Exploration with Culture
As part of an on-going multimedia project on the Puget Sound’s ocean acidification issues and the effects it’s having on the shellfish industry, Seattle Metropolitan Magazine’s March 2016 issue published a story about Washington State’s oyster species, utilizing some of the imagery from The Ocean’s Acid. It’s a great article written by Allecia Vermillion, with interesting characters and historical background of WA’s 5 main oysters.
Last week I was called by Bloomberg and headed to Willapa Bay in southwestern Washington to photograph WSU scientist Kim Patten and the surrounding environment of Bay Center, WA. Waking up at 2:30am on Monday, I spent the morning driving 3hrs to catch a clear sunrise over the waters, which have been the center of Washington’s oyster industry for generations. At over 260 square miles, the bay nearly empties at low tide, creating the second largest estuary on the U.S.’s west coast. But a local shrimp has been disrupting the area’s economy for too long, suffocating oyster beds as the crustacean burrows 1 to 2 feet beneath the surface, turning mudflats into quicksand. The published article is available in the link and the selects from the morning’s shoot are below.
Bloomberg Businessweek: Washington State Turns to Neurotoxins to Save Its Oysters
A pile of discarded oyster shells are left in the sun so organic matter can decompose before being bagged and placed back in the water as a refuge for young oyster seed.
Long-line oyster beds stretch across the tidal flats of Willapa Bay as a front of morning fog recedes westward.
Old oyster shells wrapped in bags ready for delivery outside an oyster nursery
WSU scientist and researcher Kim Patten uses a clam digger to pull out an invasive shrimp from one to two feet beneath the mud.
A male and female shrimp (the female is carrying orange egg sacks)
An oyster shucker in Bay Center, WA
In order to prosper, every living creature requires clean air, clean water and abundant food. For ocean-thriving mollusks, clean seawater is a must. In December 2011, Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire formed a Blue Ribbon Panel. Their purpose: to investigate and study a new threat to Pacific Northwest waters. They were putting Ocean Acidification (OA) under the microscope.
What is occurring is evidence of our Industrial Period 100 years prior as heavy carbon dioxide (CO2) elements now begin surfacing in the shallow waters of the Puget Sound. As the spring and fall seasons of the Pacific Northwest bring strong northwesterly winds, currents in the Pacific Ocean stir up these century-old pollutants, pushing them upwards and east into the estuaries. These so-called up-wellings decrease pH levels, causing normal numbers of 8.25 to sink lower into the acidic levels of 8.14 (The pH scale is representative of aqueous solutions from zero to fourteen; where zero characterizes hydrochloric acid or battery acid, and fourteen is sodium hydroxide, better known as bleach). Acid is a solvent. It dissolves what it comes in contact with. Add acidic waters to oyster seed and you find its ingredients eating away at the calcium carbonate that makes up the mollusk’s shell.
Taylor Shellfish Farms is the first to experience this threat. They are attracting globe attention to what is occurring within their hatcheries and throughout their farms. They rely on clean healthy water for larvae seed to develop, but ocean acidification is effecting the development of these mollusks, prohibiting full and consistent growth of their calcium carbonate shells. What is the future of the mollusk culture if we continue burning fossil fuels and causing the climate to warm-up at faster then expected rate? Our industrial state affects more then just our air quality.
To see Part II of the multimedia project Ocean Acidification and our Oyster Culture, please click here
