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California Sea Grant Extension Specialist Luke Gardner leads a project to explore whether adding California-grown seaweeds to cattle feed could help reduce methane emissions. Scientists at Moss Landing Marine Labs aquaculture center, where Gardner is based, hope that the project could help revitalize the dairy industry while simultaneously propelling the algal aquaculture industry and reducing U.S. dairies carbon emissions.
Luke Gardner, California Sea Grant Aquaculture Specialist at Moss Landing Marine Labs, notes that Hog Island Oysters must now raise the pH of their Humboldt Bay hatchery waters in order for their oyster seed to settle and grow. To support the industry, aquaculture center researchers are studying ways to buffer ocean acidity through integrated techniques where algae and shellfish grown together in multi-chamber recirculating tank networks. This research is critical, notes Gardner, because we are “rapidly approaching a time when shellfish growth will be impacted by ocean acidification.”
California Sea Grant, the research program that produced this year’s report, is compiling and analyzing the 195 comments — mostly from fishermen — received in the town hall sessions and subsequently by mail and email.
That analysis is expected to be released by February.
Paul Olin has spent his career in aquaculture, developing programs to raise shrimp, scallops and finfish. He is consulting with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife as it prepares the environmental review of aquaculture in state waters. In the meantime, he is looking to the federal oceans as the next possibility.
Working with the port of Ventura, Olin is helping organize a project in which the port would lease 20 federal parcels of 100 acres each off the coast. The port, bearing the costs of permitting, would then lease the parcels to mussel farmers.
The benefit to the farmers is clear. But the port would also gain, Olin said, from the business the mussel farms would bring to a once-thriving working harbor that, like many along the Southern California coast, has been converted largely to tourism uses.
“We’ve seen a major shift in public sentiment — the social license — and government acceptance that this is the only way we’re going to produce the seafood we need,” said Olin, who hopes the Ventura project will be up and running within two years.
Recent research led by California Sea Grant Extension Specialist Mariska Obedzinski reveals that even small amounts of running water in coastal California streams can mean survival instead of death for juvenile coho salmon.
Three fish biologists from the group California Sea Grant climb into big black balloon-like dry suits, hop over fences and scurry down steep river banks, whacking away brush to get to the river bed.
They spit in their goggles to stop them from fogging up, check to make sure their field computers and flashlights are working, and prepare themselves for a face full of cold water.