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Public Health improves oyster quality control

Humboldt County is first public agency to use molecular testing

1/23/12

Humboldt's vibrant oyster farming industry and bioterrorism funds have allowed the county's public health laboratory to deploy a cutting-edge process to test for shellfish contamination.

The laboratory is now the only public facility in California to utilize a molecular process -- known as polymerase chain reaction -- for oyster testing. The only other laboratory to perform this type of work is a private lab in San Diego.

Laboratory manager Jeremy Corrigan said the new process, which started last week, allows the county to perform bacteria testing for Humboldt's oyster farmers as well as operations in Oregon and Washington.

”This is an opportunity for us to get more business from not only our county but other places,” he said.

Corrigan worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to get the molecular method in place at the lab. He said the agency recognized the county's established oyster testing program. The lab has been performing tests on and off since 1999, according to the public health department.

Corrigan adjusted the protocol to use the equipment required for oyster testing. The county purchased the equipment -- which can also be used to test for diseases such as whooping cough and influenza, or substances like anthrax --with bioterrorism funding.

For nearly 20 years, Coast Seafood Co. has contracted with the lab to run weekly tests on samples of Pacific and Kumamoto oysters for a type of bacteria that causes intestinal infection.

”It really aids in our ability to control the quality of our product and really monitor the quality of our product. We really have a high quality of seafood that comes out of Humboldt Bay,” Coast Seafood Co. Southwest Operations Manager Greg Dale said.

This bacteria, virbrio parahaemolyticus, is a naturally occurring organism commonly found in brackish saltwater along the coast in the United States and Canada where oysters are cultivated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Certain conditions can cause the bacteria to flourish in coastal waters, and shellfish can become contaminated.

According to public health, two cases of the intestinal infection caused by virbrio parahaemolyticus were reported in 2007, but it is unclear if they were linked to oyster consumption. No cases have been reported in the past four years.

Dale said the company has done quality control for oysters and water as a precaution. About 70 percent of California's oysters are grown in Humboldt Bay.

Although there has never been a positive result, a recent false positive illustrates the streamlined convenience of the new process, he said.

In the past, the lab performed a chemical test to see if the bacteria was present. If the test was positive, samples were sent to the San Diego lab to determine if pathogens that can make people sick were present. The entire process took about five to six days. According to public health, any contaminated oyster beds are shut down until the results are available.

Report highlights California's huge 'wave power' potential

1/19/12

A new report by the Department of Energy says that waves off California's 1,100-mile coastline could generate more than 140 terawatt hours of electricity a year -- enough to power 14 million homes -- if tidal and wave energy was developed to its maximum potential.

The United States uses about 4,000 terawatt hours of electricity a year; 1 terawatt hour powers about 100,000 American homes.

"California's wave and tidal current resources offer real opportunities to generate renewable energy using water-power technologies in the future," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.

Wave energy uses a variety of devices placed in the ocean to generate electricity, but the technology has not been widely used in the United States. The Department of Energy is sponsoring three demonstration projects off the coast of Oregon, in Washington's Puget Sound area and in Maine.

Currently, California has no wave energy project up and running, but the California Ocean Protection Council says one project off the coast of San Onofre has received a preliminary permit. The permitting process is complex and involves several federal and state agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

"Wave energy projects have a very low profile -- much lower than a wind turbine," Mike Reed, team leader for water-power technologies at the Department of Energy, said in an interview. "The devices are located two to three miles off shore -- you can't see them from the shore."

Pacific Gas & Electric last year suspended its Humboldt WaveConnect Project, a pilot project off the coast of Humboldt County, amid opposition from some environmentalists and concerns about the lengthy permitting process, escalating costs and feasibility. Many Humboldt County environmentalists opposed WaveConnect over concerns that it would damage local fisheries and marine ecology.

The Energy Department's Water Power Program is trying to quantify the nation's potential water-power resources so that investors, developers and policymakers can make decisions about where to place them.

Crab season starts Sunday

1/14/12

After waiting weeks for the season to begin, commercial crab fishermen were allowed to drop their traps into the water Friday at noon.

Dozens of boats loaded with crab pots headed out to sea on Friday morning, and crab is expected to show up on docks on Sunday.

Eureka crab fisherman Scott Creps said fishermen will be waiting on the water at midnight Sunday to pull up their catch.

”It's been a month and a half -- everybody's really anxious to get going,” he said “We've got a good price to get started with.”

DFG senior marine biologist Pete Kalvass said crab samples tested last weekend finally showed crabs from all ports on the North Coast -- including Eureka and Trinidad -- meeting the minimum standards for the season. Although the season normally starts Dec. 1, early results showed that the crabs weren't meaty enough, delaying the season. Crabs must be 25 percent meat to reach the threshold.

Creps said fishermen have been offered $3 a pound, a substantial increase from last year's price of $1.75 a pound.

The delayed market may have played a role in the price.

The season has already opened in the San Francisco Bay Area, where parties agreed to a price of $2.25 a pound in late November after a two-week bargaining delay.

A Defender of World’s Whales Sees Only a Tenuous Recovery

12/11/11

Roger Payne first came to prominence more than 40 years ago, when he and a colleague made the discovery that whales sing eerily beautiful songs as a way of communicating. Their 1970 recording of whale sounds, Songs of the Humpback Whale, helped to galvanize the global anti-whaling movement, which led most countries to scrap their whaling fleets.

