For many in the US region of New England, the lobster roll is synonymous with summertime. Loaded into a toasted bun, chunks of the sweet meat are served hot and soaked in butter, or chilled and slathered in mayonnaise with celery and herbs.<\/p>\n
The only thing more debated than the recipe is the price: the once-humble roll now routinely fetches $30 (\u00a322), or even $50, in a sign of the changing times \u2013 and seas.<\/p>\n
A third-generation lobster fisherman, Scott Lord spends his days hauling traps on the Gulf of Maine, which is warming faster than 99% of the world\u2019s oceans<\/a>. \u201cWhether you agree with who says why it\u2019s happening, it is happening,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Bycatch that was once plentiful, such as sea urchins, sand dollars or starfish, are increasingly rare. And, most concerning, Lord has noticed the number of inshore lobsters dropping dramatically over the past 15 years, pushing fishers farther and farther offshore.<\/p>\n Motivated to find a remedy, Lord joined a regional shellfish committee. \u201cWhy are there not clams where there used to be clams? Why are they not coming back, no matter what we do?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n Hundreds of miles to the south in Massachusetts<\/a>, on a sandy crook of land that spins out to form Cape Cod, Adam Subhas, a scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, is trying to find the answers.<\/p>\n Scott Lord brings in his catch of lobsters from traps off the coast; he has had to go out farther from shore to find the shellfish in recent years. Lobster rolls at the Lobster Trap Restaurant & Fish Market in Bourne, Massachusetts<\/p>\n Subhas heads LOC-NESS (Locking Ocean Carbon in the North-east Shelf and Slope, an initiative researching how to decarbonise the ocean, also known as marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR). Scientists working in this field are trying to discover whether the ocean, which is estimated to absorb about 31% of atmospheric carbon<\/a>, could be manipulated to soak up even more.<\/p>\n Proponents say ocean carbon removal could help stop the world from passing the 2C (3.6F) tipping point outlined in the 2016 Paris Agreement<\/a>, if used in conjunction with the reduction of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n What was once a small-scale idea is rapidly gaining traction. A database newly launched by the Pulitzer Center, Ocean Carbon Removal Watch<\/a>, which tracks mCDR investments, field trials and research, shows that more than \u00a3370m has been invested in the sector over the past five years.<\/p>\n This was initially driven by the private sector but, thanks to a spate of US federal investments in 2023 \u2013 totalling at least \u00a344m, according to a Guardian analysis of the database \u2013 scientific field trials began to catch up. Until, that is, President Trump announced sweeping cuts<\/a> to all federally funded ocean sciences.<\/p>\n Adam Subhas, who is heading the LOC-NESS programme, among lobster larvae at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution laboratory in Massachusetts<\/p>\n \u201cThe funding cuts are affecting everyone,\u201d says Subhas.<\/p>\n With federal science backing nearly dried up, LOC-NESS is the last \u201cunicorn\u201d for US ocean carbon removal.<\/p>\n It is testing the technique that has garnered the most support in the past few years: ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE)<\/a>. Its central tenet is to encourage seawater to absorb more atmospheric carbon by dispersing alkaline materials over a wide area of ocean.<\/p>\n Working 40 miles offshore from Boston in the Gulf of Maine\u2019s Wilkinson basin last summer, Subhas\u2019s team put about 65,000 litres of sodium hydroxide into the sea<\/a>. The highly alkaline material was mixed with a red dye to make it easier for sensors and satellites to track.<\/p>\n Subhas, left, and Kate Morkeski prepare to cast a net to pick up plankton off their research vessel during ocean alkalinity enhancement field trials<\/p>\n \u201cThe ocean is 70% of the Earth\u2019s surface and, if this is really going to scale [up], we have to understand how this might work in the open ocean, too,\u201d says Subhas, who has a Loch Ness monster soft toy perched on a shelf in his laboratory next to the scientists\u2019 bible, the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.<\/p>\n The team used a fleet of boats and monitored alkalinity and carbon uptake for four days via autonomous underwater vehicles that provided highly sensitive measurements.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a while, there\u2019s been scientific debate around if you could even measure some of these signals,\u201d says Subhas, who presented his findings at this year\u2019s Ocean Sciences Meeting<\/a>. He believes they can provide a roadmap for how alkalinity enhancement can be measured and modelled in the future.<\/p>\n Three ships took part in the LOC-NESS Project\u2019s successful OAE trial in the Gulf of Maine, which included observers from the US Environmental Protection Agency, the Massachusetts state fisheries body, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the fishing industry<\/p>\n Adam Subhas, right, and Jennie Rheuban take samples from a CTD probe, which collects samples allowing scientists to measure the temperature, salinity, oxygen and acidity of seawater at different depths. Right, an autonomous glider with sensors to measure the alkalinity of the sea<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be really clear about the need for large-scale emissions reductions, while at the same time figuring out the science behind some of these more novel approaches that might help supplement those large-scale reductions into the future,\u201d says Subhas.<\/p>\n Outside the Woods Hole laboratories, the thrum of alkaline water being pumped into machines analysing dissolved inorganic carbon plays in the background.<\/p>\n Lobsters and alkalinity<\/p>\n Based on data collected last summer, the team is examining two years of trials to understand how marine creatures respond to different levels of alkalinity. After initial biological studies on species at the base of the food web such as phytoplankton, the team is now focusing on lobsters.<\/p>\n It is a species that generates the second-highest value of any seafood landed in the US, accounting for just under $700m (about \u00a3550m) in 2023<\/a>. Then they will move on to the tautog wrasse, a popular species for sports fishing.<\/p>\n Designing the experiment came with its own challenges. Lobsters are very sensitive during moulting, do not like temperatures above 20C (68F) and \u201cunfortunately, they eat each other, given the opportunity\u201d, says Chris Murray, a marine biologist who built special floating mesh cups to avoid cannibalism.<\/p>\n Chloe Dean, a researcher, assesses the biological impacts of higher alkalinity. Preliminary lab results showed no increased mortality or behavioural changes after exposure to elevated pH and alkalinity<\/p>\n So far, Murray and his team have not seen any lethal effects with either low or high levels of alkalinity, but they will analyse the lobsters\u2019 RNA, the molecular building block for all cellular functions, at the end of the trials to better understandtheir physiological response and, in particular, their ability to secrete waste.<\/p>\n Describing these studies as the \u201ctip of the iceberg\u201d, Murray says the next step of this experimentation would involve creating a mini-ecosystem featuring many marine species.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to do this research,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s really important to weigh these impacts against what is predicted to occur in the ocean. We know that ocean warming is going to be a major disruptive force to marine food webs.\u201d<\/p>\n Can European funding save the day?<\/p>\n Luckily for the researchers, there is still a glimmer of hope from across the Atlantic. Just as US funding was abruptly stopped, Europe began scaling up its academic grants to study removal of marine carbon dioxide.<\/p>\n According to analysis of the Ocean Carbon Renewal Watch data, the European Union disbursed more than \u00a38.5m in grants in the past two years, which has distributed funds to more than 20 universities across Britain and the rest of Europe.<\/p>\n At the University of Gothenburg, Sam Dupont, a senior lecturer who studies the effects of ocean acidification and warming on marine ecosystems, was buoyed up by this newstream of funding.<\/p>\n Studying alkalinity thresholds of sea urchins, mussels and fish eggs, he is beginning two years of experimentation in Sweden and Iceland, where he is working with the country\u2019s Marine and Freshwater Research Institute to see how alkalinity affects the same species in different bodies of water.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to cover a bunch of different creatures,\u201d he says. \u201cWe see that if you go too high in alkalinity, there\u2019s something going wrong in their physiology and they develop abnormally and die.\u201d<\/p>\n An underwater glider with Amanda Pinson, of the Woods Hole marine chemistry and geochemistry department, and Patrick Deane, an engineer in the physical oceanography department<\/p>\n