Oysters Dying In The Millions Off France's Norman & Med. Coasts - Independent

[hatrack]

Baby oysters are dying in their millions along the French coast from Normandy to the Mediterranean, puzzling scientists and plunging France's shellfish industry into crisis.


On some parts of the Norman and Mediterranean coast, the entire one-year-old "class" of juvenile oysters, due to be eaten by Christmas 2009, has died in the space of a few days. A number of theories have been put forward by marine biologists and oyster farmers, mostly linked to a slight rise in the temperature of the seas around western Europe this summer. Has some form of toxic algae reached French waters? If so, why are adolescent and adult oysters apparently unaffected? Are rapid changes in water temperature damaging to baby oysters? If so, why are some oyster parcs, or beds, devastated while others nearby are relatively immune?

One theory is that the warmer sea water – up to 1C higher than normal – has generated abnormal quantities of the microscopic plankton eaten by oysters. The baby shellfish, aged from 12 to 18 months, may have been dying of over-eating.

The French Agriculture and Fisheries minister, Michel Barnier, has commissioned the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) to "mobilise all its resources" to identify the cause or, more likely, combination of causes. The government is expected to announce emergency aid to oyster producers to enable them to buy new oyster fry or "larva".

"The losses run to tens of millions of euros," said Joseph Costard, an oyster producer at Saint-Vaast in Normandy and president of the Norman association of shellfish producers. "We are going to have to change completely the way we do things and spread out the harvesting of the over two or three seasons."

EDIT

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mystery-plague-set-to-wipe-out-frances-crop-of-baby-oysters-872828.html

[Tuesday Afternoon]

1. This is sad.

so.damn.sad.