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North Carolina Sea Grant (my current employer) has a little educational DVD called The Amazing Oyster. In it, oysters are touted almost as the miracle beast. They filter plankton and maintain water quality… provide crucial habitat and food for fish and other marine life… they’re harvested and cultured as valuable seafood…
And now, oysters also provide jobs.
I spent last Tuesday out on Cedar Island, North Carolina participating in a media outing put together by the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries, showcasing a federal economic stimulus project that’s creating jobs through oyster reef restoration efforts. Commercial fishermen and contractors are being paid to add oyster shell and rock substrate into inshore waters, to attract the planktonic larvae of oysters (much like how artificial coral reefs attract coral larvae).
Organizers say that the $5 million funding adds thousands of job hours to the Pamlico Sound economy, and biologists hope that the eventual reefs will serve as metapopulation sources for oyster populations throughout the sound.
For me, it was a gorgeous day out on the water. Click through the Facebook link for the photo essay I compiled at the end of the day. I would’ve live tweeted, but I could only shake my fist at AT&T, whilst the Verizon user next to me tweeted on our boat ride in the middle of the marshy bay…
I edited this clip from a recent American Scientist talk at Sigma Xi, in Research Triangle Park, N.C. David Eggleston is a marine ecology professor at North Carolina State University who works on blue crabs, oysters, and other economically important fauna.
Footage taken with the Flip Ultra I received at ScienceOnline2010. The audio is nice and crisp because of a professional recording by Elsa Youngsteadt of Sigma Xi (coincidentally also a AAAS Mass Media alum).
AUGUSTA, ME – Removing a 162-year old hydroelectric dam has improved a Maine community’s sportsfishing industry, and may be adding up to $43 million dollars annually to its economy, according to a new study by economists at Bates College.
Lynne Lewis, a professor at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, determined that removal of the Edwards Dam near Augusta, Maine, has made the local waters more attractive to recreational anglers, who notice greater numbers and types of fish. At the same time, residents and tourists are now willing to pay more to visit the area for fishing. The study, among the first examining fisheries post-dam removal, was published in the December 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Water Resources Association.
Abstract
Growing empirical evidence suggest that spawning salmon populations provide measurable nutrient flows back to riparian forest systems, further complicating the dilemma of optimizing harvest management of both timber and fisheries in salmon-rearing watersheds. Such a co-dependent relationship between these two high-value resources begs reconsideration of existing resource management strategies, where frequently timber production is prioritized. Here, I review recent research on salmon benefits to forest growth, all of which focus on the Pacific Northwest region of North America and the endemic timber and salmon species. Additionally, I consider the implications from this ecological co-dependency for existing timber harvest and conservation payment policies. As an example, I apply them to the findings by Zorbrist and Lippke (2007) on Oregon and Washington riparian timber harvesting limits for fish protection, whose economic analysis predict that such restrictions decrease soil expectation value for small landowners.
Keywords: ecosystem services, salmon, marine-derived nutrients, forestry economics
Submitted as an economics course term paper on 2008/12/14. This report has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
