Sitka Tribe of Alaska fisheries biologish Jen Hamblen empties blue mussel meat into a blender. (Emily Russell/KCAW)

Shellfish is a staple in many homes throughout Southeast Alaska, but it also can be a hazard. A new lab in Sitka tests regularly for shellfish toxins and is now teaching more than a dozen tribes in the region to do the same.

Global warming could increase the level of toxins, so tribes are working fast to take the mystery out of what’s blooming on their shores.

Downloadable audio.

Jen Hamblen has purple plastic gloves on and a long black apron. She’s shucking blue mussels, the kind you might find in a seafood restaurant.

“I love chowder. I must say, my appetite for raw shellfish has decreased since I began this position,” Hamblen admits.

Hamblen is a fisheries biologist for the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. She’s scrapes the meat off the shells into a little white bowl.

When she has at least 100 grams worth of blue mussel meat, she empties the bowl into a blender. She sets the timer for three minutes and turns the blender on high.

“The fancy word for that is ‘homogenization,’ but ‘shellfish smoothies’ is the other term we like to use,” Hamblen jokes.

After 3 minutes of blending, the blue mussels are homogeneous. (Emily Russell/KCAW)

The Tribe started blending up shellfish and testing them in the lab because of the growing concern over Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, or PSP. Toxic algae blooms can contaminate shellfish, causing the sometimes fatal illness.

“People want to know, ‘Can we go out? Is it safe or is it not?’ Because it is an easy subsistence resource to harvest here. There are shellfish everywhere.”

Michael Jamros directs the Tribe’s research lab, which opened last year.

“When I showed up a year ago the lab was basically a bunch of boxes and I pretty much had to from there ordering the rest of supplies and getting the lab set up,” Jamros says.

It’s all set up and fully functioning now. That’s a good thing, since a study published last month reports that since 1997, the annual production of algae in the Arctic has risen by nearly 50 percent.

Chris Whitehead, the environmental program manager for the Tribe, says warmer ocean temperatures make better breeding grounds for toxins.

 “Just like your garden– if you water it and it’s warm and sunny out and you give it fertilizer– everything does really well,” Whitehead says. “It’s the same with these vegetative cells in the marine system.”

That’s why their weekly tests are so important, Whitehead says. And now more than a dozen other tribes in the region are also testing for toxins, including communities like Wrangell and Ketchikan and Juneau and Yakutat and Hoonah, Whitehead explains.

A new lab in Sitka tests regularly for shellfish toxins and is now teaching more than a dozen tribes in the region to do the same. (Map courtesy of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska)

“It’s a huge deal here,” says Ian Johnson. “People are out digging all the time.”

Johnson is the environmental coordinator for the Hoonah Indian Association.

“If I was just to guess, I would say over 50 percent of the community consumed clams, probably more. It might be 70 or 80 percent,” says Johnson.

Three people died in 2010 from paralytic shellfish poisoning, including one from Hoonah, and others have gotten sick since.

That’s why Johnson says people are eager for his weekly results, which he started releasing in October. But he soon ran into a problem.

People have different names for the same clams, like the Pacific Littleneck clams– some people call them steamer clams. Others, Johnson says, just differentiate between edible and inedible clams.

So he published an online survey about shellfish names.

“I was just trying to tap into this local base of knowledge and try to understand what people call these different species of clams so I can communicate the results better with them,” Johnson says.

Johnson released results from the survey online and continues testing the water for toxins each week. If levels are unsafe, Johnson can send in shellfish samples to get blended up and tested in Sitka.

The batch of mussels in the blender right now is from Petersburg, a community 90 miles east of Sitka. They were flown in just this morning.

After three minutes, the mixture is then run through a series of tests to determine if the mussels in Petersburg are safe to harvest.

Shellfish samples are flown in from other tribes almost every week, which helps fisheries biologist Jen Hamblen iron out the kinks in the lab.

Outside of the lab is a different story.

“A problem we encountered today is that there are frozen mussels on the beaches right now,” explains Hamblen. “So, we’ll have to look at how to do sampling in Southeast Alaska when we have cold snaps like the one we’re experiencing now.”

She may not be eating much raw shellfish herself, but Hamblen has an appetite to get it right. Because the one variable that won’t change is the local demand to know whether the fruits of the sea are safe to eat.

Lab manager Michael Jamros stands with Chris Whitehead, founder of the Southeast Alaska Tribal Ocean Research group. The lab hopes to be regional testing hub for commercial and casual shellfish harvesters alike. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

With warming ocean temperatures, the risk for paralytic shellfish poisoning can linger all year round. And Alaska has only one FDA-certified laboratory to test shellfish. There are no labs to protect those digging for their dinner, but that may soon change.

At the end of the month, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska will open an environmental research laboratory and – with all hope – take a bite out of the testing market.

Downloadable audio.

This time last year, the room in the corner of Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s (STA) Resource Protection Department was bare. And now, it’s got a fume hood, test tubes in every color, and a $49,000 machine.

KCAW: This is the thing. This is the big exciting thing.
Chris Whitehead: It goes Beep.
Michael Jamros: It looks like a big box.
KCAW: It’s your own R2-D2. It’s your own little robot.

Michael Jamros is the lab’s new manager. And the “robot” in question is a plate reader, one of several machines that can analyze toxins in shellfish. After the shellfish arrive, Jamros shucks all the meat out and puts it in a blender to homogenize it. He then extracts the toxins and removes the solids using a centrifuge.

Using a pipette, Jamros will dispense the solution in 96 tiny wells on one plastic plate. Imagine filling a tray with batter for 96 muffins, but instead of putting it in an oven, he feeds it into a plate reader.

A plate reader, used by Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s new environmental lab to test small quantities of highly concentrated shellfish tissue for toxins. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Jamros is running an ELISA assay, measuring the toxicity of each well. The results appear on his laptop. “From here we have our data that we can calculate from and figure out how much toxin is in our samples,” he said.

You hear that? Data. Cold, hard numbers that take the guesswork out of eating butter clams or blue mussels. In Southeast, there’s never been a way for subsistence harvesters to assess the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning or measure harmful algal blooms, or HABs, which load shellfish with toxins. Until now.

Chris Whitehead coordinated a partnership with thirteen Southeast tribes, to monitor local beaches for toxins. Their goal is to make it safe for locals to harvest shellfish. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Chris Whitehead is STA’s environmental program manager and the driving force behind the lab, set to open in May. “Native people have been harvesting clams for thousands of year. A lot of the elders I talk to don’t do it anymore because they just don’t know. So, to be able to bring that back and be able to utilize that resource is huge,” Whitehead said.

If you like this, see KCAW’s previous reporting on the lab…
PSP Part 1: Tribal partnership seeks modern solution to an ancient problem
PSP Part 2: With new lab, STA takes a gamble on shellfish testing

When he came to Sitka in 2013, Whitehead wanted to create a warning system for clam diggers, like in Washington state. “The Washington Department of Health has a great website so you can see what beaches are open or closed. And when I got to Alaska there wasn’t anything.”

Whitehead  called up Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which tests all commercial shellfish for the state. He discovered, however, there would be a time lag to ship shellfish to Anchorage and await results. “The turnaround time for the [DEC] data – to actually be usable for us and to prevent human health issues – wasn’t going to work,” he said.

Given this, Whitehead decided to pursue a local solution by creating his own marine biotoxin program right here in Southeast. He locked in $1 million in grant funding for the next three years. He formed Southeast Alaska Tribal Toxins (SEATT), a coalition of thirteen other tribes in the region and organized trainings for them with state and federal agencies, like NOAA, to be “eyes in the water,” monitoring local beaches for toxic blooms.

“So those sites will be monitored at the expense of the tribe and the resources that the tribes have every other week. So every tide cycle pretty much,” Whitehead said.

The lab uses new technology, including the ELISA and receptor binding assay (RBA), to test for the presence of toxins in shellfish, without resorting to live mice. (Emily Kwong/KCAW)

Jerry Borchert was in Sitka to lead one of those trainings. Borchert coordinates marine biotoxin management for the state of Washington.

In speaking with KCAW, he said, “My first time here was a year ago in September. It was a smaller group. I think there were six tribes at the time and for a lot of these folks, this was brand new to them. Looking at plankton, trying to identify what a harmful species looks like, how to record it, how to share this information, and it’s those same tribes in the beginning who are now the teachers and the program is expanding. This is amazing.”

With the new laboratory, subsistence harvesters can hopefully send their shellfish to Sitka and get test results back in one business day. Eventually, the lab hopes to run tests for commercial entities – like shellfish growers and processors.

But some hurdles remain. The lab needs the blessing of an alphabet soup of agencies, like the FDA, to become a full-fledged regulatory lab, on par with the one on Anchorage. Borchert said, “Long term stability is something I’m a little concerned with. The state regulatory folks are finally coming to these workshops and I’m hoping they can recognize what can happen.”

For his part, Whitehead is taking it one step at a time. The lab is running test samples all this month and sending their results to NOAA in Seattle, for verification. If those check out, the lab will begin accepting subsistence shellfish as early as May.

To test shellfish, the lab needs 5 ounces of tissue (e.g. 10-12 butter clams or 20 little neck clams). For more information about how to submit, click here. 

The Southeast Alaska Tribal Toxins (SEATT) network includes the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida in Juneau, as well as tribes in Douglas, Kake, Petersburg, Ketchikan, Hydaburg, Craig, Klawock, Kasaan, Hoonah, and Yakutat.

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is caused by the accumulation of harmful biotoxins in shellfish. They can be identified in the water, but only through microscopy. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Downloadable audio.

Chris Whitehead, Environmental Program Manager, talks about Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s new Environmental Research Laboratory. He was joined by lab manager Michael Jamros to talk about the multi-tribal collaboration, called SEATOR, that will monitor beaches throughout Southeast for harmful algal blooms and paralytic shellfish poisoning.

The laboratory expects to begin taking citizen samples by the beginning of May. For more information, e-mail seator@sitkatribe-nsn.gov.

Jeff Feldpausch and Chris Whitehead stand in the soon-to-be biotoxin testing lab at STA’s Resource Protection Department, intended to test shellfish for commercial entities. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Despite the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning — or PSP — Southeast Alaska has a robust dive fishery that includes geoduck clams. The entire industry hinges on weekly testing results from the Department of Environmental Conservation laboratory in Anchorage.

This scenario could change in the not-too-distant future. In part 1 of our 2-part series, KCAW’s Emily Kwong reported on efforts by Sitka Tribe of Alaska to monitor the waters of Southeast for PSP. In part 2 today, she tracks their plans to launch a commercial testing lab.

Downloadable audio.

If you’ve ever seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you may remember that scene with the golden eggs.

Willy Wonka: These are the geese that lay the golden eggs.

Veruca Salt: Are they chocolate eggs?

Willy Wonka: Golden chocolate eggs.

The green haired Oompa Loompas weigh the eggs on a scale to decide if they’re good or bad.

Wonka: If it’s a good egg, it’s shined up and shipped out over the world. But if it’s a bad egg, down the chute.

China imposed a five month ban on geoducks from Alaska in December of 2013 out of concerns for PSP toxins. (Photo courtesy of KRBD and the Alaska Department of Fish & Game)

The same could be said for geoducks. These giant bivalves, with lolling necks like space worms, have a high market value, where they’re called xiàngbábàng (象拔蚌) or elephant trunk clams in China. Because these clams run the risk of carrying PSP toxins, divers cannot harvest an area before a few of it’s clams have been sent to the DEC and cleared for consumption.

“If you’re lucky you get the sample on a plane that day and it gets up to the lab in Anchorage,” said Larry Trani, a diver and member of the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association, or SARDFA. Harvest has to happen within a week, which means that by the time divers get a test result, they tend to do all their actual harvest in just one day. And that’s not a lot of time.

“Time is off the essence on this,” said Trani, “As far as making all the connections from Southeast Alaska to Hong Kong, or wherever they’re going.”

Divers like Trani go down to the bottom of the ocean floor, breathing surface supplied air through a diving hookah, and walk the bottom, blasting the sand with a water gun and prying gooey ducks from their beds. It’s dangerous work, which Trani believes could benefit from the kind of lab Sitka Tribe wants to open.

“I can see that that would save time on the sampling and give us more days in which to conduct our diving,” said Trani. “I think it’s an excellent idea.”

That’s the appeal of a lab in Southeast, one Sitka Tribe hopes will persuade divers like Trani, shellfish growers, and harvesters to relocate some of their testing work to Sitka.

“It was two offices so we removed a wall and made this one large space…”

The man with the plan is shellfish biologist Chris Whitehead, who pitched the idea for a biotoxin lab to Sitka Tribe two years ago.

“I got really busy at writing grants and somehow they all got funded, said Whitehead. “Now it’s a matter of doing the work.”

That includes over half a million dollars from the Administration for Native Americans’ (ANA) Environmental Regulatory Enhancement Program to build the lab from scratch.

Jessica Gill is the tribe’s fish biologist and said, “When we get our first order, it’s going to be like Christmas!” 

The most eagerly anticipated order is for the receptor binding assay, or RBA machine. The machine isn’t authorized to test gooey ducks for PSP yet, just mussels and soft shell clams, but Chris Whitehead believes that will change soon. And the exciting thing about the machine is that it eliminates the traditional testing method, practiced by labs throughout the country.

Whitehead explained, “They run whats called a mouse bioassay. So they inject this slurry of shellfish into a mouse…”

And time how long it takes for the mouse to die. Based on that number, the lab can calculate the relative toxicity of the gooey duck for humans. With the RBA method, no mice need be harmed.

Jessica Gill, for her part, is relieved. She said, “I don’t think I could take the lab manager job thinking, ‘Oh, we’re going to kill a bunch of rats today.'”

With staff to be trained and testing to launch, STA has secured 1.3 million dollars in grant money for the PSP project for the next three years. That includes $210,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Indian General Assistance Program (IGAP) for fiscal year 2015, with plans to continue through 2017, $48,000 from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), $527,000 from ANA to the build the new lab, and an additional $150,000 to support SEATT to conduct cellular toxin analysis, as detailed in Part 1 of our series.

AmeriCorps volunteer Esther Kennedy is helping STA launch an early warning system for beaches in Southeast, so harvesters can know when it’s safe to dig and when to steer clear. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Jeff Feldpausch, the Resource Protection Director, recognizes it’s a luxury that won’t last.

“We couldn’t keep this lab open on grants forever,” Feldpausch said. “It was going to have to be something that could stand on it’s own.”

And that means attracting commercial business. The goal is for the lab to become a source of unrestricted funds for the tribe.

But among SARDFA and other potential customers KCAW spoke with, the big question on their minds was this: Would the state of Alaska by okay with handing PSP testing over to a commercial entity?

Elaine Busse Floyd, the Environmental Health Director of the DEC, said, “Well I think that if they achieved FDA certification, that would be a terrific benefit to the Southeast Alaska community.”

Busse Floyd said that while it would nice to have a lab servicing Southeast, it’s never been done before and for good reason. The state does PSP testing for free.

“So it’s possible that the big influx of customers that you might think you were going to get because of being closer, you might not get because you’d be charging and we wouldn’t be,” Bussy Floyd said. 

But the state may not always be there. Funding for PSP testing is safe this fiscal year, but that may change with future budget cuts.

The lab in Sitka would also have to earn certification from an alphabet soup of agencies, such as the FDA and the International Shellfish Sanitation Commission. Easier said than done, but STA’s Chris Whitehead has determination in spades.

“For a long time, there’s probably been a need to do something like this,” said Whitehead.
“I don’t know if I lucked out and just came in the right time to start it, but doors are opening for us to do this.”

Whithead hopes to win FDA certification by 2017 and to first test shellfish collected through subsistence, through the Southeast Alaska Tribal Toxins Group, or SEATT. It’s an ambitious plan trying to address a basic problem.

“It all started out I just wanted to go dig clams and I had no one to call to see if it was safe or not.’

And Whitehead hopes this little-lab-that-could can answer that call. 

Esther Kennedy of the Resource Protection Department collects water samples every week from Starrigavan. Along with six other tribes in Southeast, the group is working to create an early warning system to protect shellfish diggers from PSP. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Of all the traditional seafoods in Southeast Alaska, none are more shrouded in myth — and genuine risk — than clams and mussels. Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) killed two people in Southeast in 2010 and dozens more have fallen ill over the recorded history of the state.

For subsistence harvesters, there has been no way to measure the risk of clam digging — until now. In part 1 of a two-part series, KCAW reports on a partnership among Southeast tribes to create a regional water monitoring program.

Downloadable audio.

In Southeast, between Chicagof and Baranof Islands, there’s a waterway called Peril Strait. The name doesn’t come from winds ripping through the channel, but from a shocking event that happened in 1799.

“A Russian ship came in and the villagers had gone out and collected a bunch of clams from an area now called Poison Cove,” explained Jeff Feldpausch, the Resource Protection Director for Sitka Tribe of Alaska.

The incident he’s describing is the earliest documented case of PSP in the state. After eating the shellfish, 100 Aleut crew members of fur trader Alexander Baranof – died. Feldpausch added, “They only made it a few miles to the area that’s now called Dead Man’s Reach.”

Eat the wrong clam and you can die on the beach. That’s the grim pathology for PSP, which one state publication in 1982 called “Alaska Roulette.” In order to protect subsistence harvesters, the Sitka Tribe decided to invest in the latest science and to look really closely at what the clams themselves are eating.

Paralytic shellfish poisoning is transmitted through bivalves, especially butter clams, mussels, and cockles. But it all begins in the water, in the naturally produced toxins of certain kinds of plankton. (Emily Kwong/KCAW)

I met Esther Kennedy of STA’s Resource Protection Department near the Starrigavan dock. She took note of the day’s conditions. “So it’s 10AM, it’s sunny, it’s calm.” Every Tuesday, Kennedy starts her morning by collecting water samples. From far away, it looks like she’s flying an underwater kite, dragging a net sedately through the water as microscopic creatures called phytoplankton get trapped inside.

