Saving Seafood

Warming Oceans Could Make These Seafood Favorites Toxic

January 12, 2017 — In recent years, scientists have warned that climate change could have a disastrous effect on the ocean’s ecosystems as the world’s waters get warmer. But now, a new study suggests that widespread die offs of ocean-going species isn’t the only thing that warmer waters could cause: It might also make some seafood favorites too toxic to eat.

Chances are, most people haven’t heard of domoic acid, but it’s something that could be making more headlines soon enough. That’s because it’s a neurotoxin that can build up in sea creatures that are popular on the dinner table, like Dungeness crab, mussels, clams and anchovies, Clare Leschin-Hoar reports for NPR. And, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warmer waters lead to algae blooms that can cause elevated levels of this toxin in many of the ocean’s critters.

“When water’s unusually warm off our coast, it’s because the circulation and patterns in the atmosphere has changed, bringing warm water from elsewhere—and this is happening at the same time that we also see high domoic acid in shellfish. It has a very strong mechanistic connection,” Morgaine McKibben, study author and Oregon State University doctoral student tells Kavya Balaraman for Scientific American.

Domoic acid is produced by some kinds of algae, in particular one called pseudo-nitzschia. These microorganisms are the basis of the underwater food chain and thrive in warm waters, but can build up in sea life, causing serious health issues for humans and animals alike. As Leschin-Hoar explains, domoic acid first became known as a health threat in 1987, when an outbreak in Canada killed three people and sickened more than 100 with symptoms including vomiting, diarrhea and cramps. In serious cases, domoic acid poisoning can even cause seizures, numbing and memory loss.

Since then, officials have monitored domoic acid levels along the western North American coastline—and it’s been steadily rising over time. McKibben’s study looked at more than two decades worth of data gathered in the region and found a strong correlation between rising water temperatures and rising domoic acid levels, Stephanie Bucklin reports for LiveScience.

These elevated levels of domoic acid are already starting to affect the seafood business. In 2015, officials shut down Dungeness crab fisheries from Alaska to California for several months because of high domoic acid content, Balaraman reports, and similar shutdowns were enacted in 2016. This left the seafood industry in Washington state $9 million in the hole. To make matters worse, the toxin can linger in fisheries for as long as a year.

Read the full story at Smithsonian

Consultant sees huge growth potential for Maine aquaculture

October 27, 2016 — With its clean, cold waters, its proximity to large markets and its wide open coastline, Maine’s farmed oyster, mussel and scallop industries are poised to more than quadruple in value over 15 years, according to a new report from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Right now, Maine produces $24 million worth of oysters, mussels and scallops a year, 4 percent of the $700 million national market. Aquaculture accounts for about a quarter of Maine’s shellfish, worth about $6.5 million a year, according to state data.

But a market analysis prepared for GMRI by The Hale Group, the Massachusetts-based food and agribusiness consultancy, predicts that Maine’s shellfish aquaculture industry will grow to $30 million by 2030, which gave Maine ocean farmers and groups that work with them, like GMRI, reason to cheer.

“The major finding is the significant room for growth in farmed oyster, mussel, and scallop sectors at a scope and scale that fits with Maine’s working waterfront culture,” concluded GMRI in the report that it unveiled Wednesday.

Mussels and scallops show the most promise, according to the market analysis. Demand for Maine’s mussels is expected to grow faster than the industry average, given their market reputation. The domestic supply of scallops, meanwhile, meets just half the nation’s demand, giving Maine scallops a big opening.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MAINE: Shellfish closure expanded; cost to industry mounts

October 13, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Downeast shellfish harvesters are reeling as the Department of Marine Resources last Friday expanded its closure of the Downeast clam and mussel fisheries because of the westward spread of the microscopic marine organism that causes amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP).

On Sept. 27, DMR closed Cobscook Bay from Perry and Lubec to the Canadian border to the harvesting of mussels. A day later, the department expanded the closure to include clams.

On Sept. 30, DMR closed the entire state east of Otter Point on Mount Desert Island to all clam and mussel harvesting. Last week, the closure boundary was shifted westward to encompass much of Penobscot and Blue Hill bays and the outer islands.

“Currently, mussels, carnivorous snails and surf clams are closed from Deer Isle to the Canadian border,” DMR spokesman Jeff Nichols said in an email on Friday. “All other clams (softshell and hardshell) are closed from Isle au Haut to the Canadian border; European oysters are closed from Deer Isle to Machiasport.”

Harvesters and dealers have already felt the impact.

