The circle of life. Everything depends on everything else to survive on this planet. Even one disruption in the balance can have serious ramifications. Who would have thought that the warming trends on the planet would effect the oysters. “Who cares about the oysters?”, you may say. Here’s why–
With selective breeding and genetic fingerprinting, they were on their way to developing a super oyster resistant to summer mortality, keeping one step ahead of a warmer, more polluted planet. Or so they thought.
Suddenly, oyster research bogged down as a riotous bloom of bacteria went on a West Coast killing spree, wiping out billions of oyster larvae.
The outbreak first shut down an oyster brood stock program run by Oregon State University in Newport, Ore., in 2005. “All we saw was our larvae were dying,” said fisheries professor Chris Langdon, “and we couldn’t put our finger on why.”
Then the microscopic culprit overran commercial hatcheries in Washington and Oregon, crippling production over the last couple of years and causing a shortage of oyster “seed” needed to replant tideland farms from Southern California to Canada.
Science has identified the culprit, a strain of bacteria called Vibrio tubiashii, which is harmless to humans but fatal to baby oysters. It attacks them in their vulnerable, free-swimming larval stage before they settle to the seafloor, latch onto rocks or other oysters and grow thick shells.
The Vibrio blooms appear to be linked to warmer waters in estuaries and the oxygen-starved “dead zones” that have showed up this decade off the coast of Oregon and Washington, researchers said.
These low-oxygen waters correlate with stronger winds coming from a warming planet.
As filter feeders, shellfish clean seawater of excess algae and nutrients, maintaining healthy coastal waters. When oysters disappear, as they did in the Chesapeake Bay, an estuary’s water can turn murky and foul.
“With the loss of oysters, the water in the Chesapeake became more turbid, restricting light penetration to plants and sea life, and the higher nutrient levels made algal blooms more common,” Richards wrote. “The West Coast needs to avoid this at all cost.”
