What exactly is displacement and has this occurred on Totten shores?
Displacement occurs when one species becomes dominant (i.e. planting excessive numbers, food competition for same diet, or removing predators) and crowds out other species that lived in the area prior to their arrival. Those of us who have lived on Totten Inlet for many years can attest to the following: once there was the native Olympia oyster, which was displaced by a Japanese variety of oyster brought in for production; along with that came the oyster drill, a parasite (it is a small marine mollusk adapted for boring holes into oyster shells), which spread all over the oyster growing region throughout the state because of depuration techniques. Depuration in this sense meant moving oysters from an area with water quality problems into CLEAN Totten Inlet waters to purge for several weeks…then the oysters are ready for market. Then mussel rafts appeared in quiet coves, and the finfish that were there vanished. Walking along the shore, we once had lots of barnacles and oyster drills,
