Willful ignorance in Apalachicola, FL?

[Stinky The Clown]

Watching ASndrew Zimmern's What's Eating America. One segment has him in Apalachicola, FL where climate change - and nothing BUT climate change - has literally wiped out what were, just a few decades ago, the best, most prolific oystering waters in Florida.

There are no longer any oysters. None.

The citizens are bemoaning and mourning their lost life style and livelihoods.

As you watch the show, you notice a lot of right wing regalia in hats and shirts.

No one pointed to Washington.

Amazing.

[Democrats Ascendant]

1. Watching it too, and it's quite good.

I'm hoping the GOP is the last great beast to go extinct.

[Permanut]

2. Perfectly obvious..

The oysters are gone because of her emails.

[leftieNanner]

3. Weren't those

Bengazi oysters? Kevin McCarthy was involved somehow...

[Permanut]

4. Point taken..

Hadn't considered the Benghazi connection. That completely exonerates Mango Mussolini, of course.

[SCantiGOP]

6. It's either Hillary's fault

or Thanks, Obama.

[relayerbob]

12. Probably on all those pizzas

[leftieNanner]

19. AHA

Bengazi oyster pizza from the parlor with the child kidnapping in the basement - that doesn't have a basement. I think we are on to something!!!

[Joinfortmill]

13. LOL

[Haggis for Breakfast]

5. Stinky, did they say that ALL of the oyster beds are gone ???

I graduated from FSU (yes, back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) and remember Apalachicola really well. You could smell the place before you got there. Almost all of the driveways of the businesses were composed of crushed oyster shells. And oyster bars were everywhere.

You're saying that they are ALL GONE ?????????

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Yes, all gone. All of them.

The beds are dead. Changes in salinity are a major part of the underlying causes.

[Haggis for Breakfast]

9. This is just tragic. Tragic.

Climate change deniers should be forced to support the industries (and their workers) that they destroy with their stupidity and denial.

This breaks my heart. Not you, Stinky, just the news.

[rwsanders]

14. could also be change in pH.

That has been predicted for a while. CO2 combines with water to make H2CO3 and acidifies the water. Animals that rely on shells can't form them.
It is doubtful at this point if we can correct this.

[SMC22307]

8. "The number of wild oysters in Apalachicola Bay now, is zero."

The number of wild oysters in Apalachicola Bay now, is zero. Not 1 percent or 2 percent. I’m talking about 0 percent. There are no more wild oysters in Apalachicola Bay. The reason is very simple: climate crisis. The water in Apalachicola Bay is a mix of salty and fresh. That’s where oysters live, estuarial waters. If oysters are in a body of water that’s too salty, predators can come in, certain types of fish and other animals that can actually crush the shells of young oysters. The salinity has decreased so severely in Apalachicola Bay because there’s so little rain there that there is now too much salt in the water, too many predators, no more oysters.

So you see in a town like Apalachicola Bay, not only has a very large fishery disappeared, but what were 70 or 80 oyster houses that lined the bay, that were always processing oysters, now are nonexistent. The tourists that used to go down there, the stores that used to stay open, the economic tax base in that city went down dramatically. A lot of stores are closing on Main Street. A lot of families are out of work. A lot of Americans are really hurting.

https://www.worth.com/why-andrew-zimmern-made-a-food-show-about-politics/

[csziggy]

11. Part of the problem is that the Apalachicola River has been fucked with too much

For decades there have been lawsuits among the states (Florida, Alabama, and Georgia) about the amount of water allowed to be retained along the length of the river. Much of the Florida part of the river has been preserved in a natural state since Florida got so much value from the oyster beds.

Supreme Court finally rules on Florida's 30-year water war with Georgia. And it's not over.
By Craig Pittman
Published Jun. 28, 2018

The U.S. Supreme Court gave Florida another chance to show that Georgia's upstream water use should be capped to save the Panhandle's oyster industry in a ruling Wednesday that stopped short of resolving a nearly 30-year-old dispute.

In a 5-4 opinion, the justices said Florida should get another shot at showing that limiting Georgia's consumption could do what's needed to restore the fresh water flow into Apalachicola Bay to revive its oysters. The justices said a special master the court appointed to hear the case applied too strict a standard in requiring Florida to prove its case, and ordered him to reconsider.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott sued Georgia in 2013 after record low flows from the Apalachicola River caused the already ailing oyster industry to collapse. Scott's lawsuit accused Georgia of pulling too much water out to supply drinking and irrigation water to homes in growing Atlanta.

<SNIP>

Florida, Georgia and Alabama have been wrangling for 28 years over how much water Atlanta uses, a fight dubbed the Tri-State Water War. It has resulted in repeated court battles, congressional power plays and even a brief bid to move Tennessee's state line to give Georgia more water.

All three states lay claim to the water flowing through the interconnected Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint river basin.

Much more on the history: https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/Supreme-Court-finally-rules-on-Florida-s-30-year-water-war-with-Georgia-And-it-s-not-over-_169506140/

This is not a Republican vs Democratic fight - Wakulla County and the neighboring counties along the coast are mostly Republicans, as are most of the areas to the north that want the water for their own use. Maybe if the residents along the coast had voted for Democratic representatives and governors more would have been done before the industry collapsed, but there is no guarantee.

[tosh]

17. Thanks, csziggy.

I was about to post this but you have done a much better job than I would have.

I’d like to add that Apalach is actually a blue town in what was once (and still might be) the poorest county in the state of Florida. The blue is likely not to the credit of native oystermen, but it is blue nonetheless.

