The issue, which first came up back in 2015, is that burrowing shrimp are loosening the intertidal soil, turning it, in spots, into goo. Oysters then sink and suffocate. So the industry, which is huge in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor, wants to cull the native shrimp by immobilizing them with imidacloprid, a neurotoxin used in farm insecticides.
The problem is that imidacloprid is highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates. Right on the bottle it says: “Do not apply directly to water.” So the chemical hasn’t previously been approved for spraying into any marine waters.
When I wrote about this in 2015, I did so because the two biggest federal agencies with oversight of marine life both had come out against the spraying. Scientists from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had studied it and concluded: Too risky.
In the uproar that followed, the spraying was withdrawn. In 2016, the oyster growers reapplied, reducing the area of the spray. But the federal scientists again opposed it — this time in even stronger terms.
“New scientific evidence,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said, “including the findings from field trials, establishes with certainty that these proposed practices would have acute adverse impacts to sediments, the benthic community and free-swimming crustaceans and zooplankton, both on and off the treated shellfish beds.”
“Benthic community” means bottom-dwellers, such as crabs. In a shocking example, the National Marine Fisheries Service highlighted a field trial in which researchers sprayed imidacloprid, and then came back 24 hours later. Of the 141 Dungeness crabs they counted, 93 were dead. Forty-four had “tetany,” or involuntary muscle spasms. Four were still healthy.
The Service concluded dryly: “The results of this megafauna survey are concerning.” I’ll say it’s concerning: 97 percent of the crabs ended up dead or having seizures.
Science on the run
The state denied a permit for the spraying last year, concluding that “new research points to greater impacts in land and water ecosystems than previously known.” It issued an 885-page review, which included the scientific objections quoted above.
The prime sponsor of the bill, Sen. Dean Takko, D-Longview, insists it was actually the denial of the spraying permit that was political — spurred on by “agenda-driven environmentalists and misinformed Seattle chefs.”
“A process based upon science would — 10 times out of 10 — grant the shellfish farmers their permit,” Takko wrote in The Seattle Times. “Urbanites who castigate the current president for not respecting science should not, in turn, ignore science when it’s politically expedient to do so.”
That completely ignores that teams of biologists from the two federal agencies most concerned with wildlife protection rejected this, twice.
Back in D.C., politics has science on the run. It’s surprising to see the same Trumpian tactics deployed so bluntly here.
