One of the positive assets of the American northwest is the availability of fresh seafood.
US Person's favorite watery delicacy are raw oysters on the half shell with a piquant salsa perhaps made of habanero chilies. Not too much! A gourmet does not want to obscure the wonderful freshness of the sea inherent in oysters. Oysters are raised on the Pacific coast from Washington to Oregon. Netarts Bay, Oregon is one locus of the oyster business. The natural Netart oysters craved by San Francisco dinners of the 19th century are gone, but oysters are now farmed in the Bay. Netarts Bay provides oyster seed to other West Coast farmers. The industry is valued at $73million a year. with a larger economic impact estimated at $207 million and 3,000. That is a big deal in economically depressed coastal communities. But Oyster farmers are confronting a new problem. Larvae are dying at alarming rates of 70 to 80%. The first suspected culprit were bacteria in the water, but testing of the bay water by Oregon State University showed high amounts of dissolved CO₂ making the sea water acidic. For the past six years wild oysters in Willapa Bay, Washington have failed to produce successfully because acidic seawater have prevented larvae from forming their carboniferous shells Other wild beds on the coast have also experienced losses attributed to the acidification of the ocean.
Ocean acidification is the other carbon emissions problem that does not get as much attention as climate change. It is, however, an equally serious symptom of greenhouse effect. Researchers affiliated with NOAA have been studying the problem for more than three decades. The world's oceans have absorbed about 50% of the CO₂ released from the burning of fossil fuels. This absorption results in lower seawater pH due to 30% more hydrogen ions.
[chart]. Acidic seawater slows the rate at which corals build their carboniferous skeletons as well as retarding shell growth in shellfish and zooplankton, a major food source for many marine species. Reefs are the most prolific life zone of the ocean providing habitat and sustenance for fish, shellfish and crustacean. Reef building rates could diminish to a point in the future (2100 CE) that no reefs exist in any of the world's oceans. The United States is the third largest seafood consumer in the world, spending $60 billion per year on fish and shellfish.
The acidic water at Netarts Bay is old, cold, deep water brought to the Pacific shallows by long period ocean circulation patterns and prevailing winds. It absorbed CO₂ from the atmosphere fifty to sixty years ago. Ocean acidification is a phenomenon as old as man's industrial revolution. But carbon emissions have been rising dramatically in recent decades. Last year contained the highest level of global carbon emissions recorded to date. If current emission rates continue the oceans could be 150% more acidic by 2100 or more acidic than they have been for 20 million years. The marine food chain would undoubtably collapse and some humans will starve as a consequence. The oyster farmers at Netarts Bay are now monitoring seawater acidity and buffering it with chemistry. Federal funds are helping the industry to adapt (another example of the free market at work), but it would make more cents and more oysters to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
