PCSGA Tidings

By MARK ALAN LOVEWELL

Bay scal­lops have spawned with a vengeance this sum­mer in Cape Pogue Pond. Once ranked among the most pro­duc­tive ponds for scal­lop land­ings in the state, Cape Pogue is teem­ing with juve­nile bay scal­lops, many about the size of a dime.

Juve­nile scal­lops galore this year.

It takes 18 months for a bay scal­lop to reach har­vestable size, which means if these juve­nile scal­lops sur­vive the com­ing win­ter, pre­da­tion and other envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, the fall of 2011 will be a ban­ner year for scalloping.

The news of a huge set of bay scal­lops fol­lows the news ear­lier this sum­mer of an enor­mous set of Con­tinue Reading »

Bei­jing, Aug 4 (IANS) Chi­nese sci­en­tists have drawn the world’s first genome sequence map of oys­ters, open­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties for increas­ing oys­ter pro­duc­tion and devel­op­ment of indus­trial mate­ri­als.
The map was also the first of its kind for both shell­fish and marine life, said Zhang Guo­fan, chief sci­en­tist of the Oys­ter Genome Sequence Map Project and researcher with the Insti­tute of Oceanol­ogy, Chi­nese Acad­emy of Sci­ence (IOCAS).

The project team jointly set up by Zhang and Guo Xim­ing, of the State Uni­ver­sity of New Jer­sey more than two years ago, found the oys­ter genome com­prised 800 mil­lion DNA base pairs, includ­ing around Con­tinue Reading »

There is increas­ing con­cern that ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion, caused by the uptake of addi­tional CO₂ at the ocean sur­face, could affect the func­tion­ing of marine ecosys­tems; how­ever, the mech­a­nisms by which pop­u­la­tion declines will occur have not been iden­ti­fied, espe­cially for non­cal­ci­fy­ing species such as fishes. Here, we use a com­bi­na­tion of lab­o­ra­tory and field-based exper­i­ments to show that lev­els of dis­solved CO₂ pre­dicted to occur in the ocean this cen­tury alter the behav­ior of lar­val fish and dra­mat­i­cally decrease their sur­vival dur­ing recruit­ment to adult pop­u­la­tions. Altered behav­ior of lar­vae was detected at 700 ppm CO₂, with many indi­vid­u­als becom­ing attracted to the smell of preda­tors. At 850 ppm CO₂, the abil­ity to sense preda­tors was com­pletely impaired. Lar­vae exposed to ele­vated CO₂ were more active and exhib­ited riskier behav­ior in nat­ural coral-reef habi­tat. As a result, they had 5–9 times higher mor­tal­ity from pre­da­tion than current-day con­trols, with mor­tal­ity increas­ing with CO₂ con­cen­tra­tion. Our results show that addi­tional CO₂ absorbed into the ocean will reduce recruit­ment suc­cess and have far-reaching con­se­quences for the sus­tain­abil­ity of fish populations.

Mun­day, P. L., Dix­son, D. L., McCormick, M. I., Meekan, M., Fer­rari, M. C. O., & Chivers, D. P., 2010. Replen­ish­ment of fish pop­u­la­tions is threat­ened by ocean acidification.

There is increas­ing con­cern that ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion, caused by the uptake of addi­tional CO₂ at the ocean sur­face, could affect the func­tion­ing of marine ecosys­tems; how­ever, the mech­a­nisms by which pop­u­la­tion declines will occur have not been iden­ti­fied, espe­cially for non­cal­ci­fy­ing species such as fishes. Here, we use a com­bi­na­tion of lab­o­ra­tory and field-based exper­i­ments to show that lev­els of dis­solved CO₂ pre­dicted to occur in the ocean this cen­tury alter the behav­ior of lar­val fish and dra­mat­i­cally decrease their sur­vival dur­ing recruit­ment to adult pop­u­la­tions. Altered behav­ior of lar­vae was detected at 700 ppm CO₂, with many indi­vid­u­als becom­ing attracted to the smell of Con­tinue Reading »

Wel­come to the fifth year of Sound­HAB oper­a­tion.   We are off to a slow start due to the weather, but that changes fast and so do blooms in our region. The pur­pose of this list serve is for researchers and man­agers to share timely infor­ma­tion about harm­ful algal blooms through­out the Pacific North­west but espe­cially West­ern Wash­ing­ton marine waters.  There are cur­rently 92 mem­bers with sev­eral new mem­bers this year and a few who will be actively mon­i­tor­ing dis­crete locations.

