Saving Seafood

How much is a clam worth to a coastal community?

February 25, 2021 — Researchers have developed a method to estimate the value of oyster and clam aquaculture to nitrogen reduction in a coastal community. Nitrogen is a nutrient that comes from many different sources, including agriculture, fertilizers, septic systems, and treated wastewater. In excess it fuels algal growth, which can affect water quality and human health.

As a result, a growing number of communities are required to follow regulations to reduce the amount of nitrogen they release. Shellfish are an option that can be a valuable part of a community’s nutrient management plan.

In a study in Environmental Science & Technology,  biologists, economists, and modelers from NOAA Fisheries, NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, and Stony Brook University used a transferable replacement cost methodology to estimate the value of oyster and clam aquaculture to nitrogen reduction in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Growing bivalve shellfish, including oysters and clams, provides direct economic benefits to a community by supporting jobs and making fresh local seafood available to consumers. It also provides ecosystem services—benefits that nature provides to people—including habitat for native species and improved water quality.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Once destined for raw bars, 5 million oysters are being rerouted to coastal restoration efforts

February 24, 2021 — On a recent cold, clear January afternoon, only the occasional customer shuffled in to buy bags of mollusks from Parson’s Seafood, along New Jersey’s southern coast. The place belongs to  fifth-generation shop owner Dale Parsons, one of 15 or so dedicated commercial shellfish farmers in the region. Most of them are “hurting bad,” he said, since the pandemic shuttered the buck-a-shuck eateries and raw bars that purchase the bulk of their lumpy, thick-shelled product.

Outside and down the pier, Parsons loaded 10,000 or so muddy oysters in plastic bushel baskets into his skiff, and another 10,000-plus in a second boat helmed by his employees. Under waxy blue skies, they nosed out into Tuckerton Creek, motoring around a raft of mallards diving in marsh grass, past tight clusters of shuttered summer homes built on stilts, and out into the dazzling sun reflecting off lower Barnegat Bay. The plan was to dump both loads overboard.

The dumping, though, would serve a purpose. Parsons’ oysters had been purchased by the Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration initiative (SOAR), a seven-state program co-coordinated by the Pew Charitable Trusts and The Nature Conservancy, in partnership with various state agencies, NGOs, and universities.

At the end of its first phase, begun last October and slated to wrap up later this year, SOAR will have spent $2 million on 5 million oysters from 100 oyster farms in New Jersey, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Washington state. The purpose, from SOAR’s perspective, is to bulk up 20 reef restoration projects and hopefully push some of them into “exponential growth phase,” where they rapidly create habitat for more oysters and other marine species, clean the water, and mitigate coastal flooding.

Read the full story at The Counter

REPORT: CLIMATE CHANGE A MAJOR THREAT TO RECREATIONAL FISHING

February 24, 2021 — A new report by fly fishing industry leaders brings to light what scientists have long known: that fishing is suffering from the effects of climate change—and offers solutions.

The American Fly Fishing Trade Association and its nonprofit AFFTA Fisheries Fund released the report last week, which acknowledges, “Climate change is significantly affecting ocean ecosystems, the abundance and distribution of fish, and the nature of saltwater fishing.”

AFFTA sees the effects of climate change and overfishing as principal threats to fisheries that the fly-fishing industry has long fought to address. This blue-ribbon report offers a systematic approach to strengthen marine fisheries conservation and management, support recreational fisheries, and lead to more abundant marine fisheries in all U.S. ocean waters.

Though the report looks at these issues on a national scale, it offers many recommendations that apply to the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, from warming of upland coldwater brook trout streams to effects on oyster shells and loss of shoreline habitats. One particularly applicable example is the report’s commitment to work with coastal states to increase the size and distribution of seagrass beds, by improving water quality and planting grasses. It notes that coastal ecosystems like marshes and grassbeds are capable of absorbing carbon at rates up to four times those of forests on land.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Brexit: UK fishermen fear losing their homes as export ban bites

February 22, 2021 — Since 1 January, the European Union has stopped British fishermen from selling oysters, scallops, clams, cockles and mussels, known as live bivalve molluscs (LBM), that are caught in so-called “Class B” waters.

The government says it is seeking an “urgent resolution”, while the European Commission told Sky News the ban, on health grounds, applies to all third countries and “is not a surprise” to the UK.

The Sailors Creek Shellfish company in Falmouth, Cornwall, has seen 99% of its business disappear.

Read the full story at SkyNews

MASSACHUSETTS: Report: Shellfish industry under threat as oceans grow more acidic

February 11, 2021 — Carbon emissions and wastewater are making the ocean more acidic, an accelerating chemical reaction that could threaten the ability of young scallops, oysters and lobsters to survive to maturity, according to a report published by the Massachusetts legislature on Tuesday.

A coalition of scientists, conservationists and representatives from the seafood industry found that a third of mollusks could be wiped out within 80 years if ocean waters continue to acidify at current rates. The effect on lobsters and crabs is less clear, though they are suspected to be more resilient.

“We’re running out of time before the consequences of ocean acidification become truly catastrophic,” said State Rep. Dylan Fernandes, a Democrat from Cape Cod who co-founded the coalition.

The group’s 84-page report says that oceans have been acidifying since the industrial revolution by soaking up excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. When the gas dissolves, it triggers a chain reaction that raises acidity and saps the ocean of carbonate ions that shellfish use to grow their shells, making them more vulnerable to predators and bruising waves.