Payne, the founder of the conservation group, Ocean Alliance, has continued his groundbreaking work on whales, including recent landmark studies showing how whales worldwide have high levels of pollutants — including DDT — in their bodies. He also is continuing a 40-year study of more than 2,000 right whales in Argentina, identifying individual whales by the markings on their heads.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Christina Russo, Payne talked about current threats to the world’s whale populations, including the ongoing killing of whales by Japan and other nations — a practice he describes as inhumane. Payne also discussed the mystery of the songs sung by whales, whose haunting strains have the power, he says, to move people to tears.

Yale Environment 360: You’ve been studying whales for nearly half a century?

Roger Payne: Yes. I’ve been studying whales about 45 years.

e360: Do you ever come across educated, aware people who don’t realize that whaling is still taking place?

Payne: I would say most of them don’t realize it. And if they do realize that whaling is taking place, they are very pleased that there is a moratorium and that whaling is under control. And of course the truth of the matter is that whaling is completely under the control of the whalers — not the rest of the world. The rest of the world gets no chance to vote on it, even discuss it, set up any quotas or anything else. The whalers have won absolutely everything.

e360: When you first started studying whales in the 1960s, the chief threat to them was commercial whaling. About 33,000 great whales at that time were killed annually. The 1986 moratorium made a huge impact. But Norway, Iceland and Japan — among others — still whale. How many whales are killed now annually?

Payne: The numbers have been climbing steadily since the moratorium went into effect. At that time the total number killed was 185 whales. Two years ago it was 1,004.

Government should not be subsidizing GE salmon

12/21/11

Aan angler who has fished North Coast salmon streams for many years, I’m pleased that we are having relatively strong salmon returns this year. If nature cooperates with normal rainfall and good ocean conditions, and if we continue to invest in habitat restoration, we should see a meaningful improvement to our beleaguered salmon populations in the next few years. For the North Coast, that means more than just good news for the environment; it means jobs.

But just as we see some hope for the commercial and recreational fishing industries that depend on wild California salmon, a new threat is looming — not from dams, or sedimentation, or loss of habitat, but from a CanadianCorporation called AquaBounty which has invented a genetically engineered (“GE”) fish that crosses growth-hormone genes from an ocean pout with a Chinook salmon to dramatically increase the speed and size of the salmon’s growth.

For the past decade, AquaBounty has been trying to secure approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration to market and sell its proprietary GE fish as “salmon” in supermarkets and restaurants throughout the United States. If approved, it would be the first GE animal permitted for sale for human consumption.

Not surprisingly, this has sparked controversy and strong concerns from the scientific, environmental and consumer rights communities. One concern is that if the GE salmon escaped its pens, it could have devastating effects on wild salmon stocks. Another is that selling the GE fish as “salmon” would confuse consumers and undermine prices for the commercial salmon fishing industry.

Despite the controversy, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are working overtime to help AquaBounty. The USDA recently granted $500,000 to AquaBounty to do further research to perfect the engineered fish. This is on top of previous federal grants, now totaling nearly $3 million, to support the research and development of AquaBoun-ty’s GE salmon.

The latest grant comes despite the introduction of an amendment by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, to the 2012 Agriculture Appropriations bill that would prohibit the FDA from using its funding to approve the application for GE salmon, and a similar amendment by Rep.

Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska (supported by Rep. Mike Thompson) that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year. Until this legislation gets approved by the full House and Senate and signed by the president, federal agencies can continue to dole out public money to AquaBounty, so that is what they have decided to do.

Wild Pacific salmon are a critical natural, cultural and economic resource for California and other Northwest states. Yet many salmon runs in California and the Pacific Northwest have gone extinct, and many more are at risk of extinction. And just last month, a lethal and contagious salmon infection originating from farmed salmon was found in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest, stirring concern that neighboring salmon populations, including here in California, could be vulnerable to infection.

There is a dire need for research to protect our wild salmon populations, and $3 million could certainly help.

Unfortunately, the FDA seems bent on not only subsidizing but approving AquaBounty’s GE salmon application. That approval will affect Californians’ consumer confidence and their pocketbooks, and it could devastate our commercial salmon fishing industry.

Consumers would have no way to tell whether the “salmon” they purchase is genetically engineered. That’s because the federal government is not requiring AquaBounty to label its product.

This is why I wrote Assembly Bill 88, which requires a label on all GE salmon sold in California — just as Alaska law currently requires — so that consumers can make informed choices. Frankly, if California was not federally pre-empted from doing so, I would introduce legislation, similar to the Murkowski/Woolsey/Young amendments, to ban GE salmon. Short of that, we should at least make sure GE salmon is properly labeled so that consumers know what they are getting.

Our government should not be underwriting the business activities of private corporations like AquaBounty, especially in light of the pending application for FDA approval and the controversy and environmental risk posed by GE salmon. Here in California, requiring proper labeling of this dubious product is the best we can do.

AB 88 will be heard in January when the Assembly reconvenes for session. Please write to members of the Assembly Appropriations Committee and urge them to approve AB 88, or contact my office at 415-479-4920 for information on how you can help ensure passage of this important legislation.

Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, chairs the Assembly Water, Parks & Wildlife Committee and is a candidate for the newly created 2nd Congressional District along the North Coast.