HIGH HOPESFOR ACKLEYM’s No. 1 pick drawinglofty comparisons

SPORTS > C1

Soundersget backon track,beat SanJose 2-1

SPORTS> C1

BY DREW DESILVERSeattle Times business reporter

This is an age of downsizing. Companiesare slashing their payrolls, people are tradingtheir SUVs and McMansions for hybrids andcondos, and the tumbling stock market hasturned a lot of401(k)s into201(k)s. In fact,the whole U.S.economy hasshrunk for the pastthree quarters in arow, according togovernment fig-ures.

So, in keepingwith currenttrends, the North-west 100, The Se-attle Times’ annualranking of the re-gion’s best-per-forming publiccompanies, alsohas slimmed down.For the first time inthe 18 years TheTimes has com-piled the North-west 100, fewerthan 100 compa-nies qualified for it.

The main cul-prit: last fall’sstock-market slide,which pushed doz-ens of Northwest stocks below $2 a share.The Northwest 100 long has excluded com-panies whose shares have dropped below $2,but never — not even during the dot-com col-lapse earlier this decade — have so manycompanies fallen below that threshold.

Among the missing names on this year’slist of 87 companies: Micron Technology,Red Lion Hotels, Cray and Hecla Mining, lastyear’s top performer.

C

seattletimes.com/businesstechnology | JUNE 14, 2009 | SUNDAY

BUSINESSPERSONAL FINANCE

It can be hard to see your way to

profitability during a deep reces-

sion. But Wilsonville, Ore.-based

Flir Systems, which tops this year’s

Northwest 100 as the first three-

time winner, has a not-so-secret

weapon for visualizing opportuni-

ties: infrared cameras.

Flir, which led the North-

west 100 in 2002 and

d fit in the

NORTHWEST 100: INVESTORS’ GUIDE TO REGION’S TOP COMPANIES

Our 18th annual

analysis came up 13

companies short of our

target Northwest 100.

At the top of the heap

of 87 still standing: Our

first threepeat winner.

1. FLIR SYSTEMS

Profilesand stats:

Our 18thannual

analysis ofregion’s bestperformers >

Business D1

See > NORTHWEST, A9

BY CRAIG WELCH / Seattle Times environment reporter

WILLAPA BAY, Pacific County —

T he collapse began rather unspectacularly.In 2005, when most of the millions of Pacific

oysters in this tree-lined estuary failed toreproduce, Washington’s shellfish growers largelyshrugged it off.

In a region that providesone-sixth of the nation’soysters — the epicenter of theWest Coast’s $111 millionoyster industry — everyoneknows nature can be fickle.

But then the failure wasrepeated in 2006, 2007 and2008. It spread to an Oregonhatchery that supplies babyoysters to shellfish nurseriesfrom Puget Sound to LosAngeles. Eighty percent of thathatchery’s oyster larvae died,too.

Now, as the oyster industryheads into the fifth summer ofits most unnerving crisis indecades, scientists arepondering a disturbing theory.They suspect water that risesfrom deep in the Pacific Ocean— icy seawater that surges into

Willapa Bay and gets pumped into seaside hatcheries —may be corrosive enough to kill baby oysters.

If true, that could mean shifts in ocean chemistryassociated with carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil fuelsmay be impairing sea life faster and more dramaticallythan expected.

And it would vault a key Washington industry to thecenter of international debate over how to respond to

Is the Pacific Ocean’schemistry killing sea life?

P H O T O S B Y S T E V E R I N G M A N / T H E S E A T T L E T I M E S

OYSTERS’ FAILURE TO REPRODUCE will lead workers like Northern Oyster Co.’s Gildardo Mendoza to collect far more of theirproduct from a state “oyster preserve” in Willapa Bay. Pacific oysters haven’t successfully reproduced in the wild since 2004.

WILD OYSTER LARVAE ARE DYING before they can attachto shells like the one on top. Whether reared in the wild orin hatcheries, dozens of larvae typically settle onto existingshells, forming “seed.” Above, Eric Hall, of Taylor ShellfishFarms, counts the seeds that have settled on a shell.

