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Certifiable Intertidal Anguiologist
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Somewhere between OOB & west of Watch Hill
Posts: 35,270
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Interesting and scary if true article...
Interesting Times article...
>
> Warming Waters and Dying Lobsters
>
> November 9, 2002
> By KIRK JOHNSON
>
> STONY BROOK, N.Y. - The first clue that something had once
> again gone seriously wrong in Long Island Sound was the
> color of the blood being spilled. Lobsters are not supposed
> to bleed orange.
>
> But it was the timing that really piqued Alistair D. M.
> Dove's interest. Orange-blooded lobsters began showing up
> in his pathology lab here at the State University of New
> York in mid-August, the very week researchers reported a
> sudden increase in the Sound's water temperature after a
> year of record-breaking warm weather.
>
> Through 20 subsequent autopsies, a pattern emerged. The
> animals had been killed by a buildup of calcium, the rough
> equivalent of kidney stones in humans, and all the evidence
> pointed to one cause: water so warm that it was impairing
> their ability to process minerals. The lobsters were dying
> from the stress of an environment that had become hostile
> to their ancient internal thermostats, Dr. Dove concluded.
>
> "The correlation is very strong," he said. "Not proven,
> but strong. Climate is the killer here."
>
> Dr. Dove's words are cautious. There is, as he points out,
> no airtight proof that warmer water is at the root of the
> precipitous decline in Long Island Sound lobsters over the
> last three years. Some researchers, along with many people
> in the lobster fishing industry, still say that the main
> culprits are pesticides, which were sprayed in the Sound's
> watershed areas to combat mosquitoes bearing the West Nile
> virus.
>
> But many scientists say Dr. Dove's work adds significant
> weight to the argument that warmer waters caused by climate
> change are the cause. If he is right, the implications are
> ominous for the Sound's lobsters and lobster fishermen:
> unlike pollution or pesticides, temperature is a problem
> without an easy cure, or a villain to hold accountable.
>
> "If Long Island Sound is becoming inhospitable for lobsters
> or other animals because water temperature is too high,
> that means they're not going to stay there and there's
> nothing anybody is going to do about it," said Gordon
> Colvin, the director of marine resources for the New York
> State Department of Environmental Conservation.
>
> Science has learned a lot about lobsters since a severe
> die-off battered the Sound's lobster population in 1999.
>
> Altogether, 17 research projects are under way, including
> the marine animal disease lab at Stony Brook that Dr. Dove,
> a pathologist and senior research associate on assignment
> from Cornell University, was hired this year to help
> create.
>
> This invasion of lobster science is allowing researchers to
> find calcium stones the size of sand grains (which, by the
> way, do not pose any known threat to people who eat
> lobsters), and it also enables them to see the broader
> pattern. In 1999 and again this year, water temperatures at
> the bottom of the Sound where lobsters live reached their
> highest sustained levels of the last 10 years, researchers
> said, surpassing the lobsters' so-called thermal limit of
> about 69 degrees Fahrenheit.
>
> And in both years, rather the way fever signals the flu,
> overly warm water was clearly associated with the onset of
> disease. The immediate cause of death in 1999 is still
> being investigated, but is believed to be a parasite called
> paramoeba; this year it is a calcium buildup, called
> calcinosis. Through whatever combination of problems, the
> Sound's lobster harvest is off by 10 percent or more in
> many fishing areas compared with last year. Dr. Dove and
> other researchers have prepared a paper on this year's
> problems for Diseases of Aquatic Organisms, a journal, and
> are also working on a paper on the larger climate
> connections.
>
> Other people say the warm-water explanation has been
> bolstered by default because scientists looking into the
> leading alternative theory for the 1999 disaster, pesticide
> poisoning from the mosquito-spraying program, have so far
> come up short in their search for proof.
>
> "There are researchers who are sure it was pesticide - and
> the lobster fishermen are sure - but personally I now think
> there's very little chance," said Jack Mattice, the
> director of the New York Sea Grant Institute, which is
> helping oversee the lobster research. "I believe that it
> was primarily temperature, and I think most people would
> probably say that temperature was a direct or indirect
> cause."
>
> Other scientists insist that the 1999 mystery remains
> unsolved. Long Island Sound, they say, has always been at
> the temperature frontier for the American lobster, which
> generally prefers the colder waters off New England. The
> Sound's lobster population had also exploded to record
> highs in the late 1990's, perhaps precipitating a natural
> crash from heightened competition for food. An oxygen
> deficiency in the water, called hypoxia, was severe that
> year.
>
> As in some tangled mystery story, there is no shortage of
> suspects. In the central and eastern sections of the Sound,
> the lobster catch is still down as much as 60 percent,
> compared with 1998. In the western end, where the
> devastation was greatest, the lobster harvest is about
> one-tenth what it was.
>
> Few scientists say that warmer water alone accounts for the
> lobsters' decline, and some, including Dr. Dove, say that a
> pesticide explanation for the 1999 die-off may still be
> compatible with the warm water hypothesis. Stress from high
> temperatures, they say, may suppress lobster immunity
> systems, making them more susceptible to poisons or
> diseases they could otherwise fight off.
>
> In an environmental impact study of West Nile spraying
> programs, New York City's health department said last year
> that pesticides applied just before a major storm could
> produce crustacean deaths in the bays where rainwaters
> drain. The 1999 lobster deaths occurred right after
> Hurricane Floyd hit the region, and some scientists, along
> with the lawyers representing a group of lobster fishermen
> who are suing four pesticide companies, say that the timing
> is too close to be coincidental.
>
> "They were able to withstand pollution in the past, and
> this time they didn't," said Lance Stewart, an associate
> extension professor at the University of Connecticut who
> has studied the Sound's lobsters for more than 25 years and
> who believes that pesticides played a role.
>
> Other people, including at least one of Dr. Stewart's
> colleagues at the University of Connecticut, are looking at
> the same set of facts and reaching a different conclusion
> altogether. Richard French, an associate professor of
> veterinary pathology, and one of the leading researchers
> into the 1999 die-off, said he thought that pesticide
> poisoning did not fit the geographic or timing pattern of
> the lobster deaths in 1999. High water temperatures, he
> said, do fit the facts.
>
> "When temperatures are elevated a lot of other things
> change; there's also growth in algae, and that depletes
> oxygen on the ocean floor, and that brings in hydrogen
> sulfides and other ions into the water, and changes the
> whole chemistry," he said. "When everything is lined up,
> disease breaks."
>
> Lobster fishermen say the main characteristic of the 1999
> die-off was its suddenness. This year, despite a supposedly
> similar pattern, they say, the problem has been incremental
> and chronic.
>
> "We just want our fishery back, but it doesn't appear we're
> going to get it back," said Nick Crismale, the president of
> the Connecticut Commercial Lobstermen's Association. Mr.
> Crismale is also a plaintiff in the pesticide industry
> lawsuit. "Seems to me the only people making out on this
> are the researchers," he added. "The researchers get the
> grants, and the lobstermen get nothing."
>
> Back in the lab, Dr. Dove said he had still not been able
> to figure out the exact connection between the calcium
> stones and the altered color of the lobsters' blood. Pale
> pink, clear or even green can be normal for lobsters
> depending on the time of year and the sex of the animal.
> Orange remains a mystery.
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