Sustainable shrimp from Oregon

Do you love shrimp but worry about the harm caused by shrimp fishing or shrimp farming? Well, good news, some Oregon shrimp have just been certified as sustainable.

Shrimp is America's favorite seafood, but most shrimp are farmed or caught with destructive methods. Shrimp trawling usually kills turtles and other fish, in large amounts (up to 4 times more "other" things than shrimp) and tears up the ocean bottom. Shrimp farming usually destroys coastal habitats to make shrimp ponds.

The Oregon pink shrimp are caught with much lower environmental impacts and are one type of shirmp that you can enjoy without feeling guilty. I'm happy to see this progress, the Oregon pink shrimp fishery had some problems in 2001 when I served on a management advisory panel. But diligent work has produced progress and now recognition.

The Marine Stewardship Council is the leading sustainability certifier for fisheries. Ask your favorite seafood seller for Oregon pink shrimp with the sustainability certification.

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The Chesapeake oyster tragedy

The fabled watermen of the Chesapeake Bay have just finished digging their own grave, and they're taking the oysters with them.

This is a sad story that didn't have to be this way. Oysters used to be so numerous that they cleaned the Bay every 3 days, and oyster reefs were a hazard to navigation. But overfishing has removed most of the oysters and destroyed the oyster shell reefs necessary to provide a good home for young oysters.

The oyster catch is now down around 1/1000 of the rich plunder of a century ago, and pessimists outnumber optimists. Oytster farming, once a heresy, is now the most likely hope for an oyster revival.

It's enough to make an oyster lover cry. Where did the oyster-loving watermen go so wrong? Why did the government allow it to happen? Why were we the people asleep at the wheel?

hat tip: Shifting Baselines

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Mussels, oysters, and clams to dissolve by 2100?

Acid oceans may be corrosive enough to dissolve the shells of mussels, oysters, and clams in some areas by 2100. This truly scary news sounds like Chicken Little at her worst, but this warning comes from scientist Carol Turley, from Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

OK, this ocean acidification scare is getting serious now. Dissolving shellfish shells? Really?

What you may not know is that building a calcium carbonate shell can be difficult in the ocean below the carbonate compensation depth, since calcium carbonate tends to dissolve in seawater.

Fortunately for shellfish lovers, the compensation depth is currently in deep water everywhere. But rising CO2 has already influenced carbonate compensation and it will get worse in the future. It is now a realistic concern that animals with carbonate shells may see their shells dissolve in shallow water in the future.

Ouch, sounds like that would hurt.

Hat tip: Jeremy Jacquot at treehugger.com

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Oysters hold key to bone healing

Oysters may help people with bone problems, by sharing the secrets of making pearls.

Human doctors are investigating the shiny stuff in an oyster shell, called nacre or "mother of pearl." They hope that seeding bones with nacre may speed biomineralization (making bone) in people with problems like osteoporosis.

Oyster nacre may also help people with other diseases, including arthritis and some skin conditions.

Oysters are incredibly important in the water, they build habitat by clumping together into sometimes massive reefs that can exceed even coral reefs in size. And, they filter water to get their food, and help keep water clean and clear, which is important for many other animals. But oysters are sadly overfishing almost everywhere they live, and now we're into the oyster restoration game.

Me, I adore oysters, preferable raw. And I'm sure that has nothing to do with their aphrodisiac properties. It's just that I'm a shellfish lover. I'll walk right past almost anything else to get my hands on some succulent oysters or mussels.

hat tip: UnderwaterTimes.com

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Save the lobsters that lay the golden eggs

Throw back the big ones. It's a new principle in managing commercial fishing, designed to save the lobsters (or fish) that lay the golden eggs.

Finally, some of the old, broken ideas are giving way. It used to be thought that a simple mathematical construct (maximum sustainable yield) was actually a good way to manage fishing. Only there were too many neglected factors that fell outside of the model and undermined it's utility. Things like the special reproductive value of big old fish (and lobsters) and the value of life history diversity in maximizing productivity.

Fishermen will now be required to throw back the biggest lobsters, following the lead of Maine. It's an overdue step and one that promises to help protect the future of lobsters and lobstering.

Maybe we'll see more efforts made to save the fish (and lobsters) that lay the golden eggs. Some fish (and lobsters) are too valuable to kill, they're worth more in the water than in the fish market.

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When oysters ruled the world

It was a better time, waters were clear, fish were abundant, and the (eel)grass was greener. Alas, those days are gone along with the oysters.

Massive oyster reefs 20 feet high and miles long have now been lost to a tide of overfishing, along with secondary harm from habitat destruction and disease. Once upon a time, in 1880, 100 million pounds of oysters were pulled from the Chesapeake Bay. Now, oyster catch is down to 250,000 pounds, just 0.25 % of the former bounty.

Oysters are amazing for more than their heavenly taste. A large adult oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day, and filtration is what the Chesapeake Bay sorely needs. With nutrients up, filtering out plankton is a vital service to the ecosystem. If only...

Is there hope? Maybe we can rely on farmed oysters for reversing some of the damage. That certainly seems better than the scary prospect of introducing an exotic oyster and hoping it helps. Anyone remember the Zebra mussel?

The Chesapeake may not recover from our destruction of the heroic oyster populations, and that's a shame. This is a lesson for those who would overfish to provide jobs. If we had it to do over again, I doubt anyone would support overfishing of oysters. Instead, overfishing of oysters would probably be a serious crime punishable by several years in jail.

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Washington shellfish toxins hit record levels

It's a bad year on the northwest US coast. Now we hear that toxic shellfish are a problem, thanks to record-setting blooms of toxic plankton on Washington shorelines.

Let's see, we have the dead zone underwater, starving birds, raw oysters making people sick at record levels, and now paralytic shellfish poisoning toxin at record levels. Yikes, what's an ocean lover to do? Backing off of shellfish is especially hard.

I'm told that most of these problems are unrelated, and not tied to human impacts. It's hard to believe that such a piling-on of problems is just an unhappy coincidence. I wonder what we'll think about all of this in 10 or 20 years. Looking back, will it be just a bad year or a sign of things to come? Regardless, I hope we see the need to get our house in order.

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Muscular help for ocean dead zones

In a nasty twist of fate, blue mussels that were busy cleaning up Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay were killed by an expanding dead zone.

Dead zones are usually blamed on excess nutrients from fertilizers and livestock. But the "demand-side" is a neglected human impact that creates or worsens dead zones. Over-harvest of oysters and clams that eat plankton has reduced the ability of coastal waters to consume and limit the plankton blooms that create dead zones.

Scientists were studying a lucky mussel-building boom in summer 2002, that was a miniature version of the once-grand bivalve empire (mussels, clams & oysters). They noted the "muscular" cleaning effect of some impressive mussel reefs and the clear water that resulted. But, alas, it was too good to last. A plankton bloom overwhelmed the bay and created a massive smack-down of low oxygen that killed the mussels and many other animals that couldn't flee. The bay will probably take a decade to recover.

Maybe this is a cause for California's "mussel building" Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

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