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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2015
Algae: Crab ¿ shermen are bracing for a tough season
Continued from Page 1A
the lobster population, studies
have found.
“I don’t have a crystal ball,
but I think we’re being given a
warning here,” said Vera Trainer,
who manages the marine bio-
toxin program at the Northwest
Fisheries Science Center in Seat-
tle. “We’re being shown what the
future is going to look like. This
is more of what we can expect.”
Razor clams, for now, have
been taken off menus in Oregon
and Washington. Shell¿ sh man-
agers have closed recreational
digs after ¿ nding dangerous
levels of domoic acid in the bi-
valves. Those closures have cost
an estimated $22 million in tour-
ism-related spending, said Dan
$yres, coastal shell¿ sh manager
for the Washington Department
of Fish and Wildlife.
Crabbing was also closed
along parts of the Washington
coast over the summer, though
crabbing continued in the Puget
Sound.
0att +unter, shell¿ sh proM-
ect leader with the Oregon De-
partment of Fish and Wildlife,
said crabbing is huge ¿ shery in
the state and any closure will
have “trickle-down effect on the
economy, not only on the coastal
communities.”
Crab can still be found in
many restaurants and stores,
including San Francisco’s Fish-
erman’s Wharf, and health of-
¿ cials say crabs sold in stores
are safe to eat. Some crab on
the market now may have been
harvested months ago and fro-
zen for later; commercial crab
¿ shing is currently open in some
parts of Alaska, Oregon and
Puget Sound.
Tough season
In California, crab ¿ shermen
are bracing for a tough season.
“Needless to say, this is dev-
astating,” said Steve Fitz, who
Eric Risberg/AP Photo
Crab pots are stacked along a pier at Fisherman’s Wharf
in San Francisco.
owns Mr. Morgan Fisheries in
Half Moon Bay. Crab represents
the bulk of annual income for
many in the ¿ shing community,
he said. Still, he’s optimistic that
toxin levels will go down and
the season will open soon.
Restaurants and customers
say they’ll adMust their habits.
“It’s a disappointment be-
cause we really look forward to
it every November,” said Matt
Watson, manager of Wood-
house Fish Co. in San Francis-
co, which will do its best to get
whole crab at a reasonable price
from other states.
Kris Ducker, who grew up in
California, looks forward to her
family’s holiday tradition: eating
crab served ice cold, cracked,
with a side of sourdough bread.
Even though she now lives in
Texas, she still tries to ¿ nd fresh
Dungeness crab.
“We’re looking forward
to having Dungeness crab for
Christmas Eve. We could move
on to something else. It wouldn’t
kill us, but we would be sad,”
she said.
Scientists say the warm wa-
ters that fostered the massive
toxic algae bloom off the West
Coast this year is more likely a
short-term climate event than
one attributed to climate change.
“Whether this warming itself
is a direct function of climate
change or not, we can’t say,”
said Mark Wells, an oceanog-
raphy professor in the School
of Marine Sciences at the Uni-
versity of Maine. However, the
climate change models proMect
warming along the coastlines
over the next several decades,
so “this type of event probably
is going to become much more
frequent in the future.”
On the Northeast coast, sci-
entists have documented shifts
in species as the result of warm-
er waters and that’s meant some
changes in what is caught and
where.
“We see lots of shifting go-
ing on,” said Richard Merrick,
NOAA Fisheries chief science
adviser. Signi¿ cant ¿ sh stocks
have been shifting northward
and deeper into cooler waters
along the Northwest Atlantic
Ocean, he noted. The New En-
gland cod ¿ shery collapsed but
haddock ¿ shing has gone up as
¿ shermen switched, he said.
Another study found that
warming seas will likely send
West Coast ¿ sh species north-
ward by about 20 miles a decade,
and some species probably will
disappear from southern ranges
off California and Oregon.
FFA: Membership nationwide is at an all-time high
FFA membership
nationwide
Continued from Page 1A
sciences degree at Oregon
State University and going
to work there full-time after
graduation.
Today, she is the Oregon
FFA’s associate director of
programs, handling career de-
velopment, membership and
awards and helping out at the
state fair.
“I felt the need to give back,”
she said. “The organization had
done so much for me when I
was in high school. I really attri-
bute all of my success to FFA.
… I really believe in everything
FFA does for students.”
As a student who was drawn
to FFA by its practical hands-
on activities, Kraxberger is a
testament to the growth of the
87-year-old national organiza-
tion formerly known as Future
Farmers of America.
Record membership
FFA’s membership nation-
wide is at an all-time high,
with 629,367 participants in the
2014-15 academic year com-
pared to 490,017 a decade ago,
according to Kristy Meyer, the
spokeswoman at the national
FFA headquarters in Indianap-
olis.
Participation in FFA has
been trending upward through-
out the West, too. In California,
there were 79,526 members in
2014-15, up from 64,201 a de-
cade earlier. Washington state’s
FFA ranks have increased from
5,802 in 2011-12 to 8,024 last
year. Membership has also been
increasing in Oregon and Idaho.
Started for high school stu-
dents who wanted to be produc-
tion farmers, FFA has broad-
ened its focus in recent decades
to encourage students who
aspire to become teachers, vet-
erinarians, scientists and other
professionals who interact with
agricultural industries.
In addition to hands-on
farming, FFA members learn
“soft skills” such as public
speaking, marketing and inter-
viewing for Mobs, Kraxberger
said.
“There’s something for
everyone in FFA,” she said.
“Something really cool that’s
been happening is that for peo-
ple in the city who don’t have
access to farms, maybe they’re
doing a science proMect related
to agriculture. … If it relates to
the environment or natural re-
sources, it’s very much FFA.”
Students and teachers say
this emphasis on building ca-
reer skills is a big reason for the
FFA’s burgeoning popularity.
The growth of agriculture ed-
ucation in schools, the contin-
ued involvement of alumni and
youngsters’ desire to avert a
future global food shortage are
also factors, they say.
“I think FFA is Must an amaz-
ing program that sets kids up
for success,” said Ally Rose
McDonald, a senior at Durham,
Calif., High School and the Cal-
ifornia FFA’s Superior Region
secretary. “It truly opens doors.
It gives you an opportunity to
see what kind of agricultural
¿ elds you’d like to pursue.
“I think FFA gives you the
tools to be con¿ dent and suc-
cessful in talking to other peo-
ple,” she said. “Those are tools
that are going to be necessary
throughout your life.”
Bucking the trend
FFA’s growth has come as
629,267: Up
28.4% from
2004-05
(Thousands of members)
523.3 540.4
495 500.8 507.8 506.2
490
2004-05
Tim Hearden/Capital Press
FFA members from Northern California await a series of
competitions Oct. 15 at Shasta College in Redding, Calif.
FFA membership nationwide has reached record levels.
participation in other youth pro-
grams for high school students
has seen a decline.
For instance, Boy Scouts
of America membership fell
7 percent last year, continu-
ing a decade-long decline, and
the number of Girl Scouts and
adult volunteers dropped by 6
percent, The Associated Press
reported. There were about 3.4
million Boy Scouts and adult
volunteers and about 2.8 mil-
lion Girl Scouts and volunteers
last year.
Youth team sports participa-
tion has also declined in the last
¿ ve years, according to a report
by the Sports and Fitness Indus-
try Association.
What makes FFA different is
its af¿ liation with high schools,
leaders say. A student might
start with an agriculture-related
class and become involved in
FFA’s extracurricular activities.
“I think we’re Must ahead
of the curve,” said Katy Teix-
eira, an Anderson, Calif., high
school adviser who was an FFA
member. “It gives kids an op-
portunity to travel and to learn
and compete at the state, nation-
al and international level.”
Jack Klaiber, a freshman at
Anderson, Calif., High School,
is in his ¿ rst year of FFA.
“At ¿ rst it was Must because
some of my friends were doing
it,” Klaiber said of his reason
for Moining. “As I started to at-
tend the events, I realized this
is something I want to put my
time into and it will be a great
thing for me.”
While Klaiber isn’t neces-
sarily planning a career in agri-
culture, “I’d still like it to be a
main part of my life,” he said.
Humble beginnings
Fostering farming careers
was the sole purpose when 33
students from 18 states gathered
at the American Royal Live-
stock Show in Kansas City to
form Future Farmers of Amer-
ica in 1928. The group elected
Leslie Applegate of Freehold,
N.J., as its ¿ rst president and
adopted its national emblem.
The national FFA was or-
ganized two years after Walter
S. Newman, Virginia’s state
supervisor of agriculture edu-
cation, worked with other ag
educators to start the Future
Farmers of Virginia to address
concerns that boys were losing
interest and leaving the farm,
FFA adopted its of¿ cial
creed in 1930 and introduced
its familiar blue corduroy Mack-
ets three years later. In 1965,
the FFA merged with a similar
organization for young African
Americans called New Farmers
of America, and girls gained
full membership privileges as
voting delegates in 1969.
In 1988, Future Farmers of
America changed its name to
the National FFA Organization
to reÀ ect the growing diversi-
ty of the agriculture industry,
according to the organization’s
website.
“One of the reasons for (the
change) was that FFA wasn’t
strictly about farming, it was
about agriculture as a whole,”
said Meyer, the organization’s
spokeswoman. “It was helping
to encompass the idea that ag-
riculture is something we em-
brace in every facet of our life.”
Today, all 50 states and
two U.S. territories are charter
members of the national organi-
zation, representing 7,757 local
chapters.
For each school chapter,
there are three components —
classroom instruction, hands-on
learning outside the classroom
and a leadership structure with
elected of¿ cers, Meyer said.
’06-07
’08-09
557.3
’10-11
Source: National FFA Organization
579.7
’12-13
610.2
2014-15
Alan Kenaga/Capital Press
of regular biology by the UC
and CSU systems, so a student
can take ag and not have to
worry about their access into
college.”
Moreover, ag mechanics
classes are growing “by leaps
and bounds” because teachers
of other technical programs
are retiring and leaving school
shops empty, and ag instructors
are teaching welding and oth-
er facets of equipment main-
tenance to take up the slack,
Aschwanden said.
“We turn out 75 (ag) teacher
candidates every year,” he said.
“The rest of the career tech ar-
eas combined don’t train that
many.”
Teachers’ passion
Additionally, students are
captivated by the sheer enthu-
siasm of instructors, said Abbie
DeMeerleer, the Washington
state FFA’s executive director.
“I think they appeal to stu-
dents and thereby FFA mem-
bership increases because those
teachers really care,” she said.
“They became ag teachers be-
cause it’s a passion for them.
They want to see agriculture
succeed, and they want to see
the future of our food, ¿ ber
and natural resource profession
strong and well-positioned.
And they share that passion
with their students.”
McDonald, the Durham
High School student, agrees.
She said advisers get young-
sters excited about FFA.
“I think FFA is Must an amaz-
ing program that sets kids up
for success,” McDonald said.
Finally, teenagers — partic-
ularly ones in urban chapters —
are interested in learning about
food production, the organiza-
tion’s leaders say.
“I think, too, that this gener-
ation has a desire really to help
society, and they know it’s real-
ly important to feed the world,”
Meyer said.
While FFA has expanded
from production agriculture to
include other career skills, the
organization will “stay true to
the farming aspect,” Oregon’s
Kraxberger said.
Meyer agrees: “I think we’re
going to continue down the path
we’re on and really encourage
students to understand their key
role in the world today.”
Ag education push
In some states, FFA’s mem-
bership ranks have been helped
by a push for more ag educa-
tion. In Idaho, state FFA execu-
tive director Casey Zufelt cred-
its the legislature’s agricultural
education initiative, passed in
2014, with getting students in-
volved.
In June, a record number of
students — more than 960 —
competed in state career devel-
opment events at the University
of Idaho campus in Moscow.
Idaho FFA boasted 4,372 mem-
bers during the last school year,
up from 3,965 in 2013-2014.
“In our state, we’ve had a re-
ally neat energy going on with
the Ag Ed Initiative,” which
provides about $2 million more
in annual funding for secondary
ag education in Idaho, Zufelt
said. “It was a grass-roots effort
from teachers a couple of years
ago who decided to take some
action in improving the quality
of the programs and bringing
more money to the program as
well. … That energy translates
to the students.”
In California, FFA execu-
tive director Jim Aschwanden
expects the state’s membership
to cross the 80,000 threshold
this year. One big reason for
the increased interest may be
that ag teachers have pushed for
recognition of their classes as
meeting entrance requirements
for University of California
and California State University
campuses, he said.
“About 45 percent of the
classes offered in our ag pro-
gram meet UC and CSU en-
trance requirements one way
or another,” said Aschwanden,
who is also executive director
of the California Agricultural
Teachers Association. “Our
integrated ag biology courses
are viewed as the equivalent
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