Author Archives: globaloceanhealth

Are You a Banker or a Gambler?

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Commercial fisherpeople weigh the threats to their livelihood from corrosive seas.

Not every commercial fisherman is convinced that curbing carbon emissions is necessary to stop global warming. But the evidence that fossil fuel pollution is making the oceans more corrosive—and removing basic building blocks of the marine world—starts to get their attention.

In Alaska, commercial fishing supports one-sixth of the state’s economy and employs 70,000 people in high season, more than any other basic industry. Mark Vinsel, the executive director of United Fishermen of Alaska, the state’s largest commercial fishing organization, last year ranked his concerns about ocean acidification this way:

I’d say probably on a scale of 1 to 10, it would be 20 or 30.

If you sliced open the bellies of our most popular eating fish, at one point in their life cycle you would probably find krill, plankton, oceanic snails or other shelled creatures—the kinds of species likely to run into trouble as the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes.

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Ocean acidification is most urgent threat to marine conservation

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By Bill Dewey

November 6th, 2011

THE Taylor family has farmed shellfish in Puget Sound for over a century. The business now faces a challenge to its very existence that we didn’t even know about until five years ago: ocean acidification.

Seawater upwelling on Washington’s coast at times is so corrosive that the shells of oyster larvae dissolve faster than they can form. Recent research shows that the shifting chemistry of seawater impacts far more than oysters. Increasing acidity can deform, stunt, disorient and even kill a number of species throughout the marine food web, from tiny plankton to scallops, crabs and fish. Understanding how these corrosive waters impact the ocean’s ability to produce food is a pressing global security issue.

If we don’t begin addressing ocean acidification promptly, the future of shellfish farming and the entire seafood industry is at stake. On our current path, we are consigning our heirs to a world of increasing scarcity and conflict over ocean resources.

Are we up to it? The tools we need already exist. We can prevent many of acidification’s worst consequences by embracing proven and often profitable strategies to increase energy efficiency, manage fossil-fuel emissions and limit nutrient runoff. We can reduce harm to seafood supplies through scientific monitoring and research. These are all things we can do locally and make a difference.

In the open ocean, acidification results from emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) that mix into seawater. The oceans absorb about a quarter of the 70 million tons of CO2 we emit every day. This forms carbonic acid. The acid thins the ocean’s naturally rich soup of carbonate, the basic construction material used by many marine organisms to build shells, skeletons and reefs. Along our coasts, human activities amplify these changes by increasing runoff of soil, fertilizer and animal wastes, triggering hypoxia and acidification in many bays and estuaries where we grow shellfish.

For Taylor, acidification is not a future threat estimated by modeling or projections. It’s here now. During 2007-2009, our oyster larvae production declined up to 80 percent. Other West Coast operations were also decimated. At the Whiskey Creek Hatchery in Netarts Bay, Ore., oyster larvae dissolved in their tanks.

By monitoring water chemistry we’ve learned to avoid and buffer corrosive waters — restoring a good portion of our production, for now. We’re fortunate that we have the ability to control the seawater chemistry for our baby oysters in our hatcheries. The picture is not so rosy for critters that must survive in the increasingly acidic ocean.

At Taylor, we feel like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, with a twist: After getting knocked down, we lived to sing. Having seen the impact of high-CO2 waters we feel some responsibility to speak out and make others aware of the serious and only recently understood consequences of continued high carbon emissions on the ocean.

We are fortunate that Seattle is a hub of work on ocean acidification. An international seafood industry study group run by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership is based here. NOAA’s principal scientist on the issue, Dr. Richard Feely, is at Sand Point. The University of Washington’s Terrie Klinger leads studies on how acidification’s effects might be mitigated. Former 3rd District Congressman Brian Baird was the most knowledgeable representative in Congress on this issue and continues his interest.

All our efforts at marine conservation and resource management will prove inadequate if we don’t tackle the most basic problem of all — ocean acidification.

Bill Dewey is communications and policy director for Taylor Shellfish Farms, based in Shelton, Wash., the largest producer of farmed shellfish in the U.S.

Virginia’s oyster industry taking proactive steps to stay on top

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Despite the stagnant economy, Virginia’s oyster aquaculture industry is on an upward track, and oyster hatcheries plan to keep that trend positive.

That’s why representatives from nearly all of the oyster hatcheries in Virginia set aside an entire day on October 25 to hear West Coast counterparts and research experts discuss one more threat to water quality—ocean acidification.

The Ocean Acidification Workshop was the result of an initiative of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) to bring the lessons learned about changing ocean chemistry from the Pacific Coast shellfish industry to hatcheries on the East Coast. These lessons include the need to monitor for signs of ocean acidification and manage hatchery activities around those findings; lessons that the businesses in Oregon and Washington learned only after they were surprised by acidification and suffered devastating losses.

 

“Understanding changes in water chemistry is important to the bottom line,” said Karen Hudson, Virginia Sea Grant Shellfish Aquaculture Specialist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, who partnered with SFP to organize the event. In Virginia, the bottom line is that oyster aquaculture is a multimillion-dollar industry that relies on local hatcheries to spawn and provide young oysters for planting.

When an oyster is born, it doesn’t have a hard shell. Rather, it is a free-swimming speck of an animal that is very sensitive to its watery environment. In this stage, water quality affects larval growth and development, and some of these effects can impact the animal for its entire life. Water quality at the hatchery could be the difference between a normal, healthy oyster and an unmarketable or dead one.

The availability of the molecule that oysters use to build their shells is the key concern for hatcheries. Ocean acidification occurs as ocean water increasingly absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This dissolved carbon dioxide makes waters more acidic and actually reduces availability of the specific compound—calcium carbonate—that oysters use to build their shells. Low levels of calcium carbonate makes it difficult or even impossible for an oyster to lay down the first shell that it needs to transition from a free-swimming larva into a fingernail-sized seed oyster, which hatcheries can sell and oyster growers can plant.

Ocean acidification snuck up on West Coast hatcheries, and the results were devastating. In 2005, some hatcheries produced no viable oysters during the growing season. It wasn’t until 2010, when hatcheries started measuring for acidification and planning activities around preferable water quality conditions, that production levels were partially restored.

After hearing how West Coast hatcheries were caught off guard by ocean acidification, representatives of Virginia’s hatcheries seemed ready to take a proactive approach by adding high-precision measurements of acidity and other measures of water quality to their already existing monitoring efforts.

Although ocean acidification is driven by worldwide increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, local factors could play a role in influencing the affects of acidification in an area. Without knowing more about those local factors, it’s difficult to say whether Atlantic states will suffer a similar fate to those along the Pacific. However, there is evidence that ocean acidification is occurring in places along the East Coast. In Maine, researchers found muds so acidic they corrode shellfish larvae. Laboratory experiments suggested that estuaries could be vulnerable to the expected changes in water chemistry as atmospheric carbon dioxide increases in the future.

Virginia’s hatcheries hope that by staying in front of the issue, they can continue to provide needed oyster seed to Virginia’s rapidly growing oyster aquaculture industry. According to the Virginia Sea Grant Marine Extension Program’s 2010 “Virginia Shellfish Aquaculture Situation and outlook Report,” oyster growers sold more than 16 million oysters worth more than $5 million. That same year, growers planted nearly 80 million seed oysters, three times more than ever before, poising oyster sales to dramatically increase in a few years when those oysters mature.

“Many things are changing our water quality,” says Hudson. “The coasts are changing. Inputs are changing. By learning from the West Coast, Virginia’s hatcheries are staying current and looking forward.”

 

Janet Krenn, VIMS, 10 November 2011.

Ocean researchers dive deeper into Puget Sound’s acidification

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The past few years have seen astounding discoveries from sophisticated research on acidification in Puget Sound and the oceans.

By Craig Welch

February 27th, 2012

FRIDAY HARBOR, San Juan Island —

To understand the bizarre ways changes in ocean chemistry may affect Northwest sea life, there may be no simpler creature to start with than mussels.

When scientists in a Friday Harbor laboratory exposed mussels to slightly acidic marine water, they found the tiny fibers the shellfish use to cling to rocks stayed as strong as ever.

