Shift in Pacific’s chemistry may be killing sea life

Published July 3, 2009, 9:15 pm, Richmond Times-Dispatch

WILLAPA BAY, Wash.—The collapse began rather unspectacularly. In 2005, when most of the millions of Pacific oysters in this tree-lined estuary failed to reproduce, Washington’s shellfish growers largely shrugged it off. In a region that provides one-sixth of the nation’s oysters—the epicenter of the West Coast’s $111 million oyster industry—everyone knows nature can be fickle.

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