Oysters Are 'Functionally Extinct'

The Huffington Post
Dean Praetorius
First Posted: 02/ 4/11 04:21 PM

Oysters aren't disappearing from the dining table anytime soon, but they may be disappearing from our oceans.

A recent study published in BioScience has shown that the mollusks, declared "functionally extinct," are disappearing quickly as 85 percent of their reefs have been destroyed through disease or over-harvesting, according to the AFP. 75 percent of the remaining wild oysters can be found in 5 locations in North America.

So what does "functionally extinct" mean?

Oysters no longer play almost any significant role in their ecosystems.

From the AFP:

"Oyster reefs are at less than 10 percent of their prior abundance in most bays (70 percent) and ecoregions (63 percent)," said the study.

"They are functionally extinct -- in that they lack any significant ecosystem role and remain at less than one percent of prior abundances in many bays (37 percent) and ecoregions (28 percent) -- particularly in North America, Australia and Europe."

While the study didn't include parts of South Africa, China, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea, other studies suggest that there's been a significant decrease in oysters in these regions as well, according to the authors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/04/oysters-are-functionally-_n_818870.html

Louisiana oyster beds remain empty after BP disaster

By Paul Adams

BBC News, Louisiana

Louisiana's oyster beds have not recovered from the US's worst environmental catastrophe, the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster, and some fishermen fear they never will.

We were fishing at the end of the world- or at least a place that felt like it.

Grand Isle is one of the final precarious fragments of land where the myriad bayous of the Mississippi delta give way to the open water of the Gulf of Mexico.

Around us, hungry frigate birds watched as we headed for the oyster beds.

Pelicans swooped by in formation, low and effortless, and a pair of dolphins raced just ahead of the bow, daring each other to get closer and occasionally rolling sideways to check we were suitably impressed.


We were less than 100 miles (160 km) from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon but everything looked pristine under a blazing sun.

And the oysters! As big as the palm of my hand, succulent and briny.

It was still early and so, for the first time in my life, I had oysters for breakfast. But the atmosphere aboard the boat was sombre.

The oysters were good but hardly plentiful. At this, the season of peak demand, far too many were simply dead.

Not, as you might think, coated in sticky oil or even poisoned by chemical dispersants but killed off, as luck would have it, by fresh water.


Millions of gallons from the Mississippi River were hurriedly diverted into the bays and marshes of the delta to keep the oil from rolling in, earlier in the year - but this upset the delicate balance of fresh and salty conditions the oysters need to survive.

Nick Collins is a fourth generation oyster-man, with a rich gumbo of an accent to match.

His business had only just recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, five years ago, and Nick was looking forward to a bumper year.

But if the first setback was an act of God, the second was an act of industry - an industry that is much bigger and more commercially important to Louisiana than Nick's delicious oysters, an industry that sits off this fragile, mysterious landscape of channels and marshes, and produces the stuff that Americans really cannot get enough off.

Microbe army
At nearby Port Fouchon beach, the shallow-water rigs, tens of them, sit as little as a mile offshore.

Oil arrived here in the weeks after the spill and BP's clean-up continues.


Armies of contract workers, mostly from Central America, make their steady, painstaking way along the sand.

Wave after wave of them, in bright yellow boots, stooping slightly over shovels and brushes, scooping up tiny tar balls, covered in sand.

They pause, scour the patch in front of them and then - to the sound of "Vamonos!" ("Let's go!") - move on a few paces.

Not all the oil is from the Macondo well. Studies show that some of it comes from elsewhere, perhaps from the rigs we can see, perhaps even from the natural seepage that goes on all the time in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico - and which has, over the eons, created an army of microbes that like nothing more than to feast, like Pac-Men, on energy-rich hydrocarbons.

Organisms that just might clean up whatever muck lurks out of sight, all by themselves.


So the clean-up is not just about the Deepwater Horizon but about every company that has ever sought to make a fortune extracting the black stuff and bringing it ashore.