On Sept. 30, DMR ordered the recall of mussels and mahogany quahogs harvested or wet stored in the Jonesport area between Sept. 25 and Sept. 30. It also ordered a recall of clams harvested in the area between Cranberry Point in Corea and Cow Point in Roque Bluffs between Sept. 28 and Sept. 30.

According to Nichols, the recall affected five licensed shellfish dealers, “and more than 10,000 pounds of product was recovered and destroyed, which was more than 96 percent of the total product recalled.”

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

Maine Seafood Recalls 2016: Mussels, Clams Pulled Over Shellfish With Deadly Neurotoxin

October 5, 2016 — After the discovery of a deadly neurotoxin across a long stretch of its southeast coast, Maine’s Department of Marine Resources has reportedly recalled both mussels and clams plucked from the state even though no one has reported any sickness, according to local CBS affiliate WGME. The toxin is called domoic acid and exposure at a high level can cause brain damage or potentially death.

The recall is focused squarely on mussels and mahogany quahogs, another name for clams, harvested between Sunday and Friday of last week in the Jonesport area and clams from along a roughly 60-mile coastal stretch between Cranberry Point and Cow Point in the southeast.

Ingesting the toxin can lead to amnesic shellfish poisoning, or ASP, which can cause diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, CNN reports.

According to WGME, the state said the recall is working and that shellfish dealers were ordered to throw out any infected products.

“All of our dealers have been extremely cooperative. They’ve been fulfilling their obligation through this recall process. We’re confident that we’ve removed the impacted shellfish from the supply chain,” Department of Marine Resources spokesman Jeff Nichols told WGME.

Domoic acid, typically found in Japan but in some cases has reached U.S. shores, develops from algae and builds up in shellfish, sardines, and anchovies, according to the Marine Mammal Center, which first found it in marine mammals in 1998.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

Mussels Disappearing From New England Waters, Scientists Say

August 29, 2016 — New England is running out of mussels.

The Gulf of Maine’s once strong population of wild blue mussels is disappearing, scientists say. A study led by marine ecologists at the University of California at Irvine found the numbers along the gulf coastline have declined by more than 60 percent over the last 40 years.

Once covering as much as two-thirds of the gulf’s intertidal zone, mussels now cover less than 15 percent.

“It would be like losing a forest,” said biologist Cascade Sorte, who with her colleagues at the university conducted the study and recently published their findings in the Global Change Biology journal.

The Gulf of Maine stretches from Cape Cod to Canada and is a key marine environment and important to commercial fishing. Blue mussels are used in seafood dishes and worth millions to the economy of some New England states, but are also important in moving bacteria and toxins out of the water.

“It’s so disheartening to see it (the loss) in our marine habitats. We’re losing the habitats they create,” she said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Odor plays a role in whether mussels stay or go

April 29, 2016 — For people looking to settle down, a location’s odor can be a factor in whether they stay or go.

Turns out the same is true for mussel larvae.

Mussel larvae swim toward odors from adult mussels, and swim away from odors from predators, including green crabs and dog whelks, says Scott Morello, a visiting researcher at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center in Walpole, Maine.

Morello found mussel larvae can recognize and respond to a broad range of odor cues when deciding whether to settle in wild beds or on aquaculture lines.

And, says Morello, the predator odors he used are from species that do not directly feed on mussel larvae, or even on newly settled mussels. The odors were from predators that feed on older mussels, which indicates larvae assess future risk on some level when they make settlement decisions.

Read the full story at the Boothbay Register

MASSACHUSETTS: Would-be mussel farmers fishing for project money

December 14, 2015 — The aquaculture project Salem State University marine research scientists hope might ultimately produce acres of mussels in a stretch of deep, open waters off the coast of Cape Ann has received the necessary permits to proceed.

Now all the project managers need is … what else? Money.

Mark R. Fregeau, a SSU marine biology professor, said the project he is managing with SSU colleague and collaborator Ted Maney has been green-lighted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and will begin in earnest once they raise about $75,000 needed to begin laying the initial long lines upon which the mussels will grow.

The mussel aquaculture — or more simply, farm — will be located in federal waters, about 81/2 miles due east of Good Harbor Beach, at a site the researchers believe will provide the perfect environment for a deep-water mussel aquaculture that would be the first of its kind in the U.S.

“We’ve been authorized to put out a couple of (experimental) lines and see how they work and what issues might arise,” Fregeau said. “The reality is that until we actually get into the water, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be dealing with. So, it will be rolled out in phases, a couple lines at a time, and that will give us the opportunity to report back to the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA.”

