Grace K. Saba

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Ocean warming due to climate change can affect the metabolism, performance, and survival of ectothermic marine species. On the US Northeast continental shelf (US NES), waters are warming faster than the global average, leading to elevated mean temperatures and an increased risk of marine heatwave exposure in the region. Thus, it is critical to unde...

The U.S. northeast shelf (USNES) has been experiencing rapid ocean warming, which is changing the thermal environment that marine species inhabit. To determine the effect of current and future ocean warming on the distribution of five important USNES fish species (Atlantic cod [Gadus morhua], black sea bass [Centropristis striata], cunner [Tautogol...

Climate change is causing persistent, widespread, and significant impacts on marine ecosystems which are predicted to interact and intensify. Overfishing and associated habitat degradation have put many fish populations and marine ecosystems at risk and is making the ocean more vulnerable to climate change and less capable of buffering against its...

Plain Language Summary Marine ecosystems play a critical role in the global carbon cycle through the food web regulation of air‐sea carbon fluxes and the transfer of particulate matter from the upper oceans to depth. Recent evidence has suggested that the detritus from fishes and gelatinous zooplankton (GZ), specifically the pelagic tunicates such...

Pelagic tunicates (salps, pyrosomes) and fishes generate jelly-falls and/or fecal pellets that sink roughly 10 times faster than bulk oceanic detritus, but their impacts on biogeochemical cycles in the ocean interior are poorly understood. Using a coupled physical-biogeochemical model, we find that fast-sinking detritus decreased global net primary...

Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has led to global climate change and ocean acidification (OA) via the absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the ocean. Coastal shelves are also affected by various processes that influence the acidity of seawater, causing acidity to vary over time and space. These variations in ocean acidity can negatively impa...

In shallow coastal shelves like the Mid‐Atlantic Bight (MAB), ocean acidification due to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is compounded by highly variable coastal processes including riverine freshwater inputs, nutrient loading, biogeochemical influence, coastal currents and water mass mixing, and seasonal transitions in physical paramete...

Fish reproduction is energetically costly, leading to a suite of energy allocation strategies for maximizing lifetime reproductive potential. Assessing energetic allocation for species that inhabit a wide distributional range can provide insight into different strategies found across individuals and populations. The Northern stock of black sea bass...

Microplastics (MP) are considered emerging contaminants in the water environment, and there is an interest in understanding their entry into the food web. As a growing body of literature demonstrates the ingestion of MP by zooplankton in controlled laboratory studies, few data are available demonstrating in situ observations of MP in zooplankton. A...

Statistical models built using different data sources and methods can exhibit conflicting patterns. We used the northern stock of black sea bass (Centropristis striata) as a case study to assess the impacts of using different fisheries data sources and laboratory-derived physiological metrics in the development of thermal habitat models for marine...

The OceanGliders program started in 2016 to support active coordination and enhancement of global glider activity. OceanGliders contributes to the international efforts of the Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS) for Climate, Ocean Health, and Operational Services. It brings together marine scientists and engineers operating gliders around the wo...

In the last decade, the ocean has absorbed a quarter of the Earth's greenhouse gas emissions through the carbon (C) cycle, a naturally occurring process. Aspects of the ocean C cycle are now being incorporated into climate change mitigation and adaptation plans. Currently, too little is known about marine vertebrate C functions for their inclusion...

Antarctic krill Euphausia superba is a key species in the Southern Ocean, where its habitat is projected to undergo continued warming and increases in pCO2. Experiments during 2 summer field seasons at Palmer Station, Antarctica, investigated the independent and interactive effects of elevated temperature and pCO2 (decreased pH) on feeding, growth,...

Fishes are the dominant vertebrates in the ocean, yet we know little of their contribution to carbon export flux at regional to global scales. We synthesize the existing information on fish-based carbon flux in coastal and pelagic waters, identify gaps and challenges in measuring this flux and approaches to address them, and recommend research prio...

Comprehensive approaches are needed to understand accumulation patterns and the relative importance of pathways of entry for microplastics in the marine environment. Here, a highly urbanized estuarine environment was sampled along a salinity gradient from the mouth of the Raritan River, (New Jersey, USA) and into the Raritan Bay and the coastal oce...

Ocean warming is leading to poleward range shifts for many fish species, and while well described, potential life history phenology differences within fish populations along a gradient from their historic to current distributional range have not been studied. In a rapidly shifting fish population, the Northern stock of black sea bass (Centropristis...

Important findings from the second decade of the 21st century on the impact of environmental change on biological processes in the Antarctic were synthesised by 26 international experts. Ten key messages emerged that have stakeholder-relevance and/or a high impact for the scientific community. They address (i) altered biogeochemical cycles, (ii) oc...

p>Important findings from the second decade of the 21st century on the impact of environmental change on biological processes in the Antarctic were synthesised by 26 international experts. Ten key messages emerged that have stakeholder-relevance and/or a high impact for the scientific community. They address (i) altered biogeochemical cycles, (ii)...

Grace Saba was incorrectly denoted as corresponding author. Emily Slesinger is corresponding author and the corresponding author email address is correct.

Ocean acidification alters the oceanic carbonate system, increasing potential for ecological, economic, and cultural losses. Historically, productive coastal oceans lack vertically resolved high‐resolution carbonate system measurements on time scales relevant to organism ecology and life history. The recent development of a deep ion‐sensitive field...

Exploitation and degradation of the mysterious layer between the sunlit ocean surface and the abyss jeopardize fish stocks and the climate. Exploitation and degradation of the mysterious layer between the sunlit ocean surface and the abyss jeopardize fish stocks and the climate.

Coastal and ocean acidification can alter ocean biogeochemistry, with ecological consequences that may result in economic and cultural losses. Yet few time series and high resolution spatial and temporal measurements exist to track the existence and movement of water low in pH and/or carbonate saturation. Past acidification monitoring efforts have...

The OceanGliders program started in 2016 to support active coordination and enhancement of global glider activity. OceanGliders contributes to the international efforts of the Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS) for Climate, Ocean Health, and Operational Services. It brings together marine scientists and engineers operating gliders around the wo...

The OceanGliders program started in 2016 to support active coordination and enhancement of global glider activity. OceanGliders contributes to the international efforts of the Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS) for Climate, Ocean Health, and Operational Services. It brings together marine scientists and engineers operating gliders around the wo...

The OceanGliders program started in 2016 to support active coordination and enhancement of global glider activity. OceanGliders contributes to the international efforts of the Global Ocean Observation System (GOOS) for Climate, Ocean Health, and Operational Services. It brings together marine scientists and engineers operating gliders around the wo...

Ocean acidification (OA) describes the progressive decrease in the pH of seawater and other cascading chemical changes resulting from oceanic uptake of atmospheric carbon. These changes can have important implications for marine ecosystems, creating risk for commercial industries, subsistence communities, cultural practices, and recreation. Charact...

Over the last decade, ocean temperature on the U.S. Northeast Continental Shelf (U.S. NES) has warmed faster than the global average and is associated with observed distribution changes of the northern stock of black sea bass (Centropristis striata). Mechanistic models based on physiological responses to environmental conditions can improve future...

The estuaries and continental shelf system of the United States Mid-Atlantic are subject to ocean acidification driven by atmospheric CO2, and coastal acidification caused by nearshore and land-sea interactions that include biological, chemical, and physical processes. These processes include freshwater and nutrient input from rivers and groundwate...

Coastal and ocean acidification has the potential to cause significant environmental and societal impacts. Monitoring carbonate chemistry parameters over spatial and temporal scales is challenging, especially with limited resources. A lack of monitoring data can lead to a limited understanding of real-world conditions. Without such data, robust exp...

Over the last decade, ocean temperature in the U.S. Northeast Continental Shelf (U.S. NES) has warmed faster than the global average and is associated with observed distribution changes of the northern stock of black sea bass ( Centropristis striata ). Mechanistic models based on physiological responses to environmental conditions can improve futur...

The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) has experienced significant change over the last 50 years. Using a 24 year spatial time series collected by the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research programme, we assessed long-term patterns in the sea ice, upper mixed layer depth (MLD) and phytoplankton productivity. The number of sea ice days steadily declined f...

Developing the workforce to meet the needs of the blue economy will require changing undergraduate marine science programs to provide a wider range of skills developed by “doing” rather than just “reading.” Students also need training on how to effectively work in a team, critically analyze data, and be able to clearly communicate key points. With...

