“The flip side of climate change.”

That’s the sound bite promoters of a new film on ocean acidification are using to describe “A Sea Change,” a film they say is based on “hard scientific information” to make the case about scientific, economic, and cultural implications of ocean acidification.

“What is conclusively known now is that the pH balance of the oceans has changed dramatically since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,” Niiji Films says about its movie, which it will premier at the National Museum of Natural History on March 14 as part of the DC Environmental Film Festival. “With near unanimity, scientists now agree that the burning of fossil fuels is fundamentally reshaping ocean chemistry,” they say, posing risks of a “total bottom-up collapse” of global fisheries over the next century.

Excerpts of the film were presented at a lunch-time session of the American Geophysical Union’s December 2008 annual meeting in San Francisco, and more “sneak previews” are scheduled in Alaska coastal towns. The interests behind the film say they hope to screen the film on every continent on June 6, two days before World Ocean Day, in an effort to mobilize interest and support for public action “before the oceans of our youth are lost for future generations.”