The federal government has taken action recently to reduce the amount of plastic waste found on land and in oceans, rivers and lakes.

In June, for example, it said it would ban single-use plastics by 2021. “It is tough to explain to your children why dead whales are washing up on our beaches with their stomachs jammed packed with plastic bags,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau commented at the time.

Despite this progress, one of the main plastic polluters — shellfish aquaculture — continues to threaten marine ecosystems.

Coastal British Columbia is rugged and jagged. Its drowned fjords are home to wild salmon and the ecosystems that depend on them. Tucked away between Vancouver and Denman islands is Baynes Sound, a serene inland sea, home to sea mammals, globally important duck and bird populations, and a biological diversity unmatched along our coast.

So unique is this ecosystem that, 20 years ago, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) recommended regions within this area be set aside as protected areas.

Threats to the sound include increased tourism, urbanization and an-as-yet-unregulated seaweed harvest. The greatest threat, however, is an expanding shellfish industry that provides a continual source of plastics to the sound.

Shellfish aquaculture

For the past 14 years, community beach cleanups have measured the plastic in Baynes Sound. An astonishing four to six tonnes of plastic debris, including anti-predator netting, plastics trays, ropes and styrofoam, is collected from the beaches annually. Now polyvinyl chloride (PVC) piping, used for the farming of geoducks is also being washed ashore.

Geoducks are native to the coastal waters of western Canada and the northwest United States. They are the largest burrowing clam in the world and are a delicacy in China, Korea, Japan and the Pacific Northwest. Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture / Flickr

In 2017, the DFO gave the West Coast shellfish industry a green light to expand its farming practices to include the lucrative geoduck, a luxury protein used in sashimi, to meet the demand from Hong Kong and the rest of China.

Geoducks (pronounced “gooey ducks”) are large salt-water clams, found naturally along the Pacific coast. Sales of farmed geoduck to this select market netted close to $56 million in 2017.

Geoduck Romesco at Taylor’s Shellfish in Seattle, Washington. Photo: T.Tseng / Flickr

Farming them involves placing juvenile geoducks into rows and rows of 18-inch long segments of PVC piping, planted vertically into the intertidal sediments, at a density of one pipe per square foot. Nets are secured with elastic bands over the pipe to protect the immature geoduck.

But the pipes become loose within days, especially after storm events, and the beach becomes littered with the plastic netting, elastics and pipes. Wave action and ultraviolet light from the sun degrade the pipes, creating fragments and then microplastics (items smaller than five millimetres in diametre) that further pollute the marine environment.

Ecosystem and health impacts

PVC is one of the most common plastic polymers in use, and its breakdown can damage ecosystem and human health.

The particles may harm invertebrates, fish, seabirds and other organisms that consume them. The chemicals in the plastic debris, including plasticizers, phthalates, flame retardants and stabilizers, can leach out of particles and have the potential to harm marine organisms. Finally, the pipe fragments can also act as a substrate, providing pathogenic marine organisms and parasites in near-shore environments with a place to grow and multiply.

“Canadians know first-hand the impacts of plastic pollution, and are tired of seeing their beaches, parks, streets and shorelines littered with plastic waste,” Trudeau said in a statement after he announced the single-use plastics ban.“We have a responsibility to work with our partners to reduce plastic pollution, protect the environment and create jobs and grow our economy. We owe it to our kids to keep the environment clean and safe for generations to come.”

So, why the paradox?

The government says it’s intent on protecting at least 10 per cent of our coastal ecosystems and reducing the threat of plastics to our marine environments. Yet the industry, which is managed by our federal government, has been given permission to introduce hazardous plastics into one of B.C.‘s most sensitive ecosystems.

Geoduck planting at the Deep Bay Marine Field Station biological research facility, operated by Vancouver Island University’s Centre for Shellfish Research in Bayes Sound, B.C. Photo: VIUDeepBay / Flickr

The ban on plastic holds consumers accountable. It targets their behaviour and will force change. But this is only part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is the industry practice of discharging dangerous plastics into sensitive ecosystems. Government is regulating a change in consumer behaviour. Why not do the same for industry?

If the government’s goal is to protect these sensitive marine ecosystems, it needs to stop the flow of plastics from industrial sources including the unregulated shellfish industry. The economic gain of farming sashimi for a select market is not worth the environmental cost.

Shelley McKeachie, a founding member, past chair and director of the Association for Denman Island Marine Stewards, co-authored this article.

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“Some people call it the elephant in the room. I like to call it the blue whale in the pool,” scientist Brian Kingzett told a room of naturalists this week. He was talking about the dramatic rise in ocean acidity along the B.C. coast.

As the Oceanside Star reports, Kingzett, field station manager for the Vancouver Island University Centre for Shellfish Research, met the Arrowsmith Naturalists at the Knox United Church to deliver a talk, Climate Change and Ocean Acidification.

“It’s going to sound a little doom and gloom,” he told the room. When it comes to recent discoveries about ocean acidity, Kingzett said he could hardly believe what he was seeing.

Scientists, Kingzett explained, traditionally haven’t spent much time measuring ocean acidity because levels have remained so consistent for nearly 300 million years. Yet when he began sampling water in and around the Strait of Georgia, Kingzett was so surprised by the results he asked fellow researchers along the Pacific Northwest to confirm them.

It was true: the region’s pH levels had dropped from an expected 8.0 to a staggering 7.57. The difference seems moderate, but each 0.1 decrease represents a whopping 25 per cent increase in acidity.

As a biologist and aquaculture expert, Kingzett said those acidity levels are a massive threat to shellfish.

“The water the small, shelled creatures are living in is actually corrosive,” he said. “Scientists aren’t sure where this is going. This is very much an emerging science,” the Oceanside Star quoted him as saying.

Kingzett was also surprised to find such high acidity levels within protected shorelines like Deep Bay on Vancouver Island’s inner coast.

Deep Bay is home to a 5,000-year-old shellfish industry. In February nearby Qualicum Scallops cut 30 per cent of its workforce after 10 million scallops were killed from high acid concentrations.

Kingzett said he expected increased acidity to affect the open ocean before changing the composition of waters in sheltered regions like Deep Bay. But thanks to polluted waters feeding the Fraser River, “some of the most acidic water is in the Strait of Georgia,” he said.

Google map showing Deep Bay in the Strait of Georgia.

Kingzett added that 2014 is projected to be the warmest year on earth since measurements began in 1881, with increasing pressure on the oceans to absorb excess carbon. This “changes the base chemistry of the ocean,” he said.

Increased levels of carbon in the water leads to the formation of carbonic acid that prevents calcium from binding, an essential step in the formation of shells.

Kingzett explained how ocean currents move around the globe like a ribbon, sometime carrying deep ocean water where acids concentrate to surface regions where there is a higher concentration of life.

Ocean currents take up to 40 years to circulate, so even if we were to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere, Kingzett said, acidic concentrate from the ocean’s depths will still continue to move to shore for another four decades.

“We’ve mailed ourselves a package we can’t refuse,” he said. “It’s a global problem that’s coming home and we really don’t know that the effects will be.”

“Everyone says the Earth is fragile. The Earth is not fragile at all. It will shake us off.”

Image Credit: Brian Kingzett via Casom.com

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This is a guest post by Caitlyn Vernon and Torrance Coste.

The February 25th headline, “10 million scallops are dead; company lays off staff,” hit British Columbians like a punch in the stomach. The shellfish industry has been an economic powerhouse on central Vancouver Island for decades, providing hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in revenue every year – over $30 million in average wholesale value. 

But when we talk about shellfish, we aren’t just talking jobs and economics. We are talking about food. Shellfish harvesting is one of our most robust local food systems, and the prospect of losing this industry makes us all feel, quite frankly, a little hungry.

Of the possible causes of the recent scallop die-off, ocean acidification seems the most likely. Ocean acidification is directly connected to climate change and to our runaway consumption of fossil fuels. In short, acidification occurs when carbon is absorbed into the ocean from the atmosphere, making the water more acidic. Acidification strips the ocean of carbonate ions, which marine species like scallops and oysters need to build their shells, therefore reducing the ability of these species to survive.

For years, groups like the B.C. Shellfish Growers Association have been raising the alarm about the verified threat of acidification to the shellfish industry.

Roberta Stevenson, the Association’s Executive Director, told us that the public and our elected decision-makers need to understand how serious the situation is for shellfish growers on B.C.’s coast. She said the significant economic benefits the industry provides could disappear if we don’t start to see the health of the oceans as an economic priority.

A major source of atmospheric carbon is the burning of fossil fuels: oil, coal, and gas. Here in B.C., we have a stake in important decisions over whether or not to build fossil fuel export infrastructure. The proposed Enbridge and Kinder Morgan pipelines, the prospective B.C. LNG industry, and the proposed Raven Coal Mine will all put much more carbon into the atmosphere, further acidifying the ocean and directly threatening the survival of shellfish species and coastal communities.

All these proposed projects need our consent. It’s important that we make the right choices and get on a path to a low-carbon future.

The recent scallop die-off is a clear illustration of what we will face if we don’t act now to reduce our carbon emissions. Climate change and ocean acidification will continue to have devastating consequences; not just for coastal economies, communities, and families, but for anyone who depends on the ocean as a source of food.

What’s more, coal, oil, and gas are finite resources, guaranteed to go bust when they run out, become too expensive, or when the environmental impacts are deemed not worth the risk. Any financial benefits we gain from extracting and exporting them will one day disappear completely. We will be left with the socio-economic hardship and lingering environmental problems well-known to many communities where boom-bust extractive industries have run their course.

By continuing to promote the extraction and export of coal, tar sands, and fracked gas instead of sustainable sectors in B.C., our government is making a political choice to prioritize short-term profits over renewable industries that can provide economic stability and contribute to viable, healthy communities over the long term.

We all deserve good jobs that don’t destroy our children’s future. For the sake of these shellfish and the families that depend on them, let’s work together to develop a smart and creative strategy to transition away from fossil fuels and toward a low carbon economy – with meaningful jobs in sustainable industries that don’t compromise ecosystems. A healthy coast is one with abundant food that can still be pulled from the ocean, as it always has been.

If we keep pumping carbon into our atmosphere we’re investing in an acidic ocean for decades if not centuries to come, and we’re forsaking the sustainable shellfish industry and the communities, businesses, and jobs it supports.

Caitlyn Vernon is Campaigns Director for Sierra Club B.C. Find her on twitter: @caitlynvernon. Torrance Coste is Vancouver Island Campaigner for the Wilderness Committee. Find him on twitter: @TorranceCoste.

This article originally appeared in the Times Colonist. Reprinted with permission.

Image Credit: The Scallop by 5k1nnyt1g3r via flickr.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.