BP, it seems, is making amends for all of us.

Fading hopes
But back to the oysters and another family business struggling with the fallout.

On the edge of New Orleans' legendary French quarter, the P & J Oyster Company has been in business for more than 130 years.

Like Nick Collins, Al Sunseri wonders if he has what it takes to recover.

The ice which gushes noisily into his giant coolers every eight minutes has very little to cool and the high, whitewashed-stone shucking tables are deserted.

He has laid off all but two temporary workers who keep a trickle of customers happy with oysters from nearby Texas.


Al also had to deal with Katrina, downsizing and waiting for the oyster beds to replenish themselves.

He was confident, as everyone was, that it was just a matter of time before the oysters reappeared and everyone was happy again.

But now he wonders about his son, who has experienced depression and has not been working for a couple of months.

He says he remembers his own anxiety as a young man, taking over a business with such a long tradition to uphold.

He thinks about Alaska and the herrings that disappeared from Prince William Sound three years after the Exxon Valdez spill, never to return.

More than seven months after the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon, the full ramifications of this disaster are still hard to gauge.

The uncertainty gnaws at everyone who depends on the sea. Is it possible, they wonder, that the worst days may still lie ahead?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9254859.stm

Louisiana oyster beds remain empty after BP disaster

By Paul Adams

BBC News, Louisiana

Louisiana's oyster beds have not recovered from the US's worst environmental catastrophe, the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig disaster, and some fishermen fear they never will.

We were fishing at the end of the world- or at least a place that felt like it.

Grand Isle is one of the final precarious fragments of land where the myriad bayous of the Mississippi delta give way to the open water of the Gulf of Mexico.

Around us, hungry frigate birds watched as we headed for the oyster beds.

Pelicans swooped by in formation, low and effortless, and a pair of dolphins raced just ahead of the bow, daring each other to get closer and occasionally rolling sideways to check we were suitably impressed.


We were less than 100 miles (160 km) from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon but everything looked pristine under a blazing sun.

And the oysters! As big as the palm of my hand, succulent and briny.

It was still early and so, for the first time in my life, I had oysters for breakfast. But the atmosphere aboard the boat was sombre.

The oysters were good but hardly plentiful. At this, the season of peak demand, far too many were simply dead.

Not, as you might think, coated in sticky oil or even poisoned by chemical dispersants but killed off, as luck would have it, by fresh water.


Millions of gallons from the Mississippi River were hurriedly diverted into the bays and marshes of the delta to keep the oil from rolling in, earlier in the year - but this upset the delicate balance of fresh and salty conditions the oysters need to survive.

Nick Collins is a fourth generation oyster-man, with a rich gumbo of an accent to match.

His business had only just recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, five years ago, and Nick was looking forward to a bumper year.

But if the first setback was an act of God, the second was an act of industry - an industry that is much bigger and more commercially important to Louisiana than Nick's delicious oysters, an industry that sits off this fragile, mysterious landscape of channels and marshes, and produces the stuff that Americans really cannot get enough off.

Microbe army
At nearby Port Fouchon beach, the shallow-water rigs, tens of them, sit as little as a mile offshore.

Oil arrived here in the weeks after the spill and BP's clean-up continues.


Armies of contract workers, mostly from Central America, make their steady, painstaking way along the sand.

Wave after wave of them, in bright yellow boots, stooping slightly over shovels and brushes, scooping up tiny tar balls, covered in sand.

They pause, scour the patch in front of them and then - to the sound of "Vamonos!" ("Let's go!") - move on a few paces.

Not all the oil is from the Macondo well. Studies show that some of it comes from elsewhere, perhaps from the rigs we can see, perhaps even from the natural seepage that goes on all the time in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico - and which has, over the eons, created an army of microbes that like nothing more than to feast, like Pac-Men, on energy-rich hydrocarbons.