“Most plankton is just beautiful and it looks like little Christmas ornaments and I have no problem with that,” said Kennedy. “But it’s a little bit unnerving to be looking at that and be like, ‘How many of those have I swum through in the past?’”

Alexandrium is a genus of dinoflagellates that leads to Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning. This cell was identified by a team of researchers at NOAA’s biotoxin testing lab in Seattle. (Photo courtesy of NOAA).

The vast majority of phytoplankton are totally harmless. But a few of them, particularly of the genus Alexandrium (they look like an acorn under the microscope) produce a chemical called Saxitoxin. Saxitoxin is 1000x more potent than cyanide, so potent it’s listed as a chemical weapon by the US military. Saxitoxin is what’s responsible for PSP.

The timer beeps. Three minutes are up and Kennedy pulls up net and bottle – now filled with water. She’ll take these drops of water back to a lab, and using a microscope, count what kinds of phytoplankton, toxic or not, are in the water that week.

So, how do these tiny creatures poison us? It works like this: when toxic-bearing phytoplankton accumulate in the water, it’s known as a harmful algal bloom, or a HAB. Some HABs are visible, even red, earning the nickname “red tide,” but many are not. As shellfish feed, the bloom’s toxins get trapped inside and have the potential to poison whoever eats the shellfish, whether a sea lion in Kodiak or a subsistence user in Klawock.

SEATT partners are monitoring for other kinds of toxic phytoplankton, such as Dinophysis. “It kind of looks like a pitcher filled with punch with Sangria,” said Kennedy. “We’re worried about that because it produced diuretic shellfish poisoning, which is very unpleasant but not high priority.” (Photo courtesy of Esther Kennedy)

“Here we are living with hundreds of bears wandering that will wander through the streets, but everyone is worried about the clams,” said Chris Whitehead, STA’s Natural Resource Specialist.

Chris Whitehead joined STA’s Resource Protection Department in the fall of 2013. In his former home of Washington State, there’s a hotline you can call to know which beaches are safe for shellfish digging.

WA HOTLINE: You have reached the Washington State Department of Health Shellfish Safety Hotline…

No such system exists in Alaska, so Whitehead wanted to create a local solution. He pitched the idea for a HAB monitoring program to several tribes. The response was instant.

“This is kind of the first step or kind of the poster child for collaboration on environmental issues,” said Jeff Feldpausch. Six other tribes have signed on for the project. Together, they form Southeast Alaska Tribal Toxins group, or SEATT, with membership from Sitka, Juneau, Yakutat, Petersburg, Klawock, Craig, and Kasaan.

Matt Anderstrom does the water testing for the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe at the Yakutat Lagoon. Two weeks ago, the lab saw its first sighting of Alexandrium – that’s the one that makes Saxitoxin. It was spotted by his younger daughter, Nellie.

“I’ve got flashcards and identification keys,” said Anderstrom. “[My daughter] was asking what the bad ones look like and as soon as she seen it, she lit up and was like, ‘That’s it, right there!”

Identification keys from NOAA’s Phytoplankton Monitoring Network in Charleston, SC. Representatives came to Alaska to provide training to SEATT’s field workers. (Emily Kwong/KCAW photo)

Using the data field workers like Anderstrom and Kennedy are gathering, each tribe hopes to eventually create an early warning system for toxic bloom events in their area. In Sitka, Feldpausch imagines it will be a stoplight published in the daily paper.

“A green should be good to go, a yellow is proceed with caution, and a red, we have found saxitoxins out there,” said Feldpausch.

Right now, the Sitka Tribe is only testing the waters at Starrigavan. Feldpausch recognized that may not be enough for some harvesters.

“Eventually we may be able to grow and do other areas,” he said, “But I imagine there’s probably 50-60 beaches around here that people get their shellfish from. There’s no way to cover all those areas.”

Each tribe has focused their first year of fieldwork on one site and for Sitka, the choice of Starrigavan is strategic. In 2013, two locals suffered mild PSP cases in the middle of October.

White explained, “It used to be wintertime was somewhat safe, you didn’t have to worry about it. But because of climate change and warming conditions, the bloom may last all the way through October, November.”

So the old rule of thumb, that safe harvesting months had an “R” in them, basically September through April, is no longer true. In 2012, Alaska Magazine got in trouble with the state for saying otherwise. With PSP a threat any time of year, Whitehead says it’s more important than ever for communities to reclaim their beaches and know exactly what lurks in the water.

For more on PSP safety and prevention, check out the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation‘s fact sheet.

In part 2 of this series later this week, KCAW will report on additional efforts by Sitka Tribe to develop a shellfish testing lab for the commercial industry.