OYSTERS IN DEEP TROUBLE

See > OYSTERS, A8

“[The oyster crisis

is a] sign of things

being out of balance,

and that scares the

living daylights out

of me.”

BRIAN SHELDONThird-generation

oysterman

WEB EXTRA

See video of NorthernOyster Co. moving oystersets and hear Sheldon’sviews on the trouble atseattletimes.com

Oyster larvae have been dying by the billions. Scientists suspect it’s a sign thatcarbon dioxide is dramatically affecting the ocean — and if they’re right, it could

push Washington into the center of the debate about the future of the seas.

JUNE 14, 2009

$1.50$2.00 outside King, Pierce,Snohomish, Kitsap countiesseattletimes.com

3 ROP

60% of our newsprintcontains recycled fiber, andinks are reused.

� 2009 Seattle Times Co.

7 59423 32000 3

SUN

IndexASK AMY NW ARTS&LIFE H5

BOOKS NW ARTS&LIFE H4

BUSINESS D SECTION

CORRECTIONS A2

DEATHS, FUNERALS NWSUNDAY B5-B7

EDITORIALS NWSUNDAY B8

LOTTERY A2

MOVIE LISTINGS NW ARTS&LIFE H6

NATION REPORT A4

NW ARTS&LIFE H SECTION

NWTRAVELER H9

ODDS AND ENDS A2

PUZZLES NW ARTS&LIFE H8

RANT & RAVE NW ARTS&LIFE H5

REAL ESTATE E SECTION

TV UPDATE A2

WEEKLY REVIEW A3

DANNY WESTNEAT NWSUNDAY B1

WORLD REPORT A11

Classified adsNWAUTOS G1

NWJOBS/PROF. SERVICES F1

HOMES/RENTALS E8

MERCH., PETS, GARAGE SALES E11

PARTLY SUNNY.High, 72. Low, 52. > B10

WEB

EXTRA

Northwest 100Q&A on Tuesday Seattle Timesbusiness reporterDrew DeSilver, whoanalyzed the databehind theNorthwest 100, willanswer yourquestions aboutthe project and thestate of theregion’s publiccompanies at noon.seattletimes.com

Seattle Times news services

Thousands of protesters roamedthrough Tehran on Saturday,clashing with police and settingtrash bins and tires ablaze in re-sponse to the government’s officialpronouncement that PresidentMahmoud Ahmadinejad had beenre-elected by a large margin.

It was the worst unrest in Teh-ran in a decade.

The brazen and angry confron-tations pushed the reformistmovement closer to a possible mo-ment of truth: whether to con-tinue defying Iran’s security forcesor, as they often have before, re-treat into quiet dismay and frus-

tration over losing more ground tothe Islamic establishment.

But for at least one day, the toneand tactics were more combativethan at any time since authoritiesput down student-led protests in1999.

Iran’s Interior Ministry said Ah-

Fury erupts in Iran after contested vote

See > IRAN, A15

PRESIDENTIAL RACE

Reformists disputeAhmadinejad win;

his challenger’slocation is unknown

BY MARTA FALCONIThe Associated Press

PERUGIA, Italy – Aman-da Knox told an Italiancourt Saturday she wasshocked by the death of herBritish roommate, Mer-edith Kercher, whom sheconsidered a friend.

Knox also said a “crescen-do” of police pressure ledher to accuse an innocentman of the murder.

The case against Knox, a University ofWashington student who was studying in Pe-rugia, has captivated Italy and attracted in-tense news coverage.

Knox, of Seattle, had already told the courton Friday that she was not in the apartmentshe shared with Kercher on the night in 2007when Kercher was slain.

Former UW studentKnox tells of shockover Brit’s murder

Amanda Knoxquestioned byprosecutors

See > KNOX, A15

More than

in coupon

savings

inside

$ 155

Larry Stone

Northwest’s top 100 companies? Nope, just 87 this year

A8 News SUNDAY, JUNE 14, 2009 2 ROP

marine changes expected to rip-ple through and undermineocean food webs.