Organisms that just might clean up whatever muck lurks out of sight, all by themselves.


So the clean-up is not just about the Deepwater Horizon but about every company that has ever sought to make a fortune extracting the black stuff and bringing it ashore.

BP, it seems, is making amends for all of us.

Fading hopes
But back to the oysters and another family business struggling with the fallout.

On the edge of New Orleans' legendary French quarter, the P & J Oyster Company has been in business for more than 130 years.

Like Nick Collins, Al Sunseri wonders if he has what it takes to recover.

The ice which gushes noisily into his giant coolers every eight minutes has very little to cool and the high, whitewashed-stone shucking tables are deserted.

He has laid off all but two temporary workers who keep a trickle of customers happy with oysters from nearby Texas.


Al also had to deal with Katrina, downsizing and waiting for the oyster beds to replenish themselves.

He was confident, as everyone was, that it was just a matter of time before the oysters reappeared and everyone was happy again.

But now he wonders about his son, who has experienced depression and has not been working for a couple of months.

He says he remembers his own anxiety as a young man, taking over a business with such a long tradition to uphold.

He thinks about Alaska and the herrings that disappeared from Prince William Sound three years after the Exxon Valdez spill, never to return.

More than seven months after the blowout on the Deepwater Horizon, the full ramifications of this disaster are still hard to gauge.

The uncertainty gnaws at everyone who depends on the sea. Is it possible, they wonder, that the worst days may still lie ahead?


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9254859.stm

Oysters at risk in acid oceans

THEY have formed a succulent and nutritious part of the human diet for thousands of years. But a new report is warning that plentiful supplies of oysters and mussels could disappear over the next century because the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic.

Dr John Baxter, the co-editor of an international report into the acidification of the world's seas, said increasing levels of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere by industrialised countries was gradually changing the acid level of waters across the world.


If the trend continued, the shells of thousands of species would be eroded and the creatures eventually wiped out - creating a huge knock-on effect on other fish and marine life.

As lobsters and crabs have shells with a different chemical composition, it is not clear how they will be affected by increasingly acidic sea water, the report says.

But as well as shellfish eaten by humans, certain types of plankton at the bottom of the marine food chain and coral reefs would also face serious ecological damage.

The first major marine areas to be affected, says the report, are the northern oceans, which are home to a wide variety of important marine life.

The Arctic Ocean is expected to be the first to reach a dangerous level of acidification with 10 per cent of its area hitting the threshold at which damage will occur by the end of this decade.

Dr Baxter, the principal adviser in marine ecology for Scottish Natural Heritage, presented the report, Ocean Acidification: Questions Answered, at a scientific meeting last week. SNH co-funded the report, alongside Natural England, the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

Baxter said: "The only way around this is for the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere to be reduced.

"To a certain extent, this can be done by carbon capture - when carbon released from power stations is trapped underneath the seabed and stopped from being released into the atmosphere - but, other than that, we just have to start using less fossil fuel.

The alternative is pretty worrying."


He said that while some animals and plants may adapt to the new environment, many would be wiped out.

"We just don't know what species adapt, if any," Baxter said, adding that the last time there had been serious ocean acidification, 55 million years ago, around 80 per cent of sea species had become extinct.

While ocean acidification occurs naturally, studies show it has increased far more rapidly in the past 150 years.

More than 440 billion metric tons of CO2 has been released into the atmosphere since the end of the first industrial revolution in the 1830s - with half of this generated in the past 30 years.

As atmospheric CO2 increases, more of it is dissolved in the oceans, causing chemical changes which make sea water more acidic. While it is unlikely the world's seas will ever become positively acidic - like lemon juice or vinegar - even a fairly mild level of acidification would have a significant effect on the world's ecosystem.

"Carbonate levels in sea water, which are presently high enough to allow calcium carbonate structures like shells and skeletons to stay intact, can drop to levels that will mean these hard structures will begin to dissolve," the reports says.

