Dieoffs At 3 Major BC Shellfish Hatcheries; Collapses May Be Linked To Acidic Upwelling Events

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Four summers ago, Sue Cudd couldn't keep a baby oyster alive. She'd start with hundreds of millions of oyster larvae in the tanks at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Netarts, Oregon. Only a handful would make it. Sometimes, they'd swim for a couple of weeks. But they'd stop developing before they grew a critical shell structure, or maybe the foot or eyespot. They'd feed poorly. One day, the larvae would simply die. A hatchery that has supplied seafood businesses for three decades had virtually nothing to sell for months, said Cudd, who owns the hatchery.

"They would just sort of fade away... It was really devastating. We're kind of the independent growers' hatchery, and we had always been reliable up until that point. People were just shocked. I heard a lot of times how it was ruining people's businesses."

It's tough to say with scientific certainty that ocean acidification is the sole cause of the die-offs that have plagued two of the Northwest's three major oyster hatcheries in the last few years. (In this series, "Northwest" includes the marine region stretching from Oregon to Alaska.)

EDIT

Scientists have linked the mass mortalities at Whiskey Creek with seasonal "upwelling" events drawing acidic and corrosive seawater that normally lurks down deep towards our beaches and shorelines. And that kind of water is likely to surface more often along the Pacific Coast as more carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere.

EDIT

http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/06/29/NoBabyOyster/