We are inter­ested in exchang­ing infor­ma­tion on all types of HABs, fish kills (wild and farmed), unusual oceano­graphic Con­tinue Reading »

EPA Press Release, “New Fed­eral Strat­egy for Chesa­peake Launches Major Ini­tia­tives and Holds Gov­ern­ment Account­able for Progress” — Oys­ters — Shell­fish and Sus­tain­able Aqua­cul­ture to Have Key Role

Janet Lubechenco, Under Sec­re­tary of Com­merce and NOAA Administrator:

“Oys­ters are a key species for Chesa­peake Bay restora­tion. Not only are they impor­tant to seafood lovers, but they cleanse water and form reef habi­tat,” said Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Under­sec­re­tary of Com­merce for Oceans and Atmos­phere and NOAA Admin­is­tra­tor. “It is crit­i­cal Con­tinue Reading »

Sci­en­tists Say Car­bon Diox­ide in Oceans Could Mean Cur­tains for Shell­fish
ABC News
Mark Wie­gardt and Sue Cudd have each ded­i­cated about  30 years of their lives to bring­ing oys­ters to our tables.  Now the two have found them­selves in the fore­front of one of the newest, most press­ing envi­ron­men­tal issues of our time:  ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion <http://​www​.nrdc​.org/​o​c​e​a​n​s​/​a​c​i​d​i​f​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​/​0​9​0​8​1​4​0​1​.​asp> .

It all began with the oys­ter lar­vae at their Whiskey Creek Shell­fish Hatch­ery in Til­am­ook, Ore.

“It first started in 2007. We had a sit­u­a­tion here when all of a sud­den, our lar­vae started dying,” said Wiegardt.

“At first we started won­der­ing, what is wrong? Bac­te­r­ial prob­lems?  What are we doing wrong?” Cudd said.

To con­tinue read­ing: http://​abc​news​.go​.com/​G​M​A​/​E​c​o​/​o​c​ean–
acidification-hits-northwest-oyster-farms/story?id=10425738

April 17, 2010
The Hon­or­able Maria Cantwell, Chair
The Hon­or­able Olympia Snowe, Rank­ing Mem­ber
Com­mit­tee on Com­merce, Sci­ence, and Trans­porta­tion
Sub­com­mit­tee on Oceans, Atmos­phere, Fish­eries, and Coast Guard
United States Sen­ate
Wash­ing­ton, DC 20510
Dear Madam Chair­woman and Rank­ing Mem­ber Snowe:
As shell­fish grow­ers, com­mer­cial fish­ing and seafood indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives from all over the United States, we are very con­cerned about ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion. Together with sci­en­tists whose research has been instru­men­tal in bring­ing to light the urgent threat that ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion poses to fish­eries and marine ecosys­tems, we respect­fully request help from pol­icy mak­ers to mit­i­gate the causes and reduce the eco­nomic harm result­ing from ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion.
It has been proven that ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion results from an excess of CO2 Con­tinue Reading »

By James Wright, SeaFood Busi­ness asso­ciate editor

22 April, 2010 — Earth Day has spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for the seafood indus­try, which is inex­tri­ca­bly linked to our planet’s sig­na­ture fea­ture — its vast blue oceans. The industry’s very exis­tence depends on healthy seas.

But there are threats to the oceans, sci­en­tists say. One of the biggest is acid­i­fi­ca­tion: Ris­ing car­bon diox­ide emis­sions have accu­mu­lated in the seas and are grad­u­ally chang­ing the oceans’ chem­istry. Research shows that shell­fish — from micro­scopic pteropods to pop­u­lar seafoods like clams and oys­ters — are stand­ing in harm’s way. Increas­ing acidic con­di­tions could ham­per these species’ abil­ity to form pro­tec­tive shells and grow prop­erly, a huge threat to the com­mer­cial shell­fish industry.

Thank­fully, sci­ence is get­ting a grasp on this poten­tially dev­as­tat­ing Con­tinue Reading »

WASHINGTON — The chang­ing chem­istry of the world’s oceans is a grow­ing global prob­lem, says the sum­mary of a con­gres­sion­ally requested study by the National Research Coun­cil, which adds that unless man-made car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) emis­sions are sub­stan­tially curbed, or atmos­pheric CO₂ is con­trolled by some other means, the ocean will con­tinue to become more acidic.  The long-term con­se­quences of ocean acid­i­fi­ca­tion on marine life are unknown, but many ecosys­tem changes are expected to result.  The fed­eral government’s National Ocean Acid­i­fi­ca­tion Pro­gram, cur­rently in devel­op­ment, is a pos­i­tive move toward coor­di­nat­ing efforts to under­stand and respond to the prob­lem, said the study committee.

The ocean absorbs approx­i­mately a third of man-made CO₂ emis­sions, includ­ing those from fossil-fuel use, cement pro­duc­tion, and defor­esta­tion, the sum­mary says.  The CO₂ taken up by the ocean Con­tinue Reading »