Oyster Seed Grant Awards
The Nantucket Shellfish Association is pleased to announce that we have awarded $20,000 in oyster seed grants to Nantucket growers. The objective of this new grant award is to support increased survivability of oysters by allowing growers to purchase seed in higher quantities and larger sizes.
Courtesy of Devils Creek Oysters
Courtesy of Devils Creek Oysters
Annually, farmers import oyster seed from licensed and approved hatcheries throughout New England. The Town of Nantucket Hatchery does not supply farmers with oyster seed, as they are a municipal department and not able to sell the shellfish that they propagate. Their efforts support natural stock enhancement in our harbors, primarily of scallops and clams.
Growers purchase seed ranging from 2-20 mm in size, buying 100,000-800,000 seed per year, at the expense of $10,000-$50,000 per year. Depending on the farm acreage, gear, and other infrastructure, it becomes a balance of buying enough seed to account for natural loss and large enough seed to bet on survivability.
Oyster seed compared to a harvest ready oyster shell
Courtesy of Devils Creek Oysters
Oysters feed by filtering algae from the water, ultimately removing nutrients from the water which, in excess, can degrade the aquatic environment. A single adult oyster can filter more than 50 gallons of water a day. Nantucket & Polpis Harbor currently host five oyster farms harvesting over 1.2 million adult oysters in total each year. Theoretically, Nantucket’s oyster farms are filtering 60 million gallons of water per day!
Since 2016, the Chesapeake Bay Program has been working with local growers to utilize harvested oyster tissue in the region’s nutrient management plan. By harvesting one million adult oysters they determined they removed 198 pounds of nitrogen and 22 pounds of phosphorus. They are currently working to determine the value of removed nutrients which might be paid to oyster growers with a nutrient credit trading program. While a project of that level is not yet feasible for the NSA, this grant is a first step towards finding our local intersection of the aquaculture industry and harbor nutrient management.
We are proud to be in the company of numerous other groups offering oyster seed grants including The Nature Conservancy, Chesapeake Oyster Alliance, Oyster South, Woods Hole Sea Grant, Louisiana Fisheries Forward, Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.
