive at location ‘R:\RESEARCH\OA - FY12\summer flounder’, and are backed up nightly on NEFSC Sandy Hook Lab servers.

Data provided are the individual-level observations prior to statistical reduction to means, principal components, etc. Data were not filtered or selected after check for errors.

All entered data were check for correspondence to original hand-written data sheets (where used). Data were inspected for statistical outliers via frequency plots and scatterplots. Some data were given subjective quality codes, e.g., based on quality / clarity of image used as the source of image-extraction software.

Archival of source data preserving unaltered collected data, Scheduled backups, Remote storage backups, Password protection

Data were collected by pre-planned design and varied with experiment. Data on embryo deaths and hatchlings were collected at a daily frequency; size and shape data of hatchlings (Nmax = 10 per replicate) were collected from the interquartile range of the hatch frequency distribution once hatching commenced; mortality of larvae was checked daily; larvae were sampled for image-based size and shape every 7 days through 28 days post-hatching. Data from images were scored via image analysis software (Image Tool v.3). Histopathology data were collected from preserved larvae (staining sequence in Chambers et al. 2014 ibid.). All data were entered into Excel spreadsheets.