A New Lawsuit Blames the Trump Administration for Ruining Oysters

By failing to document the effects of acidification in coastal waters

Larry Zhou/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

In 2007, the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in Tillamook, Oregon lost 75 percent of its oyster larvae. The oyster farmers initially thought it was disease, but that didn’t explain the monumental loss. With help from scientists, they finally pieced together the culprit: The ocean had absorbed an increasing amount of carbon dioxide from the air, changing the water’s pH to make it more acidic.

The problem of ocean acidification has only grown in the state’s coastal waters in the years since, as a recent report by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife documents. Now, the conservation nonprofit the Center for Biological Diversity is suing the Trump administration for failing to recognize the effects of ocean acidification on the marine animals and shellfish along the Oregon coast.

Ever since the Industrial Revolution encouraged people to rely more and more on fossil fuels, carbon dioxide has been entering the oceans in exponentially higher amounts. The resulting acidification decreases the availability of calcium carbonate in the ocean, which makes it more difficult for marine animals like oysters to build shells. Acidification in the Pacific Northwest has already “reached levels that were not predicted until the end of the century,” according to the Center for Biological Diversity. Activists, scientists, and the oyster industry are all worried about future harvests and ocean health. 

“It’s such a colossal problem,” said Emily Jeffers, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “These species just can’t adapt, it’s just too fast. These changes are astronomical.”

For around 10 years, the Center for Biological Diversity has been pushing the federal government and individual states for updated water quality standards to better identify and treat “impaired” waters—waters that fail to meet some of the water quality standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency and state governments. When impaired waters aren’t recognized, protection measures can’t be put in place to repair or stall the damage. In its new suit inspired by the plight of Oregon’s oyster farmers, the Center claims that the EPA failed to identify impaired waters in the state, therefore violating the Clean Water Act. 

Oyster farmers aren’t the only ones inspiring lawsuits to take on climate change. As reported by NPRa suit filed against mainly oil companies by West Coast fishermen in November might just be the first time food producers have sued the fossil fuel industry for environmental harm. Shellfish and crab producers in California and Oregon have faced significant losses because of toxins released by algae blooms. In a lawsuit filed in California, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations is suing 30 companies, including ExxonMobile, Shell, and Chevron, alleging that they knew about the destructive nature of the emissions resulting from burning their fuels, but sold them anyway.

The legal strategy of this crab lawsuit is different from the Oregon oyster suit. But in both cases, fishermen helped raise public awareness about a murky problem that is difficult for most people to wrap their heads around. Now, “the people that are getting impacted by this are the people who are actually growing and capturing food from the ocean for us as a society,” says George Waldbusser, an associate professor of ocean ecology at Oregon State University. “These are real jobs, these are real people, these are real incomes that are affected by this.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate