Costa Mesa, CA – March 17th-18th, 2025
Background and Need for the Workshop
Climate change is impacting marine environments on a global scale. Along the U.S. West Coast, calcifying organisms, such as pteropods and crustaceans, are at risk due to ocean acidification and hypoxia (OAH). While we routinely monitor ocean chemistry, the extent and magnitude of impacts from OAH on biological communities are more difficult to assess. Understanding biological impacts from OAH is critical for environmental managers, who require documentation of the temporal and spatial occurrence to formulate effective management response strategies.
Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods provide an opportunity to scale our biological observations to meet our pressing monitoring demands. In recent years, eDNA has been piloted in several marine monitoring programs throughout California and the northeast Pacific. However, there is a lack of consensus on how to best incorporate eDNA analyses into routine monitoring programs as well as which biological indicators will be most important for surveying OAH impacts. Identifying best practices for marine eDNA sample collection and analyses will help expedite the integration of eDNA-based monitoring and will help generate datasets that can be scaled across space, time, and monitoring programs.
Workshop Goal and Products
This workshop will focus on developing best practice recommendations for monitoring biological effects of ocean acidification using environmental DNA. The Workshop will cover recommendations for eDNA sampling, processing, and analytical methods, as well as how to best implement eDNA-based indicators into regional monitoring programs alongside other indicators. This workshop will also focus on the identification of knowledge gaps, how methodological choices may affect data comparability across programs, and recommendations for key quality assurance and control measures necessary to ensure the collection of high-quality data. The findings from the Workshop will be summarized in a summary report and manuscript.
Draft Agenda
Day 1
| 8:00 am | Light breakfast and welcome |
| 8:30 am | Introduction Workshop goals, key products and process to get thereManagement needs: Opening remarks from Ocean Protection Council Facilitated Q&A on key products and outputs from this workshop to inform monitoring strategies. |
| 9:00 am | Session 1: What are the key metrics of biological response and OA stress that we want to measure? Charge: The intent behind eDNA-OA monitoring is to measure OA stress (on the x axis), relative to a measure of biological response (on the Y axis). This session will focus on the appropriate ‘omics measures of biological responses to OA and what OA metrics and environmental metadata are needed to inform the relationship between OA stress and biological response. |
| 12:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm | Session 2: Best practices for sampling Charge: Once we understand what key metrics should be monitored, the next step is to identify the best practices for sampling eDNA and OA. This session will produce those recommendations. |
| 5:00 pm | Summary of progress, and prospectus for next day |
| 6:00 pm | Group dinner |
Day 2
| 8:30 am | Light breakfast and welcome |
| 9 am | Session 3: Best practices for laboratory and data analysis Charge: This session will focus on recommendations for best practices for laboratory and data analysis of eDNA, OA chemistry and environmental metadata. |
| 12:00 pm | Lunch |
| 1:00 pm | Session 4: Synthesis and recommendations for future investments Charge: During this session, participants will reflect on what we produced to date, then focus on identifying key gaps and recommendations for future investments in science and implementation support of regional monitoring programs. |
| 2:00 pm | Wrap up and next steps |
| 3 pm | Adjourn |
Attendees (may change)
- Megan Hepner (SCCOOS, UCSD)
- Moira Decima (UCSD SIO, CalCOFI)
- Jaime Jancke (Point Blue; ACCESS)
- Richard Feely (NOAA PMEL)
- Zack Gold (NOAA PMEL)
- Micah Horwith (WDE)
- Colleen Kellogg (Hakai Institute)
- Sean McAllister (NOAA PMEL)
- Ally Pasulka (Cal Poly SLO)
- Erin Satterthwaite (UCSD SIO, CalCOFI)
- Katherine Silliman (NOAA AOML)
- Pike Spector (Ocean Protection Council)
- Christina Frieder (SCCWRP)
- Nastassia Patin (UCSD SIO/SCCWRP)
- Susanna Theroux (SCCWRP)
- Martha Sutula (SCCWRP)
- Steve Weisberg (SCCWRP)