In 2016, Apalachicola was an oasis of Hillary yard signs.

[csziggy]

18. I hadn't realized Apalachicola had gone blue!

Everyone I meet from Wakulla County is Tea Party or worse, so it is good news to hear that the town is blue. Crawfordville is decidedly red, so I just try to not go down there. There is a couple that I have known for years and see sometimes. They are the complete opposite of my husband and I politically but we have a lot of other things in common.

I knew some people from FSU who wanted to live along the coast. I have no idea if they moved down there, or if they survived the hurricanes since I saw them in the late 1970s, but they would have contributed to the blue tinge.

I'm sticking here in Leon County which is reliably blue.

[tosh]

20. Yes, you're in a good place,

I love Tallahassee ❤️! Lived there from ‘79-‘87 and still visit often.

[csziggy]

27. As born and bred Floridian, I never wanted to be close to any coast

Or even want water front property. I love Tallahassee and Leon County for the trees, though I would not live in city limits.

I came to school in 1972, graduated in 1977, and just couldn't move away.

[Chainfire]

25. Hello Neighbor

I live 35 miles to your West, about five miles from the Apalachicola River. As a child, my father and I used to fish in the Apalachicola, before the Army Corps of Engineer made it into a drainage ditch for Atlanta. At the time, the point was to keep the river open for barge traffic. The Corp quit dredging the river years ago so no more barge traffic, but they have left all of the damaging structures in place. They built sandbars from the debris dredged from the river which blocked the ability for the small streams and swamps to absorb excess water and slowly release it back into the natural system. Basically, the government made a big mess and now refuse to clean it up.

Climate change is surely having a negative effect on the river system, (And the recent cat V hurricane didn't help the local drainage basin) but it is only part of the problem. Scientists know what needs to be done to restore the river system, but the government has no desire to spend the money to do it. After all, the banks of the river, from Chattahoochee to Apalachicola are in some of the poorest counties in the state, so there is no local clout. The oyster industry is not a mega business and the river is not a tourist attraction. The voters in Orlando, or Miami don't give a rat's ass about the river, the oysters or the people unless they can tap the river for drinking water.

The politics of the entire region is red with Tallahassee being the only bright spot thanks to FSU and FAMU. Over here, in Gadsden County, as a life-long Democrat, I sometimes feel like a motherless child.....

[csziggy]

28. Hi, neighbor!

I know - I grew up in Central Florida where the Army Corps did the same thing to the Kissimmee. They tried to "restore" it but I'm not sure that improved their mess very much. But then, I grew up supported by the phosphate industry which screwed up the entire water system of Polk County and the surrounding area. The swamps I love riding through as a kid are no more, they were mined and "recovered" into artificial lakes, now surrounded by houses and mobile homes.

What the people from downstate don't understand is that their aquifer is replenished from the water that soaks into the ground from farther north. They should care about all of it!

Gadsden has gotten much bluer than it used to be, at least the area around Havana. The far west part, probably not. Jefferson has also gone blue - too many FSU graduates that stick around, I think.

[Phoenix61]

29. Thank you for posting. This is exactly

the problem. I haven’t been there is several years although I did make it over to Port St Joe this past weekend.

[TomSlick]

31. Well, a former oyster man did manage to dredge-up one oyster in an afternoon's work.

He mostly brought-up empty shells.

The story is that drought caused by climate change has caused a decrease in flow from the rivers into the bay - which increased the salinity of the water - which allowed saltwater predators to kill off the wild oysters.

Oysters are being farmed in cages to protect them from predators. Of course, there is not enough work to keep the oyster processing plants open.

[yaesu]

10. Reminds me of the Smelts here, the streams where full of them 3-4 decades ago, people would get

barrels of them, scooping them up with nets. They are all gone now, just a memory & they were a favorite of mine growing up.

[aggiesal]

15. IDIOTS! n/t

[not_the_one]

16. I think the Deepwater Horizon oil spill did a LOT more damage to the gulf than it has been credited

with. The spill was estimated at 210,000,000 gallons.

Yes, climate change is a major slow moving catastrophe that is rapidly speeding up, but you can't dump MILLIONS of gallons of oil in any limited large body of water, like the gulf, and not get major affects on life in those waters. I would imagine dark oil in water also helps to trap solar heat, further warming the gulf waters, contributing to climate change.

A lot of the oil is still there. It just balled up and floated to the bottom. It is dissolving and WILL rear its ugly head, at some point. This may be some of the affects.

Plus, there has been another spill (Taylor Energy Oil Spill) that has been leaking for 15 years, and is still not capped. The gulf is dying. Oysters are just the canaries.

I will not knowingly eat any seafood from the gulf. I shudder to think of all the crap we (and other, especially third world, countries) have dumped into the oceans. At least the oceans are larger, and the pollution is more diluted. They, too, will eventually die. We are killing ourselves.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

21. Watched it earlier

Zimmern does an excellent show.

Gives one more to think about what climate change can bring.

[malaise]

22. It's excellent

Ignorance will destroy us all

[Chainfire]

26. Not so much ignorance

It is greed that will destroy us. Many times we know what needs to be done, but we aren't willing to pay for it unless it benefits the rich.

[rownesheck]

23. Maybe they could

bring the oysters back by filling the bay with Brawndo.

[Nature Man]

24. it's what oysters crave

[rownesheck]

30. Ha ha!

Love it!