Recently retired NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) senior scientist Dr. Richard Feely was featured on a podcast called Ecoshock hosted by Alex Smith. The podcast addresses earth science issues like climate change and ocean acidification, and provides insights from subject matter experts.
Richard Feely is a pioneering researcher in carbon cycling and ocean acidification, and spent the past 51 years with NOAA. He is often called the "grandfather of ocean acidification" for his decades of research into how the ocean absorbs human-emitted carbon dioxide. His research established ocean acidification as a global environmental crisis.
Podcast and Audio file links:
"Meet the Evil Twin - Ocean Acidification" - Posted January 7, 2026, by Radio Ecoshock
Podcast audio only (MP3) [transcript]
Deeper dive:
Dr. Richard Feely background:
- 1974: Dr. Feely joined NOAA/PMEL after earning his PhD from Texas A&M, initially focusing on carbon cycling and the "missing" atmospheric CO2.
- 1981-1983: Initiated long-term measurements of CO2 in the ocean. Because no standards existed, his team had to develop their own precise measurement techniques.
- Mid-1980s: Published early evidence of rising CO2 and declining pH in seawater, though these findings were largely ignored by the scientific community at the time.
- 1990s: Led a massive 10-year global effort involving 99 research cruises and 72,000 samples to map carbon chemistry across the world's oceans.
- 2004: Published two breakthrough studies in Science.
- One study proved the ocean had absorbed about one-third of all human-emitted CO2 since the Industrial Revolution.
- The second study, a cross-disciplinary effort, warned that acidified water was beginning to "eat away" at the calcium carbonate shells of marine life.
- 2007: Discovered that corrosive waters off the North American Pacific coast were reaching pH levels that climate models hadn't predicted for decades.
- 2008-2009: Identified the link between changing ocean chemistry and the mass die-offs of oyster larvae in Pacific Northwest hatcheries.
- 2009: Provided critical testimony to Congress, which led to the passage of the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act.
- 2010: Received the Heinz Award with a special focus on Global Change for his role in shifting public policy on ocean acidity.
- 2012: Helped establish the Global Ocean Acidification Observing Network (GOA-ON) to track acidification impacts internationally.
- 2016-2021: Led successive West Coast Ocean Acidification (WCOA) cruises, which provided the first evidence of acidification impacting the shells and sensory organs of wild Dungeness crabs.
- 2018-2020: Dr. Feely appeared on Clarivate's Highly Cited Researcher list for 3 consecutive years, in their geosciences and cross-field categories. (The Highly Cited Researcher list is an annual ranking of the top 1% of researchers cited in a year, by field.)
- 2025: Published research demonstrating that global acidification has exceeded its planetary boundary based on field data and model results.
Ocean acidification:
- PMEL Ocean Carbon Program - Ocean Acidification page
- NOAA Education - Ocean Acidification