Our mission is to protect the habitat of Puget Sound tidelands from the underregulated expansion of new and intensive shellfish aquaculture methods. These methods were never anticipated when the Shoreline Management Act was passed. They are transforming the natural tideland ecosystems in Puget Sound and are resulting in a fractured shoreline habitat. In South Puget Sound much of this has been done with few if any meaningful shoreline permits and with limited public input. It is exactly what the Shoreline Management Act was intended to prevent.

Get involved and contact your elected officials to let them you do not support aquaculture's industrial transformation of Puget Sound's tidelands.

Governor Inslee:

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Washington Mussels Send Seven to the Hospital

Seven people were hospitalized after consuming mussels harvested from Discovery Bay. In this case it was not a bacteria in the shellfish but an algae named Alexandrium, filtered and retained by the shellfish, which produces deadly neurotoxins. If neurotoxin levels are high enough, shellfish which are consumed cause Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP). Cooking does not remove the neurotoxins. In the case of the seven hospitalized one had to be placed on a ventilator. [read article here]

Alexandrium
 
Nutrients in deep sea upwellings flowing into Puget Sound and warming water temperatures from global climate change will likely lead to increasing problems from this deadly form of phytoplankton. Combined with increasing illnesses from Puget Sound shellfish which have filtered and retained vibrio, it appears we have in fact crossed an environmental threshold and are entering into unknown waters.
 

Posted by Protect Our Shoreline at 9:22 PM

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