AP quotes Wells about toxin threatening crab industry

Mark Wells, an oceanography professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine, was quoted in the Associated Press piece “Boats Sit Idle as Algae Threatens Dungeness Crab Season” about a massive bloom of microscopic algae in the Pacific Ocean. The bloom has produced a toxin — domoic acid — that’s harmful to wildlife and fish and is threatening the crab industry.

“Whether this warming itself is a direct function of climate change or not, we can’t say,” said Wells, who added climate change models project warming along the coastlines over the next several decades, so “this type of event probably is going to become much more frequent in the future.”

ABC Fox Montana, Portland Press Herald and The Seattle Times published the AP report.