CO2 Turns Puget Sound Acidic And Region’s Oysters Struggle To Survive

"Bill Taylor’s first memory is of falling out of a boat at about age 3.

Taylor’s father was working the family shellfish farm in the chill waters of Puget Sound, Washington’s scenic inland sea, with his young son in tow. It all happened pretty fast, but fortunately Taylor’s dad plucked him out of danger’s way.

Nearly 60 years later, Bill Taylor is trying to figure out how to rescue his family’s fifth-generation shellfish-farming operation from an ocean that’s turning more acidic due to global climate change. This save is going to be a lot harder.

It’s a calamity that threatens Washington state’s $270-million-a-year shellfish industry. And it has the Taylors — after a century-plus producing shellfish in the Evergreen State — exploring every potential angle to steel their mollusks against the corrosive effects of ocean acidification."

Lisa Stiffler reports for Investigate West July 10, 2017.