This is the least important reason to maintain species diversity, but... Olympia oysters are delicious. Very different flavor from the dominant Pacific species. I'm hopeful there's a win-win here where we're able to improve the ecosystem that also benefits from a financial incentive.
I'd die laughing to see a concerted conservation campaign around this:
> Stop killing all the delicious things! Think of how many fruits, how many oysters, how many fish you havn't tasted! Save them all so you can eat them all!
Somewhat off-topic but the article photograph of "Doane’s Oyster House" with the "Ladies Entrance" led me down a rabbit hole as I've never heard of them before. Really interesting stuff.
You know that millions that was spent on the plastic cleanup effort for the pacific gArbage. Gyre?
It would have been much better spent on oyseter farms (and to the pacific garbage gyre cleanup just a little later)
You know the biggest obstacle to pollution is ignorance and poor education.
I was just pinging bill gates on this earlier today.
You can treat the symptom, but the cause is human stupidity due to lack of education.
A world standard of how to treat the health of the planet needs to be set, and by comparison to many other things, is actually affordable.
Because all youre doing is setting a standard of basic knolewdge that every single child on the planet should learn - spreading that knowledge is easier (once formulated) thAn say, vaccinating every child from polio, or developing and deploying water purification plants everywhere.
What if we educate children, AND WE DEPLOY as many oysters as we can around the globe everywhere.
Imo the biggest obstacle to solving pollution is raising living standards in poor countries. India and China are eviscerating their own ecosystems as part of their growth phase. The faster these countries develop so they can start focusing on renewables, the better.
> China has more focus on renewables than the US at this point.
A meaningless statement as they continue to aggressively expand their use of coal and coal power plant manufacturing both domestically and across Asia.
China is nearly using as much coal as the rest of the world combined. They're using four to five times as much as the US.
Their actions are what matter, not their words. Their plans for renewables coincides with their plan to increase emissions perpetually as they see fit.
Apr 2019: "Edward Cunningham, a specialist on China and its energy markets at Harvard University, tells NPR that China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines."
Mar 2019: "The largest power producers in China have asked the government to allow for the development of between 300 and 500 new coal power plants by 2030 in a move that could single-handedly jeopardise global climate change targets. ... The cap would enable China to build 2 large coal power stations a month for the next 12 years, and grow the country’s capacity by an amount nearly twice the size of Europe’s total coal capacity."
Are oyster farms good business? I would think at the price you pay for them it would be a pretty sustainable venture. I just watched the episode of The Chef Show where they visit the California oyster farm and talk about how oysters filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. It didn't seem like there was a ton of labor cost, and obviously incredibly beneficial for the environment. It would be great to see them subsidized by the government but I'm curious why they don't exist in greater numbers already. I for one love oysters and would very much like to see more west coast varieties here in Toronto :)
I just saw that episode too. But I think a problem is that when using oysters in areas that are polluted you really shouldn't eat them. So it'll be awhile before it's a business venture of eating them. I know in NYC they are growing oysters in order to improve the water conditions with no intention of eating them yet.
In NYC before people were messing up the environment just by the nature of building a huge city, there were billions of oysters all around amd the water was super clean.
Then they harvested and ate all the oysters, and the waters became very polluted.
Look at the size of this pile of oyster shells from 1912
It's good business, but it requires owning some coastal land, and all the costs involved in transporting the oysters to market. In general, farming is decent enough business, but it's tough and most people nowadays don't want to do it.
Great story about a creature making a comeback with the help of some hard-working humans. But, in my opinion, the best place for an oyster is in the ocean, not anywhere near my mouth.
I'm sure farming them en-masse probably isn't great for the local ecosystem but it sounds like there's a long way to go before historical concentrations are reached let alone surpassed.
I don't know. I'm just saying that if they go totally crazy with it there will probably be some unintended negative (depending on who you ask) consequences because ecosystems are complex.
