PCSGA Tidings

Click HERE for the lat­est oil spill image from ROFFS

SEATTLE — When 1,500 gal­lons of oil spilled into Puget Sound in Octo­ber 2004, shell­fish grow­ers were slow to respond.; That inci­dent prompted the indus­try to begin HAZWOPER train­ing, which stands for Haz­ardous Waste Oper­a­tions Emer­gency Response.

“Num­ber one, imme­di­ate response is crit­i­cal. Any lag time in get­ting resources out there to get that spill con­tained and cleaned up is going to make things a lot worse,” said Russ Walker with Tay­lor Shell­fish Farms.

Shell­fish grow­ers also learned the impor­tance of tak­ing inven­tory before dis­as­ter strikes.

“You want to have records, maps of where your prod­uct is, so you know where it is at the time of the spill,” said Andy Suh­bier, marine biol­o­gist with Pacific Shell­fish Institute.

Suh­beir has recently talked with shell­fish grow­ers Con­tinue Reading »

By Rebecca Rose

Pub­lished: April 24 2010 01:56 | Last updated: April 24 2010 01:56

Oys­ter farm­ing on the Ile de Ré, on the French Atlantic coast

“There is only one way to eat an oys­ter,” says oys­ter cul­ti­va­tor Bap­tiste Mon­tant, a sandy-haired man wear­ing a T-shirt and flip-flops. “And that is au nature”. Dig­ging his hand deep into a crate of salt water, he pulls out a gnarled oys­ter shell and shucks it open with a penknife. Loos­en­ing the glis­ten­ing, dark-rimmed mol­lusc from its pearly bed, he slurps it down unadorned. A dreamy, appre­cia­tive expres­sion sweeps across his face.

No lemon or pep­per? I ask weakly as he hands me my own mus­cu­lar spec­i­men. Real­is­ing this is an occa­sion 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 »

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT:
Sus­tain­able Fish­eries Divi­sion May 21, 2010
727–824-5305, FAX 727–824-5308

BP Oil Spill: NOAA Mod­i­fies Com­mer­cial and Recre­ational Fish­ing Clo­sure in the
Oil-Affected Por­tions of the Gulf of Mex­ico
Updated Clo­sure
Cur­rent revi­sions to the clo­sure, described below, will be effec­tive on May 21, 2010 at 6 p.m. east­ern Con­tinue Reading »

Marks & Spencer’s sus­tain­abil­ity pledge, click below.

http://​plana​.mark​sand​spencer​.com/​a​b​out

I am pleased to announce the appoint­ment of Will Stelle as the North­west Regional Admin­is­tra­tor effec­tive June 1, 2010.

Many of you may recall that Will served at the North­west Regional Admin­is­tra­tor in the 1990s dur­ing the early stages of the Pacific salmon list­ings under the Endan­gered Species Act.  He was key to build­ing foun­da­tions and processes that have evolved into the part­ner­ships that are work­ing today.  His expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge of these issues will help NOAA con­tinue its mis­sion to rebuild these resources Con­tinue Reading »

Too see the new East Coast Shell­fish Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion Newslet­ter, click HERE

Dear NOAA Fish­eries Con­stituents and Stakeholders,

Attached and posted to our South­east Region web­site are today’s map and bul­letin iden­ti­fy­ing the mod­i­fied para­me­ters of the fish­ing clo­sure in the GOM EEZ, with 81% of fed­eral waters in the Gulf remain­ing open to fishing.

The map depicts both the pre­vi­ous clo­sure area (blue line) and the mod­i­fied area issued today (red).  This revised area com­prises approx­i­mately 19 per­cent of fed­eral waters in the Gulf (just over 45,000 sq. mi.) and is in effect at 6pm this evening.

Briefly, satel­lite imagery on May 17 indi­cates the main bulk of oil is dozens of miles away from the loop cur­rent, but that a small sheen of oil has been trans­ported down close to the loop cur­rent.  Today’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion extends the fish­ing clo­sure bound­ary down to the loop cur­rent as a pre­cau­tion­ary measure.

NOAA con­ducts aer­ial obser­va­tions every day to observe the plume from the air.  These obser­va­tions help develop NOAA’s tra­jec­tory models.

Addi­tion­ally today, the NOAA P-3 research air­craft will be drop­ping sen­sors to get bet­ter obser­va­tions of the loca­tion of the loop current.

Both the loca­tion of the slick and the cur­rent are dynamic and change day to day.  NOAA will con­tinue to closely mon­i­tor this por­tion of the oil over the next days to weeks.

To keep apprised of daily updates of the BP oil spill inci­dent, go to:

www​.noaa​.gov

http://​www​.deep​wa​ter​hori​zon​re​sponse​.com/​g​o​/​s​i​t​e​/​2​9​31/

Oys­ter Reefs Pro­vide Habitat!

Oys­ter reefs can have fifty times the sur­face area of an equally exten­sive flat bot­tom! Nooks and cran­nies between all the shells pro­vide habi­tat for an enor­mous range of other ani­mals, such as worms, snails, sea squirts, sponges, small crabs and fishes. Even young oys­ters (spat) hide inside empty shells to escape predators!

Oys­ters Fil­ter Water!

Oys­ters con­sume algae by fil­ter­ing water at a rate of up to 1.3 gal­lons per hour! Sci­en­tists believe that the Bay’s once-flourishing oys­ter pop­u­la­tions cleaned the estuary’s entire water vol­ume of algae and sed­i­ments every three or four days.

Oys­ters Pro­vide jobs!

For more than 100 years, Con­tinue Reading »

FDA_Letter_to_ISSC_04_12_2010