Resiliency of black sea bass, Centropristis striata, early life stages to future high CO2 conditions

Abstract

Ocean acidification is a symptom of marine climate change resulting from the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) into the world’s ocean, thereby potentially affecting survival, growth, and numerous other traits in fish early life stages. But some fish species are clearly more CO2-resilient than others, perhaps because they reside in more CO2-variable, inshore habitats as opposed to more CO2-stable offshore waters. Here we studied the early life CO2 sensitivity of an ecologically and economically important fish species (Black Sea Bass, Centropristis striata) that seasonally migrates between offshore overwintering and inshore feeding and nursery grounds. We produced embryos from wild spawners and reared them until 10 days post-hatch (dph) at three contrasting pCO2 levels (~400, ~2200, ~3000 µatm), finding no statistical effects of pCO2 on hatching success (~28%) or survival to 10 dph (~23%). At the extreme pCO2 level, surviving larvae were 1.2× larger and grew 55% faster compared to control pCO2 conditions. These results extend pioneering work by Meseck et al. (2022; https://doi.org/10.1002/mcf2.10200) to confirm a surprising CO2 tolerance of C. striata early life stages. This suggests existing adaptation to high CO2 conditions either because of seasonal exposures at productive inshore environments or at offshore depths during overwintering.