Market Research Biz News: Volunteers grow oyster gardens to help reef recovery

JANET McCONNAUGHEY-The Associated Press

Bay Street Louis, Mississippi (AP) — It’s time to stir oysters at St. Stanislaus High School in the Gulf of Mississippi.

Students on the platform under the long pier of the school gently shake the wire cage in the oyster garden as they pull it out of the water to loosen mud and algae and remove the water and nutrients from the baby’s oysters on the oyster shells. I will prevent it.

These Bay St. Louis students are part of a US coastal volunteer force that grows oysters from translucent spats to straw straws into hard-shelled bivalves that help restore depleted coral reefs.

Oyster reef It is the cornerstone of the coastal ecosystem. Each oyster filters 25-50 gallons (95-190 liters) of water daily. Glue large oysters and grow them. Coral reefs provide habitat for shrimp, crabs and fish, Protect the coastline.

Maryland, Virginia, Mississippi, and Alabama alone have more than 1,000 oyster gardens, most of which are wire cages hanging from dedicated docks or open-top floats tied to them.

Dennis Hatfield of the Gulf Shores, Alabama, said he was attacked every summer by driving crabs, fish, shrimp, sponges and other animals out of their cages in Little Lagoon.

“We feel very positive that we are habitating the lagoon,” he says, and many of the 50,000 to 55,000 adult oysters grown there go to the coral reefs of Mobile Bay.

In the 1950s, an average of 37,400 tonnes of oysters were captured annually from brackish waters across the country. However, problems such as overfishing, pollution, parasites, and suffocation of sediments reduced US oyster yields by 68% in the 1990s to about 11,900 tonnes per year.

Commercial farmers across the country grow oysters near the surface because they are mature. Much faster Where water holds more of the plankton they eat and can get rid of predators more easily.

Oyster gardening is small and uses the same techniques. However, oysters are not cultivated for half-shells or tempura pots.

Bob Stokes, director of the Galveston Bay Foundation in Texas, said it was as much education as recovery. Volunteers are “crazy about caring for the bay they live in,” he said.

When the Little Lagoon oysters were collected, over 20 large plastic “shrimp baskets” had oyster chunks.

Large enough to spawn next spring, they are currently on coral reefs that have been restored for fishing or reserved to retain broodstock for future generations. Harvesting is not allowed.

In Mississippi Sound, it rained heavily from spring to summer. Work hard on baby oysters. Most shells in cages set up in St. Stanislaus in late June retained only silt in mid-November, and the surviving juveniles were generally less than an inch long.

“If you find an oyster, set it aside and don’t count it twice,” warned Auburn University graduate student Rayne Palmer. Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Mississippi Gardening Program.

Lettha Boudreaux, head of the St. Stanislaus marine biology program, said empty shells also flow into coral reefs.

Oyster shells are preferred by hard-surfaced spats, Whole artificial reef Made from recycled shells.The Galveston Bay program puts mesh bags holding recycled shells into the water to attract spats and to them. Auspicious start..

Oyster gardening began around the Chesapeake Bay in the late 1990s. In the Chesapeake Bay, yields have plummeted by 90% in 20 years.

The Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant oyster gardening program is modeled after Chesapeake and was launched in 2001 in Alabama as a master’s thesis study.

Kimberly Henderson Hedrick, who won the Gulf Guardian Award for Head of Shellfish Restoration Project in Alabama in 2004 and is now teaching in rural Indiana, said in Alabama, “It’s a success, I’m really happy to see people still doing that. ” The place where she grew up.

Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay suffered from two very deadly parasitic diseases, in addition to other problems. The decline in the late 1900s followed the more violent clashes of overfishing in the 1920s, says senior ecosystem scientist Chris Moore. Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

The Foundation and its member group gardeners have added at least 15 million oysters in Maryland and 1 million oysters in Virginia, Moore said.

Virginia Tidewater Oyster Gardeners Association Members grow, eat and plant oysters. Tidewater has not been able to collect data on coral reef contributions, but Honorary Chairman Vic Spain believes there are probably at least 500,000 people annually.

Umbrella group called Chesapeake Oyster Alliance We have set a goal of adding 10 billion oysters by 2025.

“Good luck, it will be difficult,” Spain wrote in an email.

Dozens of schools and community groups around New York Harbor Villion Oyster Project, A spokeswoman, Helen Hetrick, said in an email. Oysters in the harbor are not called “oyster gardens” in the project because they are not safe to eat and the goal is recovery, not food.

The oyster garden is lifted from the water every week for 10 days to clear the creatures, prevent the oysters from growing through the mesh of the cage, and dry and clean the algae and seaweed growing on the wire.

It takes 3-4 years for persimmons to become adults in Chesapeake, and 1-18 months in captive cages.

In Mobile Bay and Mississippi, it may only take four to five months for oysters to be ready for transplantation, said PJ, an extension professor at Auburn University who oversees oyster gardening in Alabama at the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant. Waters says.

Collinwood, one of the two student internships managing St. Stanislaus Garden, collects data and oversees other students-not for a fee, but for transcript credits-he practices. He said he was excited about the aspect.

“I wasn’t aware that persimmons had a huge impact on the environment,” he said.

Follow JanetMcConnaughey on Twitter: @JanetMcCinNO.

Volunteers grow oyster gardens to help reef recovery | Lifestyle

Source link Volunteers grow oyster gardens to help reef recovery | Lifestyle

The post Volunteers grow oyster gardens to help reef recovery | Lifestyle appeared first on Illinois News Today.