But when the water warmed, those fibers, called byssal threads, became less adhesive — and that could prove deadly.

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Videos on ocean acidification

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Our Global Ocean Health program has supported production of videos about ocean acidification featuring scientists and fishermen speaking about the risks it poses for families, jobs, businesses, and marine life.

We worked with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) and several collaborating organizations to assemble the funds, the teams, and the people interviewed in these videos. Special thanks to aerial artist John Quigley of Spectral Q Productions, videographers Leslie Morava and Mark Brinster, Alaska aerial videographer Daniel Zatz, on-the docks organizer Alan Parks, the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, and the hundreds of Alaska fishermen and mariners who poured their energy into the SOS Acid Ocean event in 2009, generating several of the images and interviews shown below.

SOS Acid Ocean and interviews with fishermen

by John Quigley, Leslie Morava, Daniel Zatz, Mark Brinster

Ocean Acidification: perspective from Dr. Mark Green, oceanographer and oyster grower in Maine

Produced by Leslie Morava, supported by SFP and NFCC

The Making of the SOS Acid Ocean Event

by John Quigley, Leslie Morava, Daniel Zatz, Mark Brinster

Tackling Ocean Acidification

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Fishermen, seafood companies and retailers have a direct stake in protecting their supplies from the consequences of industrial society’s vast, unmanaged waste streams, such as ocean acidification and other harmful changes in seawater composition. SFP’s Global Ocean Health Program helps leaders throughout the seafood supply chain confront these enormous challenges —highlighting efficient strategies for response while avoiding costly and ineffectual ones. We provide:

  • Actionable intelligence on relevant science and policy developments
  • Expert advice on options to reduce risks to production
  • Guidance and support for monitoring changes in seawater chemistry in order to protect supplies
Billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen and other acidifying wastes pour into Earth’s air and waterways each year from smokestacks, tailpipes, feedlots, fertilizers, and other human sources. As emissions increase, they drive acidification, oxygen depletion, and loss of productive habitat in seas and estuaries around the world. This gathering crisis has already taken a heavy toll on some fisheries, especially among wild and cultured bivalves. The growth in CO2 emissions alone— if left unchecked—is expected to erode foodwebs and fisheries throughout the world, significantly reducing the ocean’s capacity to produce seafood.
Managing the risk to seafood supplies requires pursuit of two broad strategies, and many fisheries leaders are now seriously engaged in both:

1.) Preventing harm at the source. This amounts to bringing emissions and wastes under management, or strengthening existing management where necessary (e.g. via robust emissions policies, energy-efficient practices, lower-carbon fuels).
2.) Reducing harm that cannot be prevented.  This approach focuses on building resilience in seafood production systems, e.g. by monitoring changes in seawater chemistry, developing capacity to understand and protect vulnerable larvae from “bad water,” and protecting important habitats where possible by limiting localized effluents.


(Photo credit: Mark Green)
In waters where acidification is already severe, corrosive conditions can dissolve larval clams and oysters, as well as some plankton species. Shown: common hardshell clam larvae from the U.S. East Coast, exposed to seawater at pH 7.5, a reading often found in parts of many bays where riverborne carbon and nutrients compound with atmospheric emissions to amplify acidification.  At initial exposure (left) the larvae are healthy. By day two (center) they are visibly fraying and diminished in size. By day 3, the larvae are dead or soon will be.
      
Energy-related CO2 emissions are growing rapidly and for most areas of the world’s oceans, this is the primary driver of acidification. The world’s smokestacks, tailpipes and other fuel-burning activities poured 29.7 billion tons of this gas into the atmosphere in 2007, according to the U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Agency. More than one fourth of this vast flux mixes into the oceans each year, diffusing into the waters that cover two thirds of the planet.
Protecting the productive capacity of the oceans is a critical challenge for the seafood industry. But this industry need not be merely a “canary in the coal mine.”

SFP convenes major producers and vessel owners, coordinates a study group that brings in scientists and carbon policy experts to explain the problem and potential solutions, organizes briefings and public forums on ocean acidification to educate policy makers and citizens, helps producers gather reliable data in the water, and identifies opportunities for industry participants to make a difference.