In the Mississippi Sound, heavy rains through spring and summer were hard on baby oysters. Big enough to spawn next spring, they're now on reefs being restored for fishing or reserved to hold brood stock for future generations, with no harvest allowed. When the Little Lagoon oysters were collected, more than 20 big plastic 'shrimp baskets' held clumps of oysters. Volunteers become 'engaged about caring about the bay they live on,' he said. It's as much education as restoration, said Bob Stokes, director of the Galveston Bay Foundation in Texas. The oysters were grown at dozens of private docks along Little Lagoon. But the oysters aren't being grown for the half-shell or deep fryer.Īuburn University graduate students Rayne Palmer, left, and Conrad Horst with oysters collected in October to help restore Alabama's reefs. Oyster gardening uses the same techniques on a smaller scale. Commercial farmers around the country grow oysters near the surface because they mature much faster where the water holds more of the plankton they eat and predators can be more easily removed. oyster harvests fall 68% to about 11,900 tons a year in the 1990s, federal figures show. But overharvesting, pollution, parasites, smothering sediment and other problems saw U.S. In the 1950s, an average of 37,400 tons of oysters were taken annually from brackish waters nationwide. 'I feel very positive we are creating habitat in the lagoon,' he said, adding that many of the 50,000 to 55,000 adult oysters grown there each year go to reefs in Mobile Bay.

In Maryland, Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama alone, there are more than 1,000 oyster gardens, most in wire cages hanging from private docks or open-topped floats tied to them.Ĭlimate A new report shows just how much climate change is killing the world's coral reefsĭennis Hatfield of Gulf Shores, Ala., said he is struck each summer by the number of crabs, fish, shrimp, sponges and other animals he clears from his cages on Little Lagoon. The reefs provide habitat for shrimp, crabs and fish and protect shorelines. Spat glue themselves to larger oysters and grow. Each oyster filters 25 to 50 gallons (95 to 190 liters) of water a day. Oyster reefs are a keystone of coastal ecosystems. coasts that's raising oysters from translucent spat the width of a soda straw to hard-shelled bivalves that can help restore depleted reefs. Louis are part of a volunteer force along U.S. Students on a platform below the school's long pier gently shake their oyster garden's wire cages as they pull them from the water, loosening mud and algae that might keep water and nutrients from baby oysters clinging to those shells. Stanislaus High School on Mississippi's Gulf coast. It's time to agitate the oysters at St. The school is among more than 50 locations in Mississippi and more than 1,000 nationwide where people raise oysters to help build reefs off their states' coasts.īAY ST. This is about half the 200 spat per shell considered by the industry to be a good set.Dayton Hall, left, and Jackson Mountjoy use calipers to measure a baby oyster at the school's oyster garden in Bay St. By 17 September water conditions had improved and an estimated 50–100 spat were reported attached per shell on the collectors. A red tide then appeared consisting of vast numbers of a dinoflagellate tentatively identified as Gymnodinium simplex, and the anticipated main spatfall did not occur. Medium larvae peaked at 754 larvae/m 3 on 28 August. A small spatfall occurred on 14, 16 and 18 August when an average of 65, 64 and 65 spat per shell, respectively, attached on collectors during 2 days' immersion.Ī second, much bigger peak of small larvae built up from 16 August to reach an average maximum of 4,702 larvae/m 3 on 24 August. Small larvae (< 150 μm diameter) peaked at an average of 1,782 larvae per tonne of sea water (m 3) on 10 August medium larvae (151–250 μm) at 1,258/m 3 peaked on 12 August as did large settling larvae (251–300 μm) at 350/m 3. Plankton hauls from seven stations showed successive high peaks of small, medium and large larvae during early August. The spatfall prediction techniques used in Hiroshima Bay, Japan, are described.

Grant for oyster spat