Monitoring, partnership, and decision-support tools for an expanding U.S. West Coast shellfish aquaculture industry

The U.S. West Coast aquaculture industry generates revenues of $468 million per year, accounting for 36% of aquaculture seafood revenue nationwide. Shellfish aquaculture is a growing industry in California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. However, the expansion of shellfish aquaculture is occurring in a changing ocean where ocean acidification (OA) and increasing hypoxia (H) are altering seawater conditions. Many near-shore habitats are also experiencing coastal acidification, which is highly dependent on compounding factors such as freshwater delivery, upwelling eutrophication, hypoxia, and rising sea-surface temperatures. Monitoring is a cornerstone of effective environmental and resource management, highlighting spatial differences and revealing the trajectory of conditions while providing information for mitigating changing conditions and assessing effectiveness of management actions. To provide aquaculture producers with information needed to adapt to and/or mitigate the impacts of OAH, NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program (OAP) has partnered with the Integrated Ocean Observing Systems (IOOS) Regional Associations to co-locate OAH and other monitoring capacities within aquaculture operations including through partnerships between academic research and local industry partners. To facilitate coordination on the regional drivers and impacts of OA, Coastal Acidification Networks (CANs) have been developed throughout U.S. coastal communities to enhance regional collaborations and communications about the current state of the science, approaches to monitoring, and vulnerable species and ecosystems among other concerns. Now, West Coast IOOS RAs (SCCOOS, CeNCOOS, NANOOS, and AOOS) are exploiting the longstanding partnerships facilitated by CANs to deliver site-specific, real-time, actionable information (data, indicators, and forecasts) to sustain and aid the shellfish aquaculture industry by providing timely and accessible information through the development of Oyster Dashboards. The new web-based Oyster Dashboards will be customizable to deliver site-specific, actionable data in user-friendly formats available through IOOS RA data portals.