10 million scallops are dead; Qualicum company lays off staff

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CHOICE BAYNES SOUND oysters, such as these picked from a recreational oyster area, may soon be on the endangered species list. — image credit: PHOTO BY RALPH SHAW
By Comox Valley Record
Published: March 05, 2014 11:00 AM
Updated: March 05, 2014 11:2111 AM

I have recently read articles in two newspapers that gave reports of the loss of 10 million scallops to the commercial aquaculture operation of the Island Scallops near Qualicum in Area 14.
Now 10 million is a lot of scallops, one of my favourite sea foods. We know how many scallops died in this case because the seafood company gave us the figures of their loss. What the company was unable to do was give us the loss of wild scallops in Area 14 – it must also be in the millions, perhaps billions. Take this catalytic event and run it up and down the west coast of Canada and the United States and maybe we should start to pay attention to the growing acidification of our ocean caused by human-produced carbon dioxide.
“Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere are being absorbed by the ocean and may have pushed local waters through a 'tipping point' of acidity beyond which shellfish cannot survive,' said Chris Harley a marine ecologist at the University of Victoria. (Times Colonist, Business Section Feb. 27, 2014).
Beyond scallops, another direct concern I have about shellfish and the waters of the Strait of Georgia, especially Area 14, is how long can we expect to harvest clams and oysters on local beaches? International research projects such as BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) and EPOCA (European Project on Ocean Acidification) have funded a huge number of experiments to understand the implications of a rising carbon dioxide in the oceans. Again and again they have found that shellfish such as oysters are vulnerable to increased ocean acidification caused by increased carbon dioxide from human sources.
Oysters and clams involve a group of creatures called calcifiers; which is a scientific way of explaining that they build their homes out of mineral calcium carbonate that forms the hard shells that protect their soft bodies. From a human perspective, calcification is bit like magic – where the shellfish combines seawater, calcium, and carbonate to build their shells. Ocean acidification increases the challenges of building shells and eventually the clams and oysters give up and cease to exist. It seems we have reached this point with scallops in Area 14 waters: how safe are our oysters and clams?
I have recently been put on the mailing list of the Pacific Institute for Climate (PICS) Solutions newsletter. Here are a few comments from the Feb. 27, 2014 newsletter:
“Human activities are adding more and more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and about one in three carbon dioxide molecule of gas dissolves into the upper waters of the ocean. The dissolved carbon dioxide quickly combines with the sea water to form carbonic acid. Sea water normally has a pH of about 8.2 which qualifies as alkaline or slightly basic. The pH of upper seawater is falling everywhere due to increased human-produced carbon dioxide. This increasing acidification of the ocean is a serious side effect of burning fossil fuels. Around Qualicum Beach the pH now measures 7.3 which are much lower than normal. (Note: In measuring basic and acidic solutions the lower a pH number the more acidic the water becomes and conversely the higher the number the more basic the water becomes.) If you were to ask the oysters and clams I think they would prefer their ocean water with a slightly basic solution of 8.2.
Ken Denman, a senior scientist at the University of Victoria’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, pointed out that oyster growers in the Pacific Northwest have recently experienced losses due to increased acidification. The shellfish growers of B.C. and Washington know there is only one longterm solution to their growing crisis – we must find ways of reducing the human-induced production of carbon dioxide or they will be out of business. The event in Qualicum suggests to me that it may be sooner rather than later.
Pictured with this column is a photograph of some choice Baynes Sound oysters that we picked from a recreational oyster area. It is one thing to read about a business loss in a paper; but when we realize it happened in home waters of Area 14 it is scary.
I have no answer – just growing concerns.
International Reference: The Sixth Extinction – An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert; published by Henry Holt and Company, New York – 2014.

Ralph Shaw is a master fly fisherman who was awarded the Order of Canada in 1984 for his conservation efforts. In 20 years of writing a column in the Comox Valley Record it has won several awards.
 
I'm shocked by the speed in which this happened. At any rate water samples should be able to prove what happened.
 
ziggy said:
I'm shocked by the speed in which this happened. At any rate water samples should be able to prove what happened.
Click to expand...

Me too. I tried (quickly) to find some data online that would show the change per year or decade of the decreasing ph levels but I didn't find anything.
Based on what I read here things changed rather suddenly.
 
"We are the canary in the coal mine"
If you have the time you should follow the link and read the whole thing.
I'll just cut and paste the details and add some bold re pH.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/412/pofo/04ev-51271-e.htm

Mr. Saunders: Thank you for inviting me.

Island Scallops was incorporated in 1989 to commercialize about 10 years of research that was done by DFO at Nanaimo biological station by Dr. Neil Bourne and it was this technology that with the assistance from Western Economic, NRC, IRAP program and B.C. Science Council that we got started. It was about a million and a half dollars.

