Every few weeks, at low tide, Liam Wirak-Cassidy heads to a handful of beaches in Haines. He scoops up about two dozen blue mussels, marks where he found them, and freezes them.
Then he sends them to a lab in Sitka.
“They crack open the shells, make kind of a smoothie, and test them for the presence of paralytic shellfish toxins. Alexandriums, and a couple other ones,” Wirak-Cassidy, who works for the Chilkoot Indian Association, said in a recent interview.
Earlier this spring, samples taken at Portage Cove, Taiyasanka Harbor and Viking Cove came back positive for toxins from harmful algal blooms that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning. Samples taken in Skagway’s Nahku beach also came back positive.
The results sparked advisories for all four locations. Those advisories are meant to discourage people from harvesting shellfish species that accumulate toxins as they filter through sea water. The toxins can cause illness or death when consumed in high concentrations.
“We want people to be able to harvest their traditional foods and enjoy those in a safe way,” Wirak-Cassidy said.
A tribal consortium called Southeast Alaska Tribal Ocean Research, or SEATOR, runs the testing lab in Sitka. The group handles samples sent in from across the region.
Wirack-Cassidy said positive samples are typical for this time of year. While it’s ill-advised to harvest bivalves like mussels and clams right now, he says other species, like crabs and finfish, are probably OK.
“With crabs the meat is safe, you just have to clean it. The guts could contain PSTs, so as long as you clean your crabs before you eat them, they’re a safe food source,” he said.
Samples collected on Monday indicate levels are still elevated in Skagway but have decreased since earlier this spring, when testing showed toxin levels were more than 10 times higher than the regulatory limit.
Wirack-Cassidy is still waiting for results from samples he collected from Portage and Viking Coves this week. Next week he plans to sample Taiyasanka Harbor, a largely enclosed and less accessible area across the Chilkoot Inlet.
Reuben Cash, who coordinates the Skagway sampling for the Skagway Traditional Council, said the testing program provides a helpful snapshot of toxins in the area that residents should pay attention to when harvesting shellfish, or when walking pets on local beaches.
But ultimately, he said, it’s just a snapshot, and the community would benefit from more thorough testing.
“I wish we had more widespread sampling so we could give people a clearer picture of how things are,” he added.
Cash recommended that harvesters go beyond heeding the advisories and actually submit a small chunk of their harvest to the lab themselves before eating it. It’s particularly important, he says, as temperatures rise with climate change – and toxin events become less predictable.
“Those benchmarks are changing and they’re changing rapidly,” he said. “The best that I could say is that if you harvest shellfish, use the SEATOR network, use that tool to ensure that whatever you’re harvesting is not going to kill you.”
Advisories are currently in place for communities throughout Southeast, including but not limited to Yakutat, Sitka, Juneau, Hoonah, Haines and Skagway.
