Oysters and Climate Change

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rizumu
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Oysters and Climate Change

Post by rizumu »

Any thoughts on this article?

"Oysters and mussels produce 'ridiculous' levels of gasses causing climate change"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/10/13/oysters-mussels-produce-ridiculous-levels-gasses-causing-climate/

I don't know much about ostroveganism, but I can only imagine this is something to take into consideration, if the science pans out.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Oysters and Climate Change

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Oysters use microbes to break down nutrients already in the water; the question is whether those nutrients would otherwise settle to the bottom and ferment anyway in the silt (or the bodies of worms and other bivalves) creating just as much greenhouse gas without the farmed oysters and that seems plausible to me.

As long as we aren't adding more nutrients to the water to feed the oysters, there may be no harm from rope grown oyster farming.

I'm going to tag Vincent Berraud in this because he may have some insights (he's a proponent of oysters and probably knows more about it than I do)
Vincent Berraud wrote:...
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Vincent Berraud
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Re: Oysters and Climate Change

Post by Vincent Berraud »

I had never heard of this and will have to investigate it further. I would certainly revise my perspective if this article is entirely correct - brimstoneSalad makes a good point though. I'll be asking around for sure. Thanks for this.
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Vincent Berraud
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Re: Oysters and Climate Change

Post by Vincent Berraud »

Oh, silly me! this was actually addressed in David Cascio's excellent article on my blog: https://medium.com/@TheAnimalist/on-the-consumption-of-bivalves-bdde8db6d4ba

In the section about environmental impact.

Basically, It really depends on how they are farmed, but farming them can actually be beneficial and carbon negative if they use vertical farming or other non-hydraulic/scraping methods. It's also true that some commercial catching is usually pretty bad. The methods they use scrape and disrupt the sea floor but really, you can usually find good oyster farms within a couple hundred miles of wherever you are and find grocery stores that source them. I have done it several times very easily. And restaurants.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Oysters and Climate Change

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Vincent Berraud wrote: Fri Oct 13, 2017 11:44 pm Oh, silly me! this was actually addressed in David Cascio's excellent article on my blog: https://medium.com/@TheAnimalist/on-the-consumption-of-bivalves-bdde8db6d4ba
Does that take into account the new info in that study? It looks like this is older so I'm not sure if it was available yet.

I know they clean the water and reduce environmental impact from the land, which is pretty great for global food security too, but I didn't see anything specifically about methane/nitrous oxide.

Even if I'm wrong about the microbe production happening either way, maybe the methane output doesn't outweigh the savings from not using more farmland so it's still good.

Do you think he'd give his take on that recent study specifically?
Jamie in Chile
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Re: Oysters and Climate Change

Post by Jamie in Chile »

I assume this would not be an argument against eating wild oysters since catching them and eating them would presumably not lead to carbon increase compared to leaving them there. I aprpeciate that wild oysters are the minority.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Oysters and Climate Change

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Jamie in Chile wrote: Sun Oct 15, 2017 9:47 pm I assume this would not be an argument against eating wild oysters since catching them and eating them would presumably not lead to carbon increase compared to leaving them there. I aprpeciate that wild oysters are the minority.
Maybe not, although harvesting them is pretty destructive.
Only rope-grown oysters are considered sustainable AFAIK.

Rope growing should reduce the wild population by absorbing the resources in the water, providing they aren't being deliberately fed.
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