It’s hardly the first time scientists have predicted doom for New England’s seafood industry, but the report found rising ocean acidity is threatening scallops, the very species that fishermen in New Bedford and other nearby ports turned to to survive an earlier ecological catastrophe: the overfishing of cod.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

MASSACHUSETTS: Panel: Ocean acidification threatens lucrative shellfish sector

February 10, 2021 — As a result of climate change and direct human factors, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Massachusetts are becoming more acidic, making them a less friendly habitat for the shellfish that drive a key industry here.

With no action, many of the scallops, clams, mollusks and lobsters at the bottom of the ocean in the Gulf of Maine will begin to dissolve by 2060 and new ones will struggle to form, imperiling an industry that supports thousands of people in the Bay State, a special commission said in a report Tuesday.

The Special Legislative Commission on Ocean Acidification recommended that Massachusetts establish a broad ocean acidification monitoring system and funnel more money into existing programs that address some of the things that are making the ocean more acidic, like residential and agricultural runoff, septic discharges and the deterioration of natural wetlands.

“Ocean acidification poses a serious threat to the Massachusetts state economy, and a potentially existential threat to coastal economies that rely heavily on shellfishing,” the commission wrote in the conclusions of its report. “Massachusetts should act to combat ocean acidification now, rather than later. Ocean acidification is expected to worsen significantly before the end of the century. Actions taken now will ultimately be more cost-effective and valuable than actions taken when significant damage has already occurred.”

Global carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the ocean and nutrient pollution of waterways drive the pH level of areas of the ocean down, making the waters more acidic and limiting certain ions that help clams, oysters, scallops, mussels and lobsters form their protective shells.

Read the full story at WHDH

MAINE: Local fisherman tests the waters with oyster venture

February 10, 2021 — Chris Kane’s small oyster farm in Western Bay is off to a successful start. A local lobster fisherman for the last 15 years, Kane was recently granted a limited purpose aquaculture license to try his hand at growing the tasty bivalve.

Farming oysters not only can help supply fresh products to meet market demand but can also help keep the waters and the surrounding environment clean. Oysters eat naturally occurring plankton and algae and an adult oyster can also filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day.

“Since people started farming oysters, I have heard that there are now wild growing populations of oysters, which is good,” said Kane.

Last year, Kane applied for a limited purpose aquaculture (LPA) license from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) to grow oysters. LPAs differ from a standard aquaculture lease in that their term is only for one year and the cultivation space is limited to up to 400 square feet. It didn’t take long for the DMR to approve Kane for a LPA license.

“You have to do the paperwork and you can’t just apply to put one anywhere,” said Kane, adding that “it took me a while to really pick a good site out.”

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

UK shellfish sector hit with EU ban

February 5, 2021 — The European Union has put a stop to the import of live bivalve mollusks from the United Kingdom that are not ready for human consumption, plunging the country’s shellfish sector into further uncertainty.

The measure follows on the heels of the challenges caused by new post-Brexit border rules. Historically, U.K. shellfish producers have exported millions of pounds of mussels, scallops, oysters, and other products into E.U. member-states. However, as the U.K. is now a separate country and subject to strict hygiene rules, it is no longer allowed to transport these animals to the E.U. unless they have already been treated in purification plants.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

LOUISIANA: New Orleans restaurants’ oyster shells helped save the coast; can they again?

January 19, 2021 — In an eroding bay south of New Orleans, where the sea is rapidly claiming land, your dinner leftovers were being stacked into an 800-ton wall nearly a mile long.

The shells of oysters, shucked or slurped at the city’s restaurants, are the raw material for this bulwark against waves, storms and rising seas.

“It’s crazy to think each one of these was on someone’s plate,” coastal restoration specialist Deb Visco Abibou said, as shells packed tight in metal cages were hoisted from a barge and plopped into the shallow waters of Barataria Bay. “It always surprises me that they don’t smell more like garlic.”

The shells are cast-asides from the heady days before the coronavirus pandemic, back when New Orleans’ vaunted seafood restaurants were crammed with customers. The eateries were producing about 75 tons of shells per month for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, which runs New Orleans’ 7-year-old oyster recycling program.

The vast majority of oyster shells taken from the Gulf of Mexico never make it back. Instead, they end up in landfills or get crushed into chicken feed or road bed material.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

NORTH CAROLINA: 50 Million Oyster Initiative now supports 140 million oysters

January 14, 2021 — Good news for oysters! The North Carolina Coastal Federation and partners set out to restore 50 million oysters to coastal waters through their 50 Million Oyster Initiative. In the end, they nearly tripled the that goal with 140 million oysters living on 43 acres of newly created oyster reefs.

The initiative launched in Pamlico Sound, where the federation, state Division of Marine Fisheries and partners created 40 acres of new oyster sanctuary between 2017-2019. Monitoring of the Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary by the Division of Marine Fisheries in 2020 indicated oyster densities as high as 2,000 oysters per meter squared on this reef. This translates to roughly 136 million oysters on the oyster sanctuary alone, when the reef architecture is taken into consideration.

“We are very pleased with this sanctuary’s ability to grow oysters year after year, and will continue to monitor its performance as a reference for future sanctuary design and construction,” said Cameron Luck, oyster sanctuary biologist with the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

In addition to the highly successful Swan Island Oyster Sanctuary, an additional 3.5 acres of oyster reef were created as living shorelines and patch reefs throughout the state along private property and in harvestable waters. Monitoring results from these patch reefs indicate they also support high densities of oysters, with each acre supporting more than 1 million oysters.

Read the full story at The Coastland Times