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07/12/2016 12:00 PMThe Town of Clinton has contracted with Indian River Shellfish to establish an oyster farm share program for residents. If all goes as planned, residents will be able to buy a share of the harvest and have oysters available for pickup periodically throughout the season.
The Clinton Shellfish Commission has worked for more than 10 years to restore the town’s oyster habitat, which offers environmental benefits ranging from improved water quality to expanded habitats for various marine species (a single adult oyster is capable of filtering and cleaning up to 50 gallons of water per day). The town’s multi-year plan calls for the addition of two million seed oysters to Clinton Harbor this year, followed by another million seeded in 2017.
Indian River Shellfish owners Mike Gilman and George Harris—who are working with the Clinton Shellfish Commission to manage the town’s oyster