whiporwill: The great oyster crash: the proverbial canary in the coal mine for ocean acidification The hatcheries crisis offers both a foretaste of how the seas are changing due to acidification and a model for how industry and science can work together to mitigate it, says Lisa Suatoni, a National Resources Defense Council staff scientist working on the issue. “It’s our first good example of the potential economic impacts of ocean acidification,” she says. “And it’s a perfect example of people adapting to the crisis.” But even the scientists and hatchery operators who have collaborated in this success admit that it’s a stopgap. In the long run, only reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere will keep ocean acidification from getting worse and threatening more shellfish. Alan Barton, who diagnosed Whiskey Creek’s chemistry problem, isn’t waiting around for that to happen. He wanted to get as far away from souring seas as he could, so in late 2009 he left Oregon to start an oyster hatchery on North Carolina’s Intracoastal Waterway. “I looked at a map of the world and tried to figure out where ocean acidification was least likely to be a problem,” he says. “I picked here — and I was wrong.” Already, Barton sees the problems that nearly shut down the West Coast’s hatcheries settling in on the East, thanks both to local conditions and, he believes, to bigger changes in the sea itself. That’s good for his business, at least in the short term; natural oyster beds have failed in many East Coast estuaries, just as they did on Willapa Bay, and Eastern oystermen are turning to hatcheries like his for seed. But his current success will be cold comfort if carbon emissions don’t abate and the sea undergoes catastrophic change. “I’m afraid the ocean will be dead long before we have to worry about the other implications of global warming,” Barton says quietly. “I didn’t believe any of this stuff three years ago. I was always skeptical about our global models … But ocean acidification is pretty cut and dried for me now. You see it every day. You can’t escape it.”

whiporwill:

The great oyster crash: the proverbial canary in the coal mine for ocean acidification

The hatcheries crisis offers both a foretaste of how the seas are changing due to acidification and a model for how industry and science can work together to mitigate it, says Lisa Suatoni, a National Resources Defense Council staff scientist working on the issue. “It’s our first good example of the potential economic impacts of ocean acidification,” she says. “And it’s a perfect example of people adapting to the crisis.”

But even the scientists and hatchery operators who have collaborated in this success admit that it’s a stopgap. In the long run, only reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere will keep ocean acidification from getting worse and threatening more shellfish.

Alan Barton, who diagnosed Whiskey Creek’s chemistry problem, isn’t waiting around for that to happen. He wanted to get as far away from souring seas as he could, so in late 2009 he left Oregon to start an oyster hatchery on North Carolina’s Intracoastal Waterway. “I looked at a map of the world and tried to figure out where ocean acidification was least likely to be a problem,” he says. “I picked here — and I was wrong.”

Already, Barton sees the problems that nearly shut down the West Coast’s hatcheries settling in on the East, thanks both to local conditions and, he believes, to bigger changes in the sea itself. That’s good for his business, at least in the short term; natural oyster beds have failed in many East Coast estuaries, just as they did on Willapa Bay, and Eastern oystermen are turning to hatcheries like his for seed.

But his current success will be cold comfort if carbon emissions don’t abate and the sea undergoes catastrophic change.

“I’m afraid the ocean will be dead long before we have to worry about the other implications of global warming,” Barton says quietly. “I didn’t believe any of this stuff three years ago. I was always skeptical about our global models … But ocean acidification is pretty cut and dried for me now. You see it every day. You can’t escape it.”

(via whipporwill-deactivated20111220)