Taylor Shellfish hatchery worker Paul Weinstein wheels flasks from a sterile room that contain the starts of algae and diatoms, which will be grown at the hatchery and used as food for shellfish, Saturday, July 31, 2010. STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

By Craig Welch, Seattle Times environment reporter
July 31, 2010 at 8:36 PM DABOB BAY, Hood Canal — Inside the burbling tubs of the Taylor Shellfish hatchery here, oysters are incubating once again. But no one believes things are really back to normal. Several years after oyster larvae around the Northwest began dying by the billions, hatcheries like this one are again ramping up production. But that’s just because they’ve learned to avoid pumping in problem seawater. Few know better than Northwest oyster growers that ecological upheaval is still rattling their industry — and that it may be a sign of greater marine-world shifts to come. Pacific oysters in the wild on Washington’s coast haven’t reproduced in six seasons. Scientists suspect ocean-chemistry changes linked to the fossil-fuel emissions that cause global warming are helping kill these juvenile shellfish. The oceans are becoming more acidic, and that corrosive water is finding its way into Puget Sound. … “What I’m most worried about is the bottom of the food chain,” things such as plankton and other small sea creatures, said John Guinotte, a marine biogeographer with the Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue. “We’ve got some of the lowest pH levels found anywhere, but we don’t have any idea what the biological impacts are.” …  In Dabob Bay, Taylor Shellfish hatchery technician Jason Brush pulled some 10 million microscopic larvae from a tank, strained the black goo and packaged them for sale. The hatchery is having one of its best years, but people here attribute that to luck. The facility grows oysters in seawater drawn off Dabob’s surface. But this year, south breezes have kept corrosive waters down deep, far below where Taylor slurps up its water. “We basically think we’re being saved by the wind,” said chief hatchery scientist Benoit Eudeline. …

Acidification threatens wide swath of sea life via Ocean Acidification