"If levels of atmospheric and oceanic CO2 continue to rise at current rates… by 2100 it is likely that the entire Arctic Ocean will be in a state that can dissolve unprotected calcium carbonate structures."

Evidence had already been found that the shells of one species - the planktonic foraminifera - are already 30-35 per cent lighter than their pre-industrial-era counterparts, demonstrating that the effect has already begun.

Environmental groups said acidification was a growing danger to marine life. Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, said: "Climate change would already be much worse if the oceans weren't absorbing huge amounts of the carbon dioxide we are spewing into the atmosphere, but the consequence is that the planet's seas are becoming more and more acidic. This is potentially disastrous for marine life around the globe, devastating much of the base of the food chain and further endangering fish-stocks that many human populations rely on.

"We spend a lot of time worrying about droughts, floods and ice caps, but what's happening to the oceans may actually be the most dangerous impact of climate change."

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, added: "Ocean acidification threatens not only coral reefs and marine biodiversity, but also the commercial fisheries that depend on them."



By Jane Bradley


http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/environment/Oysters-at-risk-in-acid.6615795.jp

Oysters at risk in acid oceans

THEY have formed a succulent and nutritious part of the human diet for thousands of years. But a new report is warning that plentiful supplies of oysters and mussels could disappear over the next century because the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic.

Dr John Baxter, the co-editor of an international report into the acidification of the world's seas, said increasing levels of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere by industrialised countries was gradually changing the acid level of waters across the world.


If the trend continued, the shells of thousands of species would be eroded and the creatures eventually wiped out - creating a huge knock-on effect on other fish and marine life.

As lobsters and crabs have shells with a different chemical composition, it is not clear how they will be affected by increasingly acidic sea water, the report says.

But as well as shellfish eaten by humans, certain types of plankton at the bottom of the marine food chain and coral reefs would also face serious ecological damage.

The first major marine areas to be affected, says the report, are the northern oceans, which are home to a wide variety of important marine life.

The Arctic Ocean is expected to be the first to reach a dangerous level of acidification with 10 per cent of its area hitting the threshold at which damage will occur by the end of this decade.

Dr Baxter, the principal adviser in marine ecology for Scottish Natural Heritage, presented the report, Ocean Acidification: Questions Answered, at a scientific meeting last week. SNH co-funded the report, alongside Natural England, the UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme and the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.

Baxter said: "The only way around this is for the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere to be reduced.

"To a certain extent, this can be done by carbon capture - when carbon released from power stations is trapped underneath the seabed and stopped from being released into the atmosphere - but, other than that, we just have to start using less fossil fuel.

The alternative is pretty worrying."


He said that while some animals and plants may adapt to the new environment, many would be wiped out.

"We just don't know what species adapt, if any," Baxter said, adding that the last time there had been serious ocean acidification, 55 million years ago, around 80 per cent of sea species had become extinct.

While ocean acidification occurs naturally, studies show it has increased far more rapidly in the past 150 years.

More than 440 billion metric tons of CO2 has been released into the atmosphere since the end of the first industrial revolution in the 1830s - with half of this generated in the past 30 years.

As atmospheric CO2 increases, more of it is dissolved in the oceans, causing chemical changes which make sea water more acidic. While it is unlikely the world's seas will ever become positively acidic - like lemon juice or vinegar - even a fairly mild level of acidification would have a significant effect on the world's ecosystem.

"Carbonate levels in sea water, which are presently high enough to allow calcium carbonate structures like shells and skeletons to stay intact, can drop to levels that will mean these hard structures will begin to dissolve," the reports says.

"If levels of atmospheric and oceanic CO2 continue to rise at current rates… by 2100 it is likely that the entire Arctic Ocean will be in a state that can dissolve unprotected calcium carbonate structures."

Evidence had already been found that the shells of one species - the planktonic foraminifera - are already 30-35 per cent lighter than their pre-industrial-era counterparts, demonstrating that the effect has already begun.

Environmental groups said acidification was a growing danger to marine life. Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland, said: "Climate change would already be much worse if the oceans weren't absorbing huge amounts of the carbon dioxide we are spewing into the atmosphere, but the consequence is that the planet's seas are becoming more and more acidic. This is potentially disastrous for marine life around the globe, devastating much of the base of the food chain and further endangering fish-stocks that many human populations rely on.

"We spend a lot of time worrying about droughts, floods and ice caps, but what's happening to the oceans may actually be the most dangerous impact of climate change."

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, added: "Ocean acidification threatens not only coral reefs and marine biodiversity, but also the commercial fisheries that depend on them."



By Jane Bradley


http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/environment/Oysters-at-risk-in-acid.6615795.jp

Water firms blamed for poisoned oysters

BRITAIN’S water companies have been accused of contaminating oysters and putting restaurant diners at risk by dumping raw sewage into rivers and the sea.


The number of people suffering food poisoning from raw oysters has risen dramatically, with 230 customers becoming ill in just a three-month period, according to new figures.

The Sunday Times revealed last week how six water companies have fought off an attempt by the Environment Agency to impose regulations on 4,200 overflow pipes that pump out raw sewage.

The scandal of contaminated oysters follows an outbreak of norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhoea, at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, last year. Chefs at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, which has two Michelin stars, were so concerned that they took oysters off the menu for almost a year.

Britain’s oyster industry is worth about £30m a year, with the main fisheries in the Thames estuary and on the Essex coast, in the Solent off the Isle of Wight and in the River Fal in Cornwall.

Producers fear their livelihoods are being jeopardised by food poisoning incidents linked to oysters. They point out that norovirus, which contaminates the oysters, originates in humans and so the source must be sewage being discharged into rivers and the sea.

“Some Third World countries use better technology than we do to treat sewage,” said David Jarrad, assistant director of the Shellfish Association of Great Britain. “We are as much the victims in this as the consumer.”

The Food Standards Agency has written to councils this year warning of an increase in suspected norovirus outbreaks linked to oysters. Its figures for December 2009 to February 2010 show that 32 restaurants and hotels were hit by outbreaks, with 230 people falling ill.

Norovirus is killed at high temperatures but oysters are typically eaten raw. In February last year Blumenthal was forced temporarily to close the Fat Duck, which has three Michelin stars, after 529 diners fell ill over a seven-week period. A Health Protection Agency report found sewage in oysters was most likely to blame. “Oysters harvested from sewage-contaminated waters will feed on the faecal residues,” it said.

Graham Larkin, operations manager at Colchester Oyster Fishery, which supplied the Fat Duck, said the vast majority of oysters were safe to eat but action needed to be taken.

“Fisheries are being affected by this all over the country. We want to see the water cleaned up,” Larkin said.

He now conducts rigorous tests for norovirus on oysters from the River Colne in Essex. Anglian Water has sewage treatment works on the river, which flows through Colchester, and overflow pipes which can discharge sewage during very wet weather.

Gary Jones, executive head chef at Blanc’s Le Manoir in Oxfordshire, said the restaurant now only served oysters that had been through a purification process and had been tested for norovirus. “We have to be confident that what we put on the menu is not going to harm anyone,” he said.

Jones said there was “not a shadow of a doubt” that oyster contamination was caused by sewage and the water companies should be held to account over discharges. “What we are doing to the seas is horrific. We should be taking this more seriously,” he said.

Water companies are allowed to dump raw sewage into rivers and the sea during wet weather to stop it backing up into homes, but oyster producers want to see more investment to limit the amount that is discharged.

Anglian Water said there was no proven link between its sewage discharges and contaminated oysters. Water UK, which represents water companies, said the industry had spent billions of pounds to improve the sewer system and as a result water quality in rivers and bathing areas had significantly improved.

Jon Ungoed-Thomas
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7114086.ece