Carbon and Crabs
Carbon pollution may be giving the Chesapeake Bay bigger crabs but it makes for smaller oysters.
And oysters are the stuff of a good meal for a crab.
Justin Baker Reis, a marine geologist at the University of North Carolina’s Aquarium Research Center said recently that higher levels of carbon in the ocean are causing the oysters to grow slower while their predators such as blue crab grow faster.
The Wilmington News Journal reports that over the next 75-to-100 years ocean acidification could dramatically increase the size of blue crabs throwing the food chain of the nation’s largest estuary out of whack.
In addition, it could undermine the multi-million dollar efforts by Virginia and Maryland to bring back both creatures after a dramatic decline.
Shell Replenishment
It is called “No Shell Left Behind”.
The measure passed by the Maryland General Assembly is an oyster recycling tax credit that is hoped will produce more empty shells by hatcheries to replenish the oyster population.
The law provides a dollar a bushel tax credit for recycled oyster shells up to $750 a year.
The Oyster Recovery Partnership says it has recycled more than 12-hundred tons of shell over the last four years.
But WBOC reports that is only about 15 percent of the state’s annual needs.
North Carolina has a similar $1-dollar a bushel tax credit.
