Shrimp expert at the ready

Weeks ago, when news of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico started making the rounds, the first thing Carl Reiber thought was, uh oh.

Reiber, the associate dean of the College of Sciences at UNLV, happens to study crustaceans for a living (as well as teach, of course). He knows what happens to crayfish and shrimp and lobster when they don’t get enough oxygen. He’s been studying just that scenario for two decades.

And so, soon after the uh oh moment, Reiber also thought this: I can help.

He started putting together a proposal to the National Science Foundation. He already was one of the world’s top experts on hypoxia in shrimp.

He knows that if shrimp don’t get enough oxygen, bad things can happen.

“This could potentially impact several generations of shrimp,” Reiber said.

And that matters. People eat lots of shrimp, of course, averaging more than four pounds per person per year in the United States, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

And while most of the shrimp we eat is imported, two thirds of the domestic shrimp comes from the gulf. In the seafood industry, shrimp is second only to crabbing in terms of economic impact.

But shrimp are more important than a food source for humans. Grass shrimp, which are tiny and almost clear, are at the bottom of the food chain. If they were to die off or decline significantly, it could affect everything else.

“We know what happens to those animals when they’re stressed,” he said.

So that’s what Reiber knows. What he doesn’t know yet, what no one seems to know, is what the oil will do.

Which is why he is filing a request for a Rapid Response Grant with the National Science Foundation. If he gets the grant — about $200,000 for a year of study — he plans on getting some Gulf Coast shrimp and subjecting them to the same conditions they’re likely to find in the wild. He wants to see what happens if, for example, their gills get clogged with oil.

They might adapt. They might have trouble breeding. They might simply die. If what happens is bad, the data could help scientists figure out how to avoid such a thing. Or at least how to fix it.

The foundation has already awarded rapid grants to study other issues related to the spill, including to a University of Georgia researcher who is studying how the spill will affect microbes and Louisiana State University researchers studying that state’s wetlands.

But wait, you’re thinking. Georgia, Louisiana. Sure. They’re coastal. They’re in the gulf area.

But the University of Nevada, Las Vegas? Not only is it landlocked and almost 2,000 miles from the spill, it’s in the middle of the desert.

Reiber gets it. He chuckled at the apparent disconnect. But he said it’s not like you have to be near the ocean to study its creatures. He gets his shrimp shipped from that region and studies them in a lab at UNLV. That’s pretty much the same thing he would be doing if he worked at a Gulf Coast university. He can catch (with a permit) crayfish at Lake Mead if he wants to study them, too. They’re exactly the same as the crayfish he would find in Mobile, Ala., if he were to go digging in the creekbeds there.

He said UNLV has a top-notch lab and a solid scientific staff.

“There’s only one or two labs in the world that do what we do,” he said.

Reiber started out studying bacteria in Virginia’s salt marshes. He got interested in crabs, then the whole crustacean family. He went on to study their cardiorespiratory systems in Massachusetts and Florida.

He joined UNLV in 1993 and continued his research.

And then, the spill.

“The animals I work on are under assault by the oil,” Reiber said.

He hopes he can help.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.