The coastal waters of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) are associated with large phytoplankton blooms dominated by large (>20 μm) diatoms however, nanoplankton (<20 μm) are also an important component of the food web. The dominant nanoflagellates in the WAP are cryptomonad algae. Using a twenty-year time series collected by the Palmer Long Term E...

Extreme climate and weather events, such as a drought, hurricanes, or ice storms, can strongly imprint ecosystem processing and may alter ecosystem structure. Ecosystems in extreme environments are particularly vulnerable because of their adaptation to severe limitations in energy, water, or nutrients. The vulnerability can be expressed as a relati...

Underwater autonomous gliders have transitioned from exotic experimental systems to becoming a standard platform capable of collecting data over a critical range of spatial and temporal scales in the ocean. The data are proving to be extremely valuable for addressing a wide range of basic and applied research questions. These communities are growin...

Mitigating and adapting to climate change while the global human population continues its projected growth will be the dominant choice challenge confronting the present generation of undergraduates over their professional lifetimes. Today's students should be prepared to develop solutions that will involve the sea, but life-changing at-sea research...

Underwater autonomous gliders have transitioned from exotic experimental systems to becoming a standard platform capable of collecting data over a critical range of spatial and temporal scales in the ocean. The data are proving to be extremely valuable for addressing a wide range of basic and applied research questions. This evolution has led to a...

Understanding the mechanisms by which climate variability affects multiple trophic levels in food webs is essential for determining ecosystem responses to climate change. Here we use over two decades of data collected by the Palmer Long Term Ecological Research program (PAL-LTER) to determine how large-scale climate and local physical forcing affec...

The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is home to large breeding colonies of the ice-dependent Antarctic Adelie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae). Although the entire inner continental shelf is highly productive, with abundant phytoplankton and krill populations, penguin colonies are distributed heterogeneously along the WAP (Ducklow et al., 2013, in this i...

Ocean acidification has a wide-ranging potential for impacting the physiology and metabolism of zooplankton. Sufficiently elevated CO(2) concentrations can alter internal acid-base balance, compromising homeostatic regulation and disrupting internal systems ranging from oxygen transport to ion balance. We assessed feeding and nutrient excretion rat...

Rapidly sinking fecal pellets are an important component of the vertical flux of particulate organic matter (POM) from the surface to the ocean's interior; however, few studies have examined the role fish play in this export. We determined abundance, size, prey composition, particulate organic carbon/nitrogen (POC/PON), and sinking rates of fecal p...

During the summer of 2011 a large phytoplankton bloom occurred off the New Jersey coast, which was monitored using an existing ocean observatory. There was public concern about the root causes of the phytoplankton bloom and whether it reflected anthropogenic loading of nutrients from the Hudson River or whether it reflected coastal upwelling. We us...

Ocean acidification has a wide-ranging potential for impacting the physiology and metabolism of zooplankton. Sufficiently elevated CO2 concentrations can alter internal acid-base balance, compromising homeostatic regulation and disrupting internal systems ranging from oxygen transport to ion balance. We assessed feeding and nutrient excretion rates...

Crustacean zooplankton produce dissolved organic matter (DOM) and inorganic nutrients via sloppy feeding, excretion, and fecal pellet leaching. These different mechanisms of the release of metabolic products, however, have never been individually isolated. Our study was designed to determine the relative importance of these different modes on relea...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs), including toxic species, have been increasing in frequency, range, and duration over the past several decades. The effect of a harmful or toxic algal diet on zooplankton nutrient regeneration, however, has not been previously examined. In this study, we determined the effects of non-bloom and bloom concentrations of non...

Acartia tonsa copepods are not limited to herbivory and can derive up to half their daily ration from predation on heterotrophic ciliates and dinoflagellates. The effects of an omnivorous diet on nutrient regeneration, however, remain unknown. In this study, we fed A. tonsa an exclusively carnivorous diet of either (1a) heterotrophic dinoflagellate...

This chapter focuses on the important role that zooplankton play in nitrogen cycling by following the path of the food from ingestion to all aspects and stages of metabolism. It begins with a discussion of N consumption, including the nitrogenous composition of available food types, rates of N consumption, and effects of food quality. The various a...