Saving Seafood

North Carolina spending, researching to get more tasty, earth friendly oysters

July 5, 2016 — MANTEO, N.C. — North Carolina will spend more than $1.6 million improving the habitats of oysters living in its waters.

The money will go toward further restoring oyster sanctuaries in the Pamlico and Albemarle sounds in hopes the species will rebound to levels not seen in decades.

“The General Assembly’s new budget takes big steps toward making coastal North Carolina the Napa Valley of oysters,” Todd Miller, founder and executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation, said in a news release.

The state’s 2015 wild oyster harvest of 119,000 pounds is nearly 20,000 pounds less than in 2014 but still much higher than in the 1990s and 1980s when diseases decimated the population.

The total population was 800,000 pounds in 1889, when scientists first began measuring the catch. It fell to 200,000 pounds by 1960.

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

North Carolina Budget Marks $1.4 Million for Oyster Work

June 29, 2016 — Coastal conservationists and shellfish growers are cheering new investments in the state’s oyster industry included in the state budget compromise.

The $22.34 billion spending plan announced Monday includes $1.03 million in one-time funding to build oyster sanctuaries in Pamlico Sound. Also, a $300,000, non-recurring, shellfish rehabilitation fund will go to build new oyster reefs all along the coast. The budget also includes $149,000, recurring, for two new positions at the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries to accelerate shellfish industry growth and increase shellfish production and recycling.

“The General Assembly’s new budget takes big steps toward making coastal North Carolina the Napa Valley of oysters,” said Todd Miller, executive director of the North Carolina Coastal Federation. “This funding will help implement the state’s blueprint for restoring the oyster industry and help attract more federal money to restore our oyster beds.”

The budget also provides $100,000 to clean up abandoned crab pots in state waters.

Advocates say boosting the shellfish industry can benefit coastal communities by providing work for fishermen and marine contractors and improving water quality.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online

Recent heavy rains, flooding take toll on Texas oysters

June 16, 2016 — GALVESTON, Texas — Johnny Halili tossed an open oyster shell overboard. Like most of the oysters culled from the floor of Galveston Bay on Tuesday, it was dead.

“Three more years,” he said.

The Galveston County Daily News reports recent heavy rains and flooding along the Brazos River sent freshwater draining into the bay, pushing down the bay’s salinity — the amount of salt in the water. The influx of freshwater is choking some young oysters.

Oysters are resilient animals. But Texas’ oysters have taken a succession of hits in recent years: first it was Hurricane Ike in 2008, which dumped sediment over the bay floor; then prolonged drought, which made the water too salty. Now, heavy rains are the latest assault on oysters.

For oystermen, Mother Nature’s twists and turns have created a costly waiting game.

Halili, who with his wife, Lisa, owns Prestige Oysters in San Leon, tested salinity levels at some of his oyster leases last week after days of rain and flooding. One of his tests found a salinity level of zero parts per thousand, or freshwater.

Oysters thrive with salinity levels around 14 parts per thousand, Halili said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Galveston County Daily News

A Revolution in Southern Farmed Oysters

June 14, 2016 — On a recent Tuesday morning, Brian Rackley ate oysters for breakfast. He slipped a little knife into the neck and popped the shell, cut the foot. He took in a long, deep breath, quietly considering the bivalve’s aromatics, and slurped the thing out of the shell. After a moment’s thought, he scribbled a couple of words in a Moleskine notebook: “Driftwood, Shrimp Bisque.”

Rackley runs the oyster program at Kimball House, a restaurant that occupies a former train station in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a fine place, where diners sit in tufted leather booths and order caviar service and cocktails that arrive in chilled, antique glassware. The oyster menu that Rackley maintains is suitably elaborate, an ever-changing list of 20-odd varieties of oysters sourced from across the continent: Puget Sound, Washington, to Edgecomb, Maine.

Rackley eats oysters for breakfast, before even a cup of coffee, so that his palate will be unadulterated when he writes his tasting notes, those subtle distinctions of flavor and aroma that help his customers navigate the qualities of oysters. His notebook is filled with little phrases and lists of words: “citrus, lettuce & cucumber”; “celery salted wild mushroom”; “cedar and spinach”; “rich clay & minerals, perfect with Muscadet.”

Oysters are a finicky business. Those subtle distinctions in flavor can be erased into blandness by a heavy rain. They can take years to produce but days to spoil. The vagaries of water and air temperatures, the complicated seasonal intersections of rainfall and tides, all the uncontrollable whims of nature conspire to affect oyster production. Rackley is constantly changing his menu to accommodate new oysters, removing unavailable ones.

The most notable change on Rackley’s menu, though, is the growing presence of farmed oysters from the Gulf of Mexico. High-end oyster bars have long depended on well-known oyster farms like Hama Hama, Island Creek, and others where oyster farming techniques go back decades, if not longer.

Read the full story at Pacific Standard

MASSACHUSETTS: Chilmark Adopts Detailed Rules to Monitor Oyster Growers

May 19, 2016 — New shellfish regulations in Chilmark aim to better monitor the 10 oyster grants in Menemsha Pond and protect the town’s inshore fisheries.

Following a public hearing on Tuesday, the selectmen unanimously adopted the regulations, as drafted by the town shellfish department.

For the first time, anyone holding an aquaculture permit in town must provide an annual report to the selectmen that includes harvest data, approximate numbers of adult and seed oysters at the site, and a record of mortalities and growing conditions, among other things.

“We really had a lack of aquaculture rules in general for the town,” shellfish constable Isaiah Scheffer said Wednesday. “We need to make sure that everybody that has an oyster grant is compliant.”

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Hatchery Is Breeding Better Oysters To Boost North Carolina Aquaculture

May 16, 2016 — To feed a hungry world, it’s no longer enough to catch wild seafood. Many fisheries are in decline because of overfishing, environmental stresses or both, and human demand for protein has never been greater. That means aquaculture has to be a growing part of the world’s food supply. Here in North Carolina, it’s also an essential component in growing the economies of our coastal communities.

A case in point is the state’s oyster fishery, which once supplied much of the East Coast, but now can’t even meet demand from within North Carolina. Our state is working hard to emulate our neighbors to the north, who through state-sponsored shellfish research hatcheries have bred a better oyster, able to thrive in Chesapeake Bay and other Virginia waters.

In 2011, North Carolina began supporting a hatchery, right here on the CREST Research Park in Wilmington. UNC Wilmington faculty researchers and student workers are using selective breeding techniques, supplemented by some high-tech genetic research, to develop new strains of oysters to suit our state’s waters. The hatchery is also working with scallops, which are more challenging to grow but more lucrative to sell, as well as sunray Venus clams. But oysters are its primary product.

A recent comparison of oyster cultivation in North Carolina and Virginia, conducted by the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, showed that in 2005, the two states were roughly even, each producing roughly a quarter-million dollars’ worth of farmed oysters. But while Virginia’s production exploded, reaching almost $10 million in just seven years, our state’s aquaculture operations barely doubled their output.

Read the full story at Wilmington Biz

Rising Carbon Dioxide Levels Threaten Corals and Oysters

April 5, 2016 — Tiny, thin-shelled oysters; crumbling coral reefs; fish unable to make sense of odors; decimated plankton populations. Those are some of the nightmare scenarios conjured by the prospect of a rapidly acidifying ocean caused by unchecked carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning.

Here’s the chemistry: when carbon dioxide and water mix, they form a weak acid, called carbonic acid. Add enough carbon dioxide, and the pH, or acidity, of the water will start to change. Of course, the ocean is a big place with a lot of water, and it naturally contains other chemicals that can help stabilize the pH.

On the other hand, the ocean has absorbed more than a quarter of all human-produced carbon dioxide since the industrial revolution. The result: globally, the pH of the ocean has dropped by an average of 0.1 pH units. That may not sound like much but, since the pH scale is logarithmic, it translates to a 25 to 30 percent increase in acidity. And, as ocean water becomes more acidic, the carbonate that many animals use to build their calcium skeletons and shells becomes scarcer.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI

Is global warming causing marine diseases to spread?

March 29, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine –Global climate change is altering the world’s oceans in many ways. Some impacts have received wide coverage, such as shrinking Arctic sea ice, rising sea levels and ocean warming. However, as the oceans warm, marine scientists are observing other forms of damage.

My research focuses on diseases in marine ecosystems. Humans, animals and plants are all susceptible to diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites and fungi. Marine diseases, however, are an emerging field.

Infectious agents have the potential to alter ocean life in many ways. Some threaten our food security by attacking important commercial species, such as salmon. Others, such as bacteria in oysters, may directly harm human health. Still others damage valuable marine ecosystems – most notably coral reefs.

To anticipate these potential problems, we need a better understanding of marine diseases and how climate change affects their emergence and spread.

Read the full article at the Portland Press Herald

Maryland Wants to Take shells for oyster project from prime fishing reef

MARYLAND – March 22, 2016 — Seeking to counter a shortage of oyster habitat in the Chesapeake Bay, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is renewing a controversial bid to dredge old shells that have built up over centuries from an ancient reef southeast of Baltimore. Reviving a plan abandoned in 2009, the DNR has applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to take 5 million bushels of shells from Man-O-War shoal just beyond the mouth of the Patapsco River. Ultimately, though, the state wants to barge away 30 million bushels, or about a third of the 456-acre reef.

The shells are needed to replace or augment oyster reefs worn down by harvesting and buried under an accumulation of silt, the DNR said. State officials said they would use much of the dredged shell in future large-scale, restoration projects. Some would also go to help the public fishery, though and to assist oyster farmers growing bivalves on leased plots of the Bay and its tributaries.

But the DNR’s request is drawing flak from conservationists, fishermen and even some watermen who might benefit.

Read the full story at ODU Magazine.

MARYLAND: New seafood industry group lobbies against oyster project

MARYLAND – March 22, 2016 –A new group has emerged to speak for the seafood industry in contentious Chesapeake Bay fisheries issues, and it’s already being heard in Maryland on oyster restoration.

The Delmarva Fisheries Association formed last year with the stated intent of bringing together watermen, restaurant owners, packing houses, oyster farmers and boat captains.

Capt. Robert Newberry, the association’s president and founder, used to oyster in the Upper Bay and is now a charter boat captain and a hunting guide. He said he wanted to form a group that would unite the seafood industry.

One of their first priorities, he said, was getting Maryland’s governor to take a closer look at the oyster reef construction project in the Tred Avon, which is part of an effort to restore bivalves in three of the state’s tributaries that will cost tens of millions of dollars. All three have been designated sanctuaries, off-limits to commercial harvesting.

See the full story at the Bay Journal