"New Hampshire Looks for Answers Behind Oyster Outbreaks"

"DURHAM, N.H. --  For the past 25 years, researcher Stephen Jones has tried to understand the threat that bacteria may pose to oysters in New Hampshire's Great Bay estuary. He often couldn't get funding to study the problem. But that is beginning to change as scientists notice 'something is going on.'

Scientists are recognizing that a waterborne disease sickening tens of thousands of people each year is associated with warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico moving northward, partly due to climate change. The problem is extremely rare in New Hampshire and neighboring Maine, but scientists have seen cases elsewhere in New England and expect it to become a bigger problem.

'We have this situation in the northern part of the United States and other cooler climates where people haven't thought this had been a problem,' said Jones, of the Northeast Center for Vibrio Disease and Ecology at the University of New Hampshire. 'In the last 10 or 20 years, it's become very apparent that there is something going on.'"

Michael Casey reports for the Associated Press December 4, 2016.