Seen in the Press

Butterfly Beach in Montecito is popular among beachgoers. But 30 years from now, there won’t be much of it left to enjoy.

“You're going to have more hours a day where the waves are just lapping up onto the seawall,” said Monique Myers, a California Sea Grant researcher studying the vulnerability of Santa Barbara’s coast.

Purple sea urchings are mowing down California's kelp forests, a vital part of the ecosystem.

Luke Gardner, an aquaculture specialist with the California Sea Grant, had his students run a research trial on this problem. The goal was to make these urchins valuable by turning them into a delicacy.

In California, the native Olympia oyster — nearly wiped out by over-harvesting at the beginning of the 1900s — and the widely farmed Pacific oyster both call coastal estuaries their home.

But the two species may soon be facing a housing crisis prompted by climate change, as new research originating from UC Davis and published in Limnology and Oceanography suggests their habitat may soon shrink.

UC Davis environmental science and policy Professor Ted Grosholz led the study — funded by a California Sea Grant — with a team that included first author Jordan Hollarsmith, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Vancouver’s Simon-Frasier University in Canada.

A four-year academic study funded by California Sea Grant and conducted by lead researcher Ted Grosholz of UC Davis found that oyster habitats in bays and estuaries along the California coast can be impacted by climate change.

The study, conducted from 2014-17, was performed in Tomales Bay and the research found that the greatest impact on oysters occurred in the earliest stages of development, particularly when the oyster was ready to start forming its shell.

Even moderate changes in water temperature, acidity and dissolved oxygen make it harder for native and commercial oysters to grow their calcium-based shells, a situation that does not bode well for the future, concluded a paper published this week in the journal Limnology and Oceanography.

It means the severe climatic changes predicted as the Earth warms over the next few decades could dramatically shrink the habitat for both farmed oysters and the native species that scientists have been trying desperately to restore, said Ted Grosholz, a professor of environmental science who led the study with funding from California Sea Grant.

The current reward for commercial fishers’ sustainability efforts? Of the 7.1 billion pounds of seafood Americans eat annually, over 90 percent is imported. Theresa Talley, researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, published a report that found only eight percent of San Diego’s 86 seafood markets consistently carried local fish. This is bad news in many, many ways.