Since arriving in the Puget Sound region in 1955, DR. KENNETH CHEW has seen just about everything in the inland sea of the Pacific Northwest. What worries him is what he no longer sees.
Ken is a national and international authority on the biology of shellfish and aquaculture (the planting, cultivating, and harvesting of shellfish for commerce). His professional credits are many: University of Washington professor emeritus, retired director of the Western Regional Aquaculture Center, retired associate dean of the UW College of Ocean and Fishery Science, and former member of the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission. Oh yes, and NOAA honored him by naming the Kenneth K. Chew Center for Shellfish Research and Restoration (established in partnership with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund) after him.
Early in the summer of ’55, Ken arrived in Seattle from his home state of California to study for a master’s degree in salmon biology at the UW School of Fisheries. His research project wasn’t due to start until September, so the dean arranged for a summer job for him at the Point Whitney Shellfish Laboratory at Dabob Bay on the Olympic Peninsula. “I could not believe the amount of seafood right on the beach,” he marvels. “Back in the 1950s, crabs were abundant in Hood Canal. Shrimp was abundant. Oysters and clams were all over the place. That’s where I got introduced to eating mussels. You could fish off the dock and get rockfish, piling perch, and sometimes cutthroat trout.”
That summer was the start of a life of research and teaching. Biologists at the lab urged Ken to study shellfish, such as oysters, clams, geoducks, mussels, and abalone. At that time, he says, very few people were trained in shellfish biology. Because of the arrangement that had brought him to the university, Ken devoted his first year of graduate studies to researching the behavior of salmon. But at the end of that year, he “decided to make that leap” to study shellfish and other invertebrates in the Sound. His research and training led to job offers from Oregon, California, and even Venezuela.But the dean of the UW School of Fisheries had other ideas, and put him to work creating a shellfish program at the university with one of his mentors, Dr. Albert K. Sparks.
Ken was particularly interested in the applied aspects of shellfish biology, including basic biology and environmental needs, the best culture or farming techniques, and the commercial and recreational uses of shellfish. The term aquaculture was generally unknown at the time. He recalls, “People would say: Aquaculture? Is that agriculture?” Skeptics didn’t understand why he was interested in seafood farming, a common refrain being: “There is always going to be plenty of seafood out in the ocean, so why do we need to farm it?”
It’s now apparent how wrong those skeptics were. Many natural stocks of edible sea life are so diminished that farming of shellfish and other seafood has become “absolutely major,” Ken notes. “A significant amount of the seafood you see in the stores is farmed, and many types are imported from around the world.”
From the beginning, Ken’s approach was to go to shellfish growers and ask, “What is your problem? What do you need investigated?” He would then seek funding for graduate students to research those problems. What those students discovered and reported has influenced the understanding of shellfish around the world.
Ken and his students also helped bring about a breakthrough in culinary tastes on the West Coast. Into the 1970s, he says, mussels weren’t widely regarded as a delicacy. That began to change when he and a student started reaching out to communities and public officials around the Sound to obtain support for mussel research floats in saltwater bays. That research, and more that followed, helped lead to a viable mussel growing and harvesting industry. Some of their early research was at Penn Cove on Whidbey Island, which has since become renowned for its shellfish industry.
Another breakthrough from his students’ research made it possible for commercial shellfish growers to harvest and sell oysters year-round, including in the warmer summer months when spawning makes oysters mushy and unpalatable. Some of Ken’s students learned and documented how to biologically engineer triploid or sexless oysters, which allowed for year-round harvest.
Today, the commercial shellfish industry is a major force in the state’s economy. Washington is a top oyster-producing state and the nation’s largest producer of hatchery-reared and farmed Pacific oysters. Shellfish also are an important environmental alarm system, and they help protect water quality in Puget Sound. In Ken’s words: “If you can legally harvest shellfish, it’s an indicator of good water.”
So, what has been happening to the sea creatures since young Ken Chew first saw the eye-popping natural abundance of fish and shellfish on Dabob Bay? “Puget Sound is one of the most beautiful estuaries and water bodies in the US,” Ken says, but he is concerned about diminished water quality and other changes for the worse. Looking out the window of his home on a bluff overlooking Seattle’s Shilshole Bay, Ken points to the marine waters and, at lower tides, a beckoning gravel beach. He laments, “I used to go out there in the late eighties and nine- ties at extreme low tides in July, and I could see several geoduck neck–siphon shows, and numerous siphon holes of horse, cockle, native littleneck, and butter clams. And I usually saw orange succulent sea pens, large sea stars, red rock and shore crabs, to name a few. I usually saw eelgrass and several varieties of macroalgae.”
Then he began to see fewer signs of clams, especially horse clams and geoducks, on his beach walks. Various agencies documented that seawater here and elsewhere was becoming more acidic, posing a serious threat to oysters, clams, mussels, and other invertebrates by inhibiting calcium carbonate deposits during larvae shell development. But Ken is careful to point out that the situation on the beach near Shilshole “does not necessarily reflect the same for other Sound beaches, as they are all different.”
Ken is encouraged by certain areas of progress in protecting the Sound and its organisms. Treating sewage and reducing industrial pollution have been priorities for federal, state, local, and tribal governments. In addition, fecal coliform and many shellfish toxins are measured and monitored. But he says many chemicals, hormones, and prescription drugs pass through humans, are flushed down toilets, and end up in our water. “It’s the unmeasured component that worries me,” Ken says. “It’s too expensive perhaps to test for them and study them.” He suspects that these contaminants may help explain some of the reduction of popular marine fish species over recent decades. “The recreational fishing for salmon and marine bottom fish such as rockfish and true cod may never be the same as in the fifties,” says Ken.
Despite an increase in the acidity of seawater, trends in commercial oyster and clam farming make Ken hopeful. Pinto abalone and sea cucumbers are now being grown in the NOAA hatchery that bears Ken Chew’s name, and the young creatures are being replanted in the wild as part of the restoration program. And hatcheries have helped to bring back the native Olympia oyster.
He is also encouraged that oysters and clams are available for recreational harvesting at numerous public beaches. Ken celebrates the successes in saving Puget Sound species, but he also shines a light on the problems. As he sees it, we still have to fight to keep from losing parts of Puget Sound.