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It's part marine biology, part conservation, and part babysitting.
This isn't some sort of a strange social experiment. It's the oyster conservationist program and it's a way for volunteers to help restore oysters to New Hampshire's Great Bay.
The estuary's oyster populations have declined over the decades because of over-harvest, pollution and disease. We are now to the point where the decline is dramatic.
Historically, oysters served as Great Bay's liver and kidneys by filtering huge volumes of water each day.
Now, there have been renewed efforts to restore Great Bay's oysters, including the Oyster Conservationist Program, a collaboration of The Nature Conservancy and the University of New Hampshire's Jackson Estuarine Laboratory, New Hampshire Sea Grant, and NOAA's Restoration Center.
The program involves more than 30 volunteers who each have dockside access to Great Bay. Each volunteer (or household) gets a small cage filled with 500 juvenile oysters that have been attached to 50 recycled oyster shells. The baby oysters are only about the size of a pinky fingernail at first. Volunteers tend to their cages regularly from August through October, removing crabs and other predators and fouling organisms that can harm the oysters. Every two weeks, volunteers check their oysters carefully, noting mortality and recording their growth.
By starting them in a controlled environment, the juvenile oysters "get a good jump start on life," said Ray Konisky, The Nature Conservancy's marine conservation ecologist.
In a second major initiative for next summer, the Conservancy will be expanding the Oyster River reef by adding a new shell layer to the river bottom. Years of siltation in Great Bay and harvest practices that remove shell have turned hard-bottom oyster reefs into non-productive, mucky mudflats. But now, we have acquired clam shell from a seafood processor to create an experimental shell area in hopes of “catching” a native oyster set next summer.
Together with our partners at UNH, NH Fish and Game, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and our community volunteers, we are developing new brood stock and reef habitat for Great Bay oysters. With lots of tender care and a little luck, these oysters will form and renew our reefs, filter tons of water and restore some clarity to the Great Bay estuary. These efforts represent a small yet important step to build upon. When you’re helping what may be the most ecologically-important animal in the estuary, everything counts.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): © R. Zeiber (planting oysters); © Megan Lepage (prepared oysters).
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