U.S. shellfish are beginning to suffer the effects of rising ocean acidification in the Gulf of Mexico and the Northeast. Fishing communities, along with the $1 billion mollusk farming and fishing industry, will take an economic hit, according to a new study by a team of marine scientists published Monday in the journal Natural Climate Change.

The study claimed that the acidity in the Northeast and the Gulf of Mexico will pose more of a threat in upcoming decades than in the Pacific Northwest. Reuters reported that the acidification in the area has already put 3,200 jobs at risk, and nearly $110 million has been lost in the oyster industry.

Director of the climate adaptation program at the University of California, Davis, and the study’s lead author Julie Ekstrom, said that those numbers will most likely worsen. She stated that all coasts in the U.S. were observed, and “more places are vulnerable than we previously thought.”

The researchers wrote in the journal Natural Climate Change that southern Massachusetts was very vulnerable since the area heavily relies on the shellfish industry economically. Areas near Hawaii and Florida are the least likely to be affected by the acidification. The most at-risk waters are cool, and the most vulnerable areas are expected to begin feeling the affects by 2030.

However, pockets of ecosystems along the Gulf and East Coasts may experience acidification sooner due to pollution via excess runoff, nutrients and fertilizer. And producers in the warm Gulf of Mexico were at risk in part because of the industry’s dependence on the eastern oyster. Still, taking ocean acidification in isolation from factors like river pollution, the study stated that Alaska and the Pacific Northwest are “expected to be exposed the soonest.”

Oceans are absorbing more carbon dioxide as climate-warming gases are entering the earth’s atmosphere. The chemical reaction increases the amount of acid, and it undermines the ability of shellfish to develop protective shells. The high levels of acidification are already terminating larvae in some shellfish, according to Discovery News.