Oyster hatcheries, and the oyster farms we support throughout the Pacific Northwest, depend on fossil fuels for our livelihood, much like the rest of the world. Production Manager, Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery Years of research by our NOAA and university partners showed that pollution from atmospheric carbon dioxide was to blame for “souring” the ocean waters that seasonally upwelled into our intakes, confirming that the shellfish industry’s problems were in fact caused by ocean acidification. It turned out that low seawater pH levels associated with coastal upwelling were indeed the root cause of our oyster larvae die-offs. We started by monitoring water conditions in our seawater intakes. In 2009, we began collaborating with Oregon State University (OSU) scientists and later with NOAA in 2010 to look for answers.
At that time, I dusted off a water-stained copy of a 2008 scientific research paper from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that had sat on my desk at the hatchery for months, which documented the upwelling of very corrosive seawater along the West Coast.įrom that moment on, our story began to change. This massive mortality event coincided with a huge upwelling event along the Oregon Coast, which brought seawater with a very low pH into Netarts Bay, where we’re located.ĭespite the loss of a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of product in a single night, the event forced us to step back from chasing the ‘usual suspects’ of bacteria and disease, and start considering whether seawater chemistry was the root cause of our problems. Virtually all of our larvae died in a single night, despite our valiant efforts to clean up the hatchery. Other hatcheries in the region also began seeing losses, and we feared for the future of the industry.Īnd then came the ‘best worst day of my life’. We first suspected we had a bacterial problem, but after sanitizing every part of our hatchery, the baby oysters still weren’t surviving.īy 2008, we had even larger die-offs of up to 75% of our production.
The Pacific oyster industry depends largely on aquacultured seed from hatcheries, not solely seed from the wild, so it was essential that we figure out the hatchery’s problem, and fast.
We have dozens of farms as clients, comprising an industry worth about $270 million a year of economic activity in rural communities that employs about 3,200 people. We raced to find the cause because the Pacific oyster industry depends on the larvae we produce at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, one of only a handful of oyster hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest. Whole crops of young oysters, the “larvae” we raise and sell to shellfish farmers up and down the West Coast, were wiped out. Week after week, month after month, the baby oysters we attempted to produce wound up dead on the bottom of our tanks.
#Baby oyster spat full#
We’re largely at the mercy of our environment, and each season is full of peaks and valleys.īut in the fall of 2007, we saw persistent problems that were unlike any Whiskey Creek had seen in its thirty-year history. Life working in an oyster hatchery is, at its core, just like any other type of farming. By Alan Barton, Production Manager, Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, Netarts Bay, OR
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