In 1991 we were hit by disease and I spent about eight years of my career trying to breed a disease resistant scallop, and we developed a unique, hybrid scallop. In the following decades we have grown and tried to produce 15 different species from geoducks, oysters, clams, mussels, abalone, spot prawns, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, rock scallops, black cod, halibut and recently wolf eels. All of these or most of these species have been with the assistance with DFO's researchers. So our relationship goes back over 20 years and I think that is the foundation of our company.

So what is the economic benefit for this money that was put in by Western Economic? I give a way of an example. We have orders this year for about 100 million single oyster seed. That is gross revenue to our company of about $1 million. In less than 18 months, that will generate $20 million.

In comparison, for geoducks we sell about the same amount but we only sell it into Washington state. If you look at the comparisons of what Washington state gets from that million dollars in seed, it is 60 to $85 million in revenue. B.C. is obviously losing out in this economic potential.

We sell less than $35,000 worth of geoduck seed into B.C. and people ask me why. For the last 10 years DFO has not had a policy. There are few licenses around, some of them the underwater harvesters, some private organizations but really it's a sad commentary.

Recently DFO has solicited comments on integrated geoduck management framework, and I don't expect that to take another 10 years but it is a hard guess. Wild harvest of geoducks is a competing problem but it has steadily declined in the last decade, and I believe that this fishery cannot sustain itself with the increase in predation.

I'm going to give you some examples of the roadblocks that I see. I have been in this business since 1975. In 1979 we applied for a clam farming tenure for manila clams, and I was told by the Fisheries manager that I could grow clams as long as I grew clams where they don't grow. This has been true for the rest of my almost 40 years of experience in B.C.

For every species we have looked at we have had difficulty in accessing brood stock from everything from abalone to geoducks to spot prawns, every species we have looked at. So we have had various long lengthy delays and it's not just our company. We work a lot with First Nations and I was asked to go up to Haida Gwaii and see if I could help them with scallop farming up there five years ago. We put real money, about $25,000 of our own money into application fees. As of today they still haven't got their aquaculture license. Do they think they're being unfairly treated? Absolutely.

There is a disconnect between DFO managers, DFO scientists in the industry, First Nations and non-government organizations. Little or no consultation now occurs between these groups. So there is miscommunication, misunderstanding at all levels amend that has led to stagnation in this industry.

Island Scallops has applied three times for access to information to try and determine why DFO managers have refused us. That gives you an idea of how difficult it is to get information.

You may have seen us in the press recently talking about ocean acidification. We are the canary in the coal mine. As far back as five years ago Washington state hatchery started to see very, very high levels of mortality. We were all unsure at that time what the problem was. It's now very, very clear what it is. It is ocean acidification. We see PH levels on a daily basis now below 7.2; 8.2 is what it should be.

Last year we lost about 10 million scallops of two-year classes. They were almost ready for harvest. And this occurred during exceptionally high levels of CO2. Nobody in the scientific community expected to see these levels climb so rapidly. Atmospheric concentrations are about 400 parts per million so the ocean is at least three times that on certain days.

Oyster and scallop larvae are particularly sensitive to that. You cannot grow those in hatcheries unless you buffer your seawater. There is absolutely no doubt about that. I have spent an awful a lot of money on sodium carbonate and calcium hydroxide.

Some marine fish species are also extremely sensitive to this and I have some anecdotal evidence. So we have a correlation between these very, very low PH, high CO2 and our mortality. And essentially this has led to a worldwide search for answers. And this mortality is now seen in China and Japan. I had a guy fly all the way over from Sweden to talk to me, invested $12 million on a pacific oyster hatchery and lost all his money. His PH was 7.6 and his CO2 level was over 700.

We have been and are working with DFO researchers for the last several years as well as graduate students from the University of British Columbia to try and better understand the root cause of this mortality. Can we modify our farming practices and can we build more robust strains. The answer is, yes, we can modify our farming practices. We pay a lot of attention to what the ocean is on the days we enter our young seed.

We now cannot grow our scallops for two years. It will all have to be out of the water by one year or otherwise we will lose our animals.

The process for applications for research requires collaborative agreements between industry, DFO scientists, and it has now become very onerous, time-consuming and it has really resulted in a complete lack of initiatives. For example, DFO will not sign agreements with the National Research Council and universities who conduct this type of research.

So in summary what am I here to try to recommend? Since 2011 the shellfish aquaculture advisory panel has met six times. There is also a new committee, the Shellfish Aquaculture Management Advisory Committee which has met once. Clearly these are too few and far between for reasonable a decision-making. These committees should at least meet quarterly and have deadlines for decisions. Inaction on policy is not a reason for delay.