Scientists seeking to explainwhat’s plaguing these coastal oys-ters say the link to more corrosivewater is strong but anecdotal. Itcould be just one of several fac-tors.

But the possibility leaves someshellfish farmers uneasy aboutmore than just their future busi-ness.

Indications that ocean acidifi-cation may already play a role inthe decline of oysters are a “signof things being out of balance,and that scares the living day-lights out of me,” said third-gen-eration oysterman Brian Sheldon.

Ruffling his 8-year-old son Je-bediah’s head, he added, “for thisguy.”

“Growers are scrounging”Pacific oysters aren’t native to

Willapa Bay, but shellfish grow-ers have farmed them here sincethe 1920s. It’s about the onlyplace left on the West Coastwhere growers look to the wild toget their oysters.

Normally, oysters spawn in thewater, producing larvae thatswim and eventually attach to ahard surface — typically otheroyster shells. This creates oysterseed, called a “set.” These succu-lent mollusks are then moved byhand throughout the bay andtake two to five years to fatten up.

But somewhere between thelarval stage and settling on ashell, these embryonic oysters aredying. And since only a fewyoung have survived since 2005,“we’re running out of oysters inthe bay,” said Bill Dewey, spokes-man for Taylor Shellfish Farms.“Growers are scrounging forwhatever they can find.”

Standing ankle-deep in sea-water on a south Willapa sandbarlast week, Sheldon, owner ofNorthern Oyster Co., watched hisworkers gather shellfish at lowtide from one of the few placesthat still had some: a state “oysterreserve,” a sort of shellfish bankgrowers can lease and draw uponto subsidize their own crops.

For the first time since hisgrandfather started the companyin 1934, Sheldon plans this yearto spend thousands buying oysterseed — larvae attached to shells— from hatcheries, rather thancounting solely on wild reproduc-tion. He expects he’ll make onlyhalf as much as he would in a nor-mal year.

“It perplexes me that we arestill, as a country, and really,globally, denying that there issomething going on,” he said. “Idon’t have the background in thenatural sciences to tell you it’sone thing or the other. I can just

say that over the last 10 years it’sclear to me ... something’s chang-ing. There’s no doubt in mymind.”

Researchers at first blamed anexplosion of Vibrio tubiashii, anocean-borne larvae-killing bacte-ria. When researchers sampledthe marine waters that get suckeddirectly into the hatcheries fromthe sea, they found bacteriacounts nearly 100 times abovenormal. Even after installing ex-tensive microbe-killing ultravio-let water-treatment systems, lar-vae died.

Then they noticed the water’spH — the scale measuring acidityand alkalinity — sometimesdropped below normal, becom-ing more acidic.

Seawater typically is slightlyalkaline, but when oceans absorbcarbon dioxide from the atmos-phere — as they have by the hun-dreds of billions of tons since theIndustrial Revolution — they be-come more corrosive.

Climate modelers predicted

greenhouse gases would makemarine waters more acidic bycentury’s end. They expected tonotice it first in deep water, someof which hasn’t circulated to thesurface in 1,500 years and hastherefore accumulated moreatmospheric carbon dioxide. Anddeep waters already run higher incarbon dioxide because dyingplants, animals and fish sink anddecay.

But two years ago, oceanogra-phers Richard Feely and Chris Sa-bine, both with the National Oce-anic and Atmospheric Adminis-tration’s Pacific Marine Environ-mental Laboratory in Seattle,found more acidified waters al-ready reaching the surface.

The north winds that blow offWashington’s coast push marinesurface waters off shore. Thosewaters are replaced by the icy-cold, more corrosive seawaterwelling up from hundreds of me-ters below.

Throughout 2008, researchersat Oregon’s Whiskey Creek Shell-

fish Hatchery noticed a trend:Their die-offs tended to come af-ter north winds pushed thosevery same deep waters into thepipes that feed the hatchery.

“There seems to be a strongcorrelation,” Feely said.

Ripple effects for fishIn a sense, that’s exactly what

scientists expected — just not sosoon.

