Oysters at hatcheries in Oregon and Washington are showing the effects of ocean acidification. (Oregon State University)

Shellfish lovers from Maine to Louisiana to the Pacific Northwest might be forced to make do with fewer oysters and clams in the coming decades. A funded by the National Science Foundation reveals that ocean acidification resulting mostly from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions is harming these mollusks — a problem costing millions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

Ocean acidification is exactly what the name suggests. As humans emit more carbon dioxide, these massive water bodies absorb more. The acidity of the ocean water increases, its properties change and the animals that depend on the waters being a certain chemical makeup get into trouble.

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“Much of the biodiversity of the marine environment produces — shellfish, oysters, clams, algae,” Rusty Brainard, chief of NOAA’s coral reef ecosystem division, told weather.com in 2013. “Each of the organisms does it a little bit differently, but they’re essentially converting seawater.”

What Brainard means is that coral, for example, has a with single-celled algae called zooxanthellae. The zooxanthellae go through photosynthesis to produce the energy the coral need to build their skeletons. “If the algae within the corals’ cells do too well and their numbers greatly increase, the transfer of nutrition to the coral host can be disrupted,” notes a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution primer. “It is clear that the rise in CO2 is decreasing the corals’ ability to build their skeletons rather than protecting them.”

Similar changes cost scallop producers in British Columbia , and now it’s happening to clams and oysters, too. It’s not just in the Pacific Northwest, either, according to authors of the new paper, who published their work today, Monday, Feb. 23 in the journal Nature Climate Change. “Everywhere is basically at risk, but for different reasons,” George Waldbusser, a researcher in Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, told weather.com.

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In New England, “the product ports of Maine and southern New Hampshire feature poorly buffered rivers running into cold New England waters, which are especially enriched with acidifying carbon dioxide,” a reported. In the Mid-Atlantic, nitrogen pollution is aggravating the ocean acidification problem, and along the Gulf of Mexico, several coastal communities depend on oysters alone, making them vulnerable should the oyster harvest fail.

Hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest have begun monitoring their water, a step that has allowed them to understand the extent of the problem, then take action in the form of what Waldbusser describes as the “Tums approach.” “Two of the three main hatcheries are buffering their water with sodium carbonate,” he said. “They’re basically using an antacid in the water…. Species are actually doing better now with that water being buffered.”

Monitoring and sodium carbonate may work in hatcheries, but “we can’t necessarily buffer the whole ocean,” Waldbusser said. In the wild, a better understanding of a range of species — in addition to those that are the most commercially important — as well as restoring habitat, can help. The problem is truly widespread.

“What we struggled with quite a bit,” Waldbusser said, of the work, “was the notion that everywhere is sort of at threat. We thought there would be places that would be more sensitive or bigger hotspots. Just about everywhere along the coast is at risk.”

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Russian photographer Alexander Semenov captures a close-up image of coral from the Red Sea. (Alexander Semenov)