Collaborative research with DFO scientists should again be encouraged without becoming embroiled with red tape from Ottawa. Collateral agreements are onerous and very difficult. I used to be able to pick up the phone, talk to scientists at DFO and get answers without the rigmarole.

In the past we had experimental development permits for the industry which have been successfully used in the past and I think it should be re-examined in developing new policy. DFO policy development with stakeholders has changed dramatically in the last several years and is due to delays, indecision, and legal roadblocks.

I believe there is a detachment between DFO scientists and DFO managers. DFO managers are not required to consult with DFO scientists and it's clear that the managers don't do this. DFO scientists must have some input on these committees.

With policy grounded in science I think the industry, First Nations, NGOs and DFO we can move forward. Thanks very much for your attention.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Saunders.

=================================
 
Part 2


Senator Hubley: Thank you for joining us today. On the ocean acidification, I have asked some questions on the East Coast and they're not at all up to speed on it. I am wondering if you know what is contributing to that in this area and I'm sure it will eventually become an issue in our area as well but it did catch my attention.

Mr. Saunders: It's just not B.C. Richard Feeley publishes a lot on the Northern Pacific where he talks about aragonite. Well aragonite is your calcium carbonate form at PH 8, 8 per 1, it's a fairly complicated carbon cycle. Where it is coming from, I don't know, but it's clear we are on an upwelling coast, the deep water is higher in CO2 and it's also saltier. We've seen in Georgia Strait in the last five years, four years a much saltier water and a dramatic, I mean an incredibly dramatic increase in CO2. We first started to notice this in '09. We had two months of a drop in PH from 8.1 to 7.8. I was hearing through Washington state that they were saying as low as 7.6. I was shocked to tell you the truth. I didn't know, I mean, we have all been taught the ocean doesn't change. This is a nice stable environment.

The next year, instead of two months, we had pretty much those levels all year round. Within three years now we are three times atmospheric CO2. We can deal with that onshore because we can buffer the sea water and much to my surprise we don't know, I thought that our larger animals could withstand these fluctuations. So I can't answer your question. I don't know where it is coming from. I know the East Coast sea scallop industry out of New Jersey is finding similar levels and their sea scallop fishery, as you may know, has had a cutback of 30 per cent because the scallops aren't growing. It is correlation; it is not proof. I don't know what the particular reason is for this massive mortality in the field.

=================================

Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Mr. Saunders has mentioned the roadblocks in the industry, and you mentioned that members of the Skidegate First Nation, were facing delays in the approval processfor aquaculture licenses preventing them from succeeding in this area. As you all well know a lot of First Nations communities are economically challenged so why would they be refused a license?

Mr. Saunders: They weren't being refused. They got their aquaculture tenure from the province pretty quickly. They try and do it in 120 days. Skidegate Inlet, the timing was poor, I will say that on the government side, they switched from the province to the federal government, but there really is no excuse for this delay. This particular group has now lost financing because of this delay.

We have worked with seven First Nations on the Central Coast supplying them with seed and they have struggled now for 10 years without a lot of success.

The Cape Mudge We Wai Kai Nation on Quadra Island is probably the best success story. They have now been farming there for four years. Unfortunately they lost their crop this year as well. They lost about three million animals so we are working with them as well to try and get another shot at it.

Senator Lovelace Nicholas: So how did they lose their animals?

Mr. Saunders: It is strongly correlated with ocean acidification. I can't say that it is that, but everybody who has been growing scallops with us in the lower strait has experienced this in the last year.

Senator Lovelace Nicholas: Is there any chance of improvements?

Mr. Saunders: I'm certainly the guy who thinks the glass is half full, yes, I think there is. We went through one disease outbreak in 1991, as I said, spent eight years, the tools now available to us are much more sophisticated so I believe that we can breed an animal that will survive in these changing ocean conditions.
 
kildonan said:
Me too. I tried (quickly) to find some data online that would show the change per year or decade of the decreasing ph levels but I didn't find anything.
Based on what I read here things changed rather suddenly.
Click to expand...

I know the iphc has been doing water samples at every one of there sets over the last few years. The vessel sets a water profiler at the end of every set. Not sure if there is enough data to get a trend but it may be a place to look.
 
fish4all said:
I know the iphc has been doing water samples at every one of there sets over the last few years. The vessel sets a water profiler at the end of every set. Not sure if there is enough data to get a trend but it may be a place to look.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that fish4all. looks like pH sampling just started in 2007: http://www.iphc.int/publications/ra...onitoringduringtheIPHCsetlinesurveyin2011.pdf

p.413:"In 2000, a Sea-bird™ Seacat SBE-19 water column proÞ ler was purchased by the IPHC and deployed aboard a commercial halibut longliner chartered for the annual stock assessment survey. In 2007, the IPHC received a grant from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Restoration and Enhancement Program to purchase a second Seabird™ Seacat SBE-19plus (an updated version of the SBE-19) dedicated to the IPHC survey stations off the Oregon coast. This new proÞ ler was equipped with sensors to measure depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen (SBE-43), pH (SBE-18), and chlorophyll a concentration (WetLabs ECO-FLRTD).

Look at Appendix III - Years 2009-2011 shown. Looks like a decrease in pH for the Gulf of Alaska in 2009. Only have 1 year (2010) for the Puget Sound and the Strait of Juan de Fuca (Appendix I). Appendix II shows a decrease in 2009 for the Washington/Oregon Coasts areas. Too bad this dataset wasn't 20+ years.
 
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In a troubling new discovery, scientists studying ocean waters off California, Oregon and Washington have found the first evidence that increasing acidity in the ocean is dissolving the shells of a key species of tiny sea creature at the base of the food chain.
The animals, a type of free-floating marine snail known as pteropods, are an important food source for salmon, herring, mackerel and other fish in the Pacific Ocean. Those fish are eaten not only by millions of people every year, but also by a wide variety of other sea creatures, from whales to dolphins to sea lions.
If the trend continues, climate change scientists say, it will imperil the ocean environment.
"These are alarm bells," said Nina Bednarsek, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle who helped lead the research. "This study makes us understand that we have made an impact on the ocean environment to the extent where we can actually see the shells dissolving right now."
http://www.mercurynews.com/science/...e-pacific-ocean-acidity-dissolving-shells-key

[video]http://bcove.me/86mr5tt5
 
Hi everyone, new to the forum and late to this party.

This piece of news is a real shocker. Gonna throw in my 2 cents of chemistry in here.

First of all, I'd like to address the issue of salt or salinity and acidity : In no way on this physical earth is it possible for salinity or sodium chloride concentration capable of influencing acidity levels. There's a very long explanation to this, but suffice to say the most important thing in the ocean concerning acidification is two things and only two things : carbon dioxide and calcium carbonate.

The reason the ocean is generally at a slightly basic pH (as opposed to acidic) is because it's saturated (or supposed to be!) with calcium carbonate, you know, stuff that makes up shells and sand and rocks and stuff. In more technical terms, its calcite and aragonite. So what this does is that it buffers the acidity. Someone earlier mentioned neutralizing acidity with something alkaline. That's slightly different. In the shortest explanation possible, neutralization is usually a strong acid and a strong base. Buffering has to do with setting up a weak acid or base to act as a shock absorber for any sudden inputs. (At least if I remember it correctly!)

The frightening thing is that all ocean organisms including the fish and prawns and etc are strongly adapted to a pH of 8.2 or something like that. I used to play around with marine organisms in tanks and once the pH dropped to mid or low 7.something, everything started acting up. Anything that didn't have a spine (invertebrates) died. Everything that did have a spine acted really weird. Stopped feeding, became aggressive, chased their own tails around, well you get the idea.

Thing is, I never expected to see this in my lifetime and that's why it's so scary. I figured we'd have enough time to find alternatives and whatnot. The really scary part is that pH is on a logarithmic scale. Meaning if it gets a lot easier to change the closer it is to neutral. Or put another way, it took a lot of CO2 infusion to change it to whatever it is now and it won't take anywhere near as much to swing it into the truly acidic scale.

But I'm glad to see people taking it with such great concern. Bodes well for our future.

Tight lines everyone.

P.S. I said earlier its only two things. There are other possibilities, but unlikely ones. Someone or something is dumping tons of acid into the ocean. Either some rogue factory somewhere nearby is doing nothing but dumping crazy amounts of excess acid byproduct into the ocean or there's a lot of underwater volcanos dumping in the undersea close by. I am assuming we would've caught the son of a ***** in the 1st case and we would've heard about it in the 2nd. So I'm discounting these two and going with CO2.
 
If you are shocked by the scallop die off , how about the purple starfish that were so prolific in Georgia Straight all over the tidal rocks.
They disappeared in 2 years ..... bang ! they are gone !
 
capt hook said:
If you are shocked by the scallop die off , how about the purple starfish that were so prolific in Georgia Straight all over the tidal rocks.
They disappeared in 2 years ..... bang ! they are gone !
Click to expand...

Yes I've seen lots of dying purple starfish. The story was in the Vancouver Sun a few days ago. They say it's some new virus.
 
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