Corrosive waters can dissolveclam shells, eat away at coralsand kill fish eggs. Already, scien-tists have taken pteropods, tinymarine snails that swim in theopen ocean, from the Gulf ofAlaska and exposed them toslightly acidified marine water ina laboratory. Their protectiveshells immediately dissolved.

Those creatures make up 60percent of the food for Alaska’sjuvenile pink salmon. Similarcreatures support many of themajor fish species in Alaska’sNorth Pacific, which in turn sup-ports the billion-dollar Seattle-based industry that provides halfthe nation’s catch of fish.

“The fish we depend on —salmon and pollock and herring— when they’re in the first year oftheir life, they all depend onshellfish for survival,” Feely said.“Early models suggest a 10 per-cent loss in pteropods can cause a20 percent loss in weight of afish.”

Just last month, Smithsonianscientists published a paper sug-gesting that in the next centurymore acidified oceans will threat-en the world’s shellfish. Oysterlarvae, they pointed out, are par-ticularly susceptible. Their earlyshells are made from an easilyeroded form of calcium carbon-ate.

Researchers believe that mightbe part of what’s already happen-ing on the Northwest coast. If oys-ter larvae are swimming in ma-rine waters — whether pumpedfrom the sea into a hatchery or inthe bay — as deep, acidified wateris pushed toward shore, “that

could be a problem,” said SimonAlin, a NOAA scientist who workswith Sabine and Feely.

In addition, Vibrio tubiashiithrives in this more corrosive en-vironment. “It becomes the domi-nant pathogen,” Feely said.

Still, it’s too soon to say for cer-tain if these issues are localized orpart of a broader phenomenon.The hatchery is not far from alow-oxygen dead zone off the Or-egon coast. There also isn’t so-phisticated enough equipment inplace to get precise pH readings.

But it all suggests significantocean changes are coming fast, ifthey’re not here already.

“We’re not saying we’re killingall life in the ocean,” Sabine said.“There will be winners and losers.But this is not something that’s offin the future. This is not some-thing for our children’s children.It’s happening now.”

Asking for helpAlready the oyster industry is

seeing job losses and other ef-fects. In the last year, Taylorspent $500,000 just trying to getoysters to attach to shells in a sec-ondary hatchery, said Willapa Di-vision Manager Eric Hall.

The industry has asked Con-gress for help replumbing hatch-eries and developing monitoringsystems to track upwelling eventsand the quality of incoming sea-water. Without intervention, itseconomic contribution to the re-gion could drop another 30 per-cent just this year, said RobinDowney, director of the PacificCoast Shellfish Growers Associa-tion.

So far in 2009, hatcheries havebeen able to improve productionbecause of fewer upwellingevents. Combined with new pip-ing and technology, oyster pro-duction could stabilize beforeconsumers notice a change.

But without major changes inthe marine environment, smalloperators who count entirely onnature, like Sheldon, will likelycontinue to struggle. “I hope youhave your fingers crossed for us,”he said.

He wants desperately to passhis business to his son, so he plansto keep on hunting for oysters.

But now he’ll do so with oneeye trained on the coast’s northwinds.

Craig Welch: 206-464-2093 orcwelch@seattletimes.com

P H O T O S B Y S T E V E R I N G M A N / T H E S E A T T L E T I M E S

ONE-SIXTH OF THE NATION’S OYSTERS come from Willapa Bay, epicenter of the West’s $111 million oyster industry.

HATCHERY OYSTERS FACE PROBLEMS, too, since they’re spawned in water piped from the ocean.Eric Hall, of Taylor Shellfish, now spends much more money on producing oyster seed.

< OystersFROM A1

LARVAE DYINGBY THE BILLIONS

Possible factor: Corrosivewater, which can dissolveshells, eat away at corals

and kill fish eggs

OYSTERS IN DEEP TROUBLE

GROWERS RELY on wild oysters, which typically grow in clusterslike this. Third-generation shellfish farmer Brian Sheldon nowmust turn to oysters started in hatcheries.

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