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

Ocean acidification threatens future of aquaculture, shellfish industries

October 29, 2015 — In seawater tanks in a refrigerated room at the Darling Marine Center, the baby mussels are thriving.

Two months ago they were near-invisible larvae, swimming around in the tanks. Now tens of thousands of the tiny mollusks, each just a few millimeters long, have attached themselves to the different kinds of rope scientists have been testing here, and are eating the lab’s stock of algal food at an impressive clip.

Mick Devin, the lab manager at this University of Maine marine research facility, has been overseeing this experiment, part of an effort to master the art of hatching mussels, something mussel farmers – who grow their product on lines hanging in seawater – have never previously needed to do.

“Mussel farmers have been able to just throw their lines out and collect all the larvae they want from nature,” Devin says. “But mussel populations are down drastically in this state, so that may not be working so well now.” Hatcheries, he expects, may have to step up in the not-too-distant future.

Mussels have been vanishing from stretches of coastline where they once were ubiquitous, and scientists remain uncertain as to why. Green crabs, whose population exploded after an “ocean heat wave” in 2012, may have stripped many sections clean. But warmer water and increased rainfall – both problems expected to grow in Maine as a result of global climate change – may be creating a far worse problem: an acid sea.

“We know this affects larval development in bivalves, (and) chances are it will result in decreased numbers, whether it’s a natural population on a bed or one in a farm,” says Paul Rawson of the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences, who is in charge of the research. “We need to make sure the technology is in place so the farms will have a reliable source of seed.”

The world’s oceans are turning more acidic. Since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have grown by more than 70 percent and now stand at the highest level in at least 800,000 years. As the oceans absorb additional CO2, they’ve become 30 percent more acidic over this period. By 2050, scientists estimate surface pH levels will be lower – that is, more acidic – than at any time in several million years and by 2100 more acidic than any time in the past 300 million years – two or three times more so than today.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

Absurd Creature of the Week: This Crafty Fish Turns Mussels Into Its Surrogate Parents

October 23, 2015 — Last week I wrote a little ditty about North America’s lampsilis mussels, which do unbelievable impressions of fish. And why would they? So that real fish attack them, busting loose clouds of mussel larvae that infiltrate the attackers’ gills. Here the larvae clamp onto the filaments and suck out nutrition, developing in safety until they drop out of their host. This, as you can imagine, is bad for the fish, to the point where it can kill them.

Lampsilis has the most highfalutin way of infesting fish with their larvae, but freshwater mussels the world over do it too—simply by releasing the young into the water column. There’s one group of fishes in Europe and Asia, though, that won’t suffer such parasitization without retaliation: the bitterlings. These guys flip mussels’ reproductive strategy back on them. Using a tube-like structure, the female fish inserts her eggs into a mussel’s gills, then the male fires his sperm in as well. The fertilized eggs get a nice little home in the host. The host mostly just gets embarrassed.

So let us explore the strange game that is different kinds of parasitic river critters trying to impregnate each other with their offspring.

Typically fish reproduction is about as basic as it gets in the animal kingdom. Males and females get near each other, then dump their sperm and eggs into the water. That’s it. The problem with that, though, is it opens the young up to all kinds of problems, particularly predation. Only a fraction will make it. The rest will end up in stomachs.

For the bitterling, this won’t do. Its reproduction begins with good mussels, and it’s up to the male to find them, preferably large hosts with more room to hold the young. When he chooses a victim, or even several in a given area, he posts up. Should rival males take an interest in his property, his coloration intensifies as he head-butts his foes for control of the territory.

Read the full story at Wired

Where have Maine’s mussels gone?

CASCO BAY, Maine  — August 30, 2015 — The survey map in Ann Thayer’s hand showed fat red splotches that wrapped around two-thirds of Bangs Island’s shoreline, meaning that the intertidal zone – the zone between the high and low water marks – was supposed to be densely packed with mussel beds. The tide was nearly three hours past high, leaving plenty of rockweed exposed.

Thayer began systematically flipping over the weed, looking for mussels, aka Mytilus edulis, attached to the rock below.

“Nothing,” she said. She said this over and over.

By the time she got back into her dinghy to row back to her Boston Whaler, she’d found only two mussels. Two where surveys from the 1970s and 1990s indicated there should be thousands, mollusks wedged into almost every nook and cranny in the rocks, the blue-hued shellfish nearly as commonplace as the barnacles living on their shells.

Thayer, who serves on the board of directors of Friends of Casco Bay, was not surprised by her findings.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald