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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 17, 2019)
A3 THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2019 Pacifi c Ocean acidifying at twice rate of global average Trend could spell trouble for shellfi sh farmers By KALE WILLIAMS The Oregonian The Pacifi c Ocean is acidifying at twice the rate of the rest of the world’s oceans, according to researchers, with poten- tially catastrophic effects on shellfi sheries. The fi ndings, pub- lished Monday in the jour- nal Nature Geoscience, were the product of a sev- en-year study led by Emily Osborne, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra- tion’s ocean acidifi cation program. Osborne began collecting samples of sediment from the Santa Barbara Basin off the coast of Southern Cali- fornia in 2013. Because the basin has little oxygen and a dearth of plants and animals, the ocean fl oor has remained relatively undisturbed. The sediment cores she pulled from the basin contained the shells of foraminifera, a sin- gle-celled plankton, dating back to 1895. After weighing and pho- tographing each specimen, Osborne was able to use the thickness of the shells to establish a 100-year record of pH levels in the waters of the California Current, which runs along the West Coast. She found that, since 1895, shell thickness had decreased by 20% due to increased ocean acidifi cation. “I started looking at the lowest, oldest parts of core and worked my way to top,” National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Emily Osborne, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, carries a sediment core taken off the coast of California. she said. “It was crazy to see visually how the shell changed throughout the core.” The ocean absorbs car- bon dioxide from the atmo- sphere, which reduces pH levels and concentrations of calcium carbonate, a min- eral used by shellfi sh to cal- cify their shells. As more carbon is released into the atmosphere, concentra- tions of calcium carbonate decrease and the shells of organisms like foraminifera get thinner, a trend Osborne saw clearly in the sediment cores she examined. “The shell thickness record instantly showed a long-term declining trend,” she said. “It was really obvi- ous across entire record.” That trend could spell trouble for shellfi sh farm- ers on the West Coast, who depend on calcium carbon- ate-rich waters for their oys- ters, clams and mussels to grow. In 2007, the Whiskey Creek Shellfi sh Hatchery in Hemp harvest swamps market By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press The surge of enthusi- asm that spurred a fi ve- fold expansion of Oregon’s hemp acreage this year has been dampened by numer- ous problems that prevented many farmers from cashing in on the crop. A shortage of equipment necessary to harvest, dry and process hemp has forced many growers to abandon fi elds they initially hoped would reap robust fi nancial rewards. “They got caught up in the grand illusion,” said Rick Kozen, a hemp entrepreneur whose Operation: Hemp Aid is helping distressed grow- ers. “It was almost set up for failure.” Expectations of strong revenues have often proven overly optimistic as the amount of hemp produced in Oregon and elsewhere has swamped the fl edgling infra- structure needed to make fi n- ished products available to potential buyers. “People heard there was a lot of money and they went into it fast and furious,” said Mark Taylor, founder of the Southern Oregon Hemp Co-Operative. “Poor plan- ning produces poor results in any commerce.” To compound the logisti- cal issues facing hemp farm- ers, ill-timed rain downpours, hail storms and freezing weather damaged the crop’s quality in certain areas. While the 2019 season was bitterly disappointing for some hemp farmers, the tur- bulence and uncertainty are unfortunate “growing pains” that likely won’t permanently hamper the industry’s poten- tial for profi t, experts say. “It’s going to be a little bumpy until the infrastruc- ture matures,” said Beau Whitney a senior economist at New Frontier Data who tracks the hemp industry. Regulatory and market factors converged to cause hemp acreage to surge in 2019. The crop was legalized at the federal level by the 2018 Farm Bill, convincing farm- ers that hemp could be grown without the same legal jeop- ardy as marijuana, the psy- choactive form of cannabis that remains illegal under federal law. At the same time, the marketplace saw a profu- sion of new food, beverage and cosmetic products con- taining cannabidiol, or CBD, which is a compound con- tained in hemp that’s touted for reducing infl ammation and possessing other health- ful qualities. Nearly 2,000 farmers planted about 64,000 acres of hemp in Oregon this year, up from fewer than 600 growers with about 11,750 acres in 2018, according to the Oregon Department of Agriculture. Farmers who were accus- tomed to earning a few hun- dred dollars per acre growing hay were inspired to switch to hemp after hearing about others earning $50,000 per acre in revenues from the crop, Taylor said. “Bragging has a funny effect on the market,” he said. “It can make people jump in without thinking.” An early problem to emerge was with hemp seeds that were advertised as being “feminized,” or altered to only germinate female plants that produce CBD-laden fl owers, said Kozen. In fact, some growers later found the seeds weren’t actually feminized, meaning that half of them grew male plants that caused problems with cross-pollination and unwanted seed production, he said. Farmers who grew widely spaced hemp plants on plas- tic-covered mounds — emu- lating techniques used for small-scale marijuana oper- ations — later found the method didn’t scale up to WANTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber Northwest Hardwoods • Longview, WA Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 bigger fi elds, he said. “It’s not conducive to har- vesting large crops,” said Kozen, who expects 40% of Oregon’s hemp acre- age went unharvested this year. “There’s no congru- ity in the industry, there’s no standard.” Once the 2019 crop was ready to harvest, many grow- ers discovered that machin- ery needed to reap, dry and bale hemp wasn’t as widely available as they’d been led to believe, said Jerry Norton, founder of American Hemp Seed Genetics. “We’ve had some bottle- necks,” Norton said. “A lot of people were sold a bill of goods.” Likewise, some pur- ported hemp brokers misrep- resented themselves as hav- ing existing deals to sell the crop to major processors and product manufacturers, when in fact such deals were only speculative or didn’t exist at all, said Whitney. Farmers who grew hemp based on such false prom- ises learned at harvest time that they didn’t actually have a market for their crops, he said. “There are a number of people out there who are just corrupt,” Whitney said. “It would put the cultivator into a false sense of security that their crop had been sold, then they had the carpet pulled out from under them.” The Astoria City Council wishes everyone a JOYOUS HOLIDAY SEASON! Enjoy the lights and holiday festivities while shopping Downtown Astoria! www.astoriadowntown.com FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 29 th - WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 1 st Customers can park downtown longer than the posted time limit, except in metered spaces. Netarts Bay on the Oregon Coast saw a catastrophic lar- val failure because of acidic conditions. Looking at the chemical composition of the shells, Osborne found that the type of carbon in the shells was indicative of carbon diox- ide absorbed from the atmo- sphere, the same greenhouse gas that is driving changes to the climate across Oregon and around the globe. A 2015 survey of shell- fi sh farmers, conducted by Oregon State University, found that 75% of those asked reported some level of concern over ocean acidifi - cation. Of those respondents who said they have been affected by ocean acidifi ca- tion, 97% reported fi nancial damage, while 68% cited emotional stress. The record also showed evidence of natural variabil- ity, she said. The pH levels rose and fell with natural phenomenon like El Niño and the Pacifi c Decadal OREGON CAPITAL INSIDER Oscillation, a longer-term pattern of warming and cooling ocean waters. Those natural changes will off- set effects of ocean acidi- fi cation in some years, but amplify it in others. “We now know that the Pacifi c Decadal Oscillation can intensify or alleviate (ocean acidifi cation) in this region,” Osborne said. “For those large swings to also have a human imprint, it’s going to make the extremes more extreme.” We’re investing in Salem coverage when other news organizations are cutting back. Get the inside scoop on state government and politics! Merry C HRISTMAS from for Visit Ch ou ris r G tm ift as Sh Pre op se nts ! Check out our website for a full list of upcoming events and year-round activities! Indoor pool and hot tub Outdoor pool Jumping Pillow Mini golf Playgrounds Rental bikes Basketball Family movies Board games Ping-Pong Pool tables Arcade games Enjoy themed weekends throughout the year and organized games/crafts all summer long. Step outside your door and discover the beauty of coastal nature at its finest. 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