Transcript for:
Oyster Farming and Climate Change Challenges

[Music] [Music] I used to go down with my mom and pack oysters right off the table with her when I was a kid they put a little stool up there and I'd get my own little set of gloves and I'd get to sort and pack oysters and to me it was like like the most fun thing to do ever [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] there's lots of small generational businesses that have um lived off of the oyster industry here in wola Bay for generations and generations it's really deep in the history and then the type of people that live here we're oer from clam farmers and that's about it that's all we do here that's the environment that that we have something happened in 2008 that we didn't quite understand and that was hatcheries that normally would start in the spring uh notice the larvey dying in their tanks huge mortalities and we weren't we weren't getting the seed we needed everyone was concerned as to as to what was going on what the oceanographers had told us this was actually one of the effects of of global warming um you're seeing a pH shift in the ocean it's more evident off of our Coast because of the upwelling that occurs during the summer months when the northwest wind blows [Music] uh without oyster seed the farm would slowly die it's a three-year tomarket product we could survive for a few more years but not having that oyster seed would be just prolonging death of the business more or less death of our farm and my father at that point decided that there's been some studies that were going on and that this was going to be something that was going to keep on occurring so we we started a hatchery over in Hilo Hawaii it was a big gamble in starting a hatchery and branching out and going to a different local but I just felt that's what that's what made the most sense for me to do [Music] [Music] the difference between us in like General Society is that we see the impact that it has we're probably um the first one that is raising our hand saying it's here it's real we see this so for us we have to be very proactive and we have to watch it and we have to monitor it to make sure that our business doesn't get put in a predicament in the future where we won't be able to have a healthy Farm [Music] n [Music]