Here, now, is a primer on this sand burrowing bivalve.įirst off, it's pronounced "gooey duck." Contrary to what one might think, it's not related to a duck at all. has earned a reputation as one of the weirdest looking (it might make you blush) and most delicious mollusks to meet the American plate. Among these strange looking alien creatures, the geoduck of the Northwest Coastal U.S. Other recent publications from the research team cover the development of modeling tools useful for addressing changes in shellfish management in the South Sound and ocean acidification in coastal estuaries.įor more information, contact Ferriss at or 20 and McDonald at or 20.From microscopic plankton to intimidating, deep sea lantern fish, the creatures that live in the ocean are as varied and unfamiliar as if they lived on another planet. This study was undertaken by Washington Sea Grant, in part with funding from a 2013 state proviso to study possible effects of shellfish aquaculture on the environment. Other co-authors are Jonathan Reum of Washington Sea Grant Dara Farrell of UW mechanical engineering and Northwest Fisheries Science Center’s Chris Harvey, who developed the model. Further studies are needed to determine the potential impact of more aquaculture activities on specific areas of the Sound, they added. Though these results show that Puget Sound can generally support more geoduck aquaculture, if effectively managed, the model can’t drill down to specific inlets or bays and predict how organisms would react at a finer scale to increased farming, researchers said. Netting is stretched across PVC pipes on a geoduck farm in Case Inlet. “This is a starting point that can be used to help focus attention on certain aspects of the system, such as species of interest, to collect more empirical data and further test these model results,” said lead author Bridget Ferriss, who completed the research as a scientist at Washington Sea Grant and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the UW. Many of the animals and birds potentially affected in central Puget Sound also live in the South Sound, so it’s reasonable to expect some similar outcomes, they said. A similar model is being developed for the South Sound by an independent team and when it’s ready, the researchers hope to compare results in order to consider impacts to the broader Puget Sound region. The researchers, however, analyzed central Puget Sound for this study because the best model for predicting broader future impacts was built for the central basin alone. Most of the region’s current geoduck farming takes place in the South Sound. Meanwhile, the shellfish industry and local tribes wish to expand geoduck aquaculture throughout Puget Sound, and the state’s Department of Natural Resources recently approved a pilot leasing project on state-owned aquatic land. The researchers incorporated field observations from five years of studying geoduck farm conditions, then used the model to predict effects on the food web over 50 years if geoduck aquaculture increased. To reach these conclusions, a team of researchers from the University of Washington and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center used a robust, well-established modeling tool that examines relationships among many types of organisms in central Puget Sound. The study also found that under one scenario, geoduck farming in the main basin of Puget Sound could more than double before the ecosystem would feel significant impacts. That’s one of the findings of the first major scientific study to examine the broad, long-term ecosystem effects of geoduck aquaculture in Puget Sound, published last week in the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea’s Journal of Marine Science. A geoduck farm in Puget Sound’s Case Inlet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |