1859 March | April 2018

what i’m working on
Saving the Shellfish
Alan Barton uses science to solve a mystery
interview by Gina Williams
IN 2007 AND 2008, baby oysters began dying at Pacific Northwest
shellfish hatcheries that rely heavily on aquacultured seed stock.
The cause remained a mystery, until one morning when Whiskey
Creek Shellfish Hatchery production manager Alan Barton walked in
and everything was dead.
Barton realized the problem might be from the water in Tillamook’s
Netarts Bay where Whiskey Creek, Oregon’s only shellfish hatchery
and the second largest shellfish hatchery on the West Coast,
is located. It turned out the mass die-off coincided with a large
upwelling event along the Oregon Coast that brought corrosive
seawater with a low pH into Netarts Bay. Barton turned to his former
colleagues at Oregon State University’s oyster-breeding program for
help. Fortunately, Burk Hales, an OSU professor of ocean ecology
and biogeochemistry, confirmed acidification was the culprit and
developed a way to measure the chemistry of the Netarts Bay
water. The hatchery also began working with the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2010, and today the
hatchery is back to nearly full production. Barton and researchers
caution the current fix might not work forever.
Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery production manager Alan Barton
helped determine the cause of a massive shellfish die-off a decade ago.
What has near disaster at Whiskey
Creek taught us about ocean
acidification and climate change?
Burning fossil fuels has increased
the concentration of CO 2
(carbon
dioxide) in the atmosphere by about
30 percent, which has increased the
acidity (decreased pH) of the ocean
by about 30 percent. For young
shellfish at their most vulnerable
state, especially in their first two
weeks of life, a low pH environment
causes shell deformation and
often death.
Research shows that unless we
decrease ocean CO 2
by moving
toward less fossil fuel emissions,
extreme events will only get worse
over time.
It’s important to note that ocean
acidification and global warming are
not the same thing. They are different
impacts of increasing concentrations
of CO 2
. Acidification is much more
straightforward and indisputable.
What are you doing to manage the
situation today?
We are now constantly monitoring
pH levels in Netarts Bay. We’ve also
learned to pump water in the afternoon
when acid levels tend to measure
lower. Professor Hales created a way
to measure the chemistry of the water
used for spawning. The effort also
resulted in a self-contained monitoring
system that continuously collects
research-quality water chemistry data,
but can be operated in-house. We’ve
also learned how to buffer our water
with sodium carbonate to keep the
shellfish seed healthy.
What’s next?
In 2011, the NOAA Ocean Acidification
Program (OAP) was started with
bipartisan support after the shellfish
industry and community leaders
urged funding for ocean acidification
research. Congress subsequently
increased investment to NOAA
OAP. Research and collaboration with
scientists has allowed us to expand
monitoring across the West Coast and
create a type of ocean acidification early
warning system that benefits the entire
shellfish and aquaculture industry—an
industry worth about $270 million a
year of economic activity and employs
about 3,200 people in rural communities
throughout the region. Researchers are
also now developing ocean chemistry
forecasts to help hatcheries time
activities to maximize output.
In addition, Professor Hales’ research
has resulted in deployment of monitoring
systems in shellfish facilities and marine
laboratories from California to Alaska.
And in February 2018, the Ocean
Carbon and Biogeochemistry Program,
a project of the interagency U.S. Carbon
Cycle Science Program, is hosting the
fourth U.S. Ocean Acidification Principal
Investigators meeting in conjunction
with the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting
in Portland.
68 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE MARCH | APRIL 2018