{"id":61364,"date":"2013-09-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-researcher-lobster-shell-disease-expanding-north-one-of-several-diseases-of-marine-organisms-causing-worry\/"},"modified":"2013-09-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-03T00:00:00","slug":"uri-researcher-lobster-shell-disease-expanding-north-one-of-several-diseases-of-marine-organisms-causing-worry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2013\/09\/uri-researcher-lobster-shell-disease-expanding-north-one-of-several-diseases-of-marine-organisms-causing-worry\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 researcher: Lobster shell disease expanding north; one of several diseases of marine organisms causing worry"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 September 3, 2013 \u2013 Recent reports that lobster shell disease has turned up along the coast of Maine have Kathy Castro worried. The 溏心vlog免费B站 fisheries scientist has led a 15-year international effort to understand what causes the disease that has, until recently, been confined primarily to the waters of southern New England and Long Island Sound. If it expands as rapidly in Maine as it did in Rhode Island waters, it could have a dramatic effect on the iconic Maine fishery.<\/p>\n


\n\tCastro was the first to notice the disease in 1996, and by 1998 nearly 18 percent of lobsters in Rhode Island waters were infected.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cBy 2010, a third of all lobsters had shell disease, and the scary part was that 70 percent of females with eggs had it,\u201d she said. \u201cThat scared me because that\u2019s the reproducing population.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWith a $3 million federal appropriation secured by Senator Jack Reed in 2005, Castro assembled a team of geneticists, behaviorists, microbiologists, chemists and others from 15 research institutions to conduct 14 different research projects designed to learn as much as they could about the disease.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMost of us thought it was going to be related to warming waters or to the oil spill in 1996, but that doesn\u2019t seem to be the case because of the complexity of the environment and the animals themselves,\u201d Castro said. <\/p>\n


\n\tAt the annual Rhode Island Sea Grant Baird Symposium at 溏心vlog免费B站 in 2010, all of the scientists came together to share their results with the public. What they found was alarming and confusing.<\/p>\n


\n\tAccording to the researchers, a bacterium that is new to local waters is believed to be the culprit responsible for allowing the disease to get started. All lobsters have some bacteria on their shell, but those with shell disease have more of them. Concentrations of trace metals are higher in lobsters with shell disease, and alkyphenols, manmade chemicals, are often found in diseased lobsters, lengthening the time it takes for their shells to harden. Lobsters with shell disease also have a compromised immune system, and the disease may be a response to any number of stresses in their environment, including diet and temperature. <\/p>\n


\n\tIn one study, 50 percent of the shell diseased lobsters were found to be functionally blind, and another found degeneration of their livers, making it difficult for them to process food. Yet these studies found no correlation to shell disease.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAfter all this research, what is still not clear is what is the key initiating event that allowed the lobsters to be susceptible to the disease in the first place,\u201d said Castro. \u201cAnd why does it look like it\u2019s spreading when we\u2019ve been unable to spread it from one lobster to another?\u201d\t<\/p>\n


\n\tCastro believes that there must be a number of factors that, together, have created the conditions that have led to lobster shell disease. <\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAnd it\u2019s not just lobsters that are battling diseases,\u201d she noted. \u201cWe\u2019ve got clam disease, oyster disease, an eelgrass disease, striped bass disease, scallop disease, and a starfish disease, too. Recently we received a report of increased parasites in bluefin tuna. With changing temperature regimes, the ocean is so confused and it\u2019s providing so much conflicting information.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe good news, according to Castro, is that lobsters with shell disease can still be eaten without any adverse effects to consumers, since only the shell is diseased. And the lobster population in Rhode Island waters is at levels seen in the 1970s before the unexplained increase in abundance that occurred in the late 1980s and 90s.<\/p>\n


\n\tYet Castro is still determined to solve the mystery.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe spent all of our time trying to figure out what caused it, and we\u2019re still not sure,\u201d she said. \u201cBut now that it\u2019s expanding northward, it\u2019s time we figured out how to stop it. Maybe if the lobstermen dipped diseased lobsters into fresh water or a mild antibiotic \u2013 safe for lobster and consumer — before tossing them back would help. Maybe we should remove all the diseased lobsters we can. There are lots of things we could try if we had the funding.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe big question, she said, is what do all these diseases mean for the future of our coastal waters.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve always talked about lobsters being the canary in the coal mine for the health of our marine environment,\u201d Castro said. \u201cMaybe we need to pay more attention to what they\u2019re telling us.\u201d<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 September 3, 2013 \u2013 Recent reports that lobster shell disease has turned up along the coast of Maine have Kathy Castro worried. The 溏心vlog免费B站 fisheries scientist has led a 15-year international effort to understand what causes the disease that has, until recently, been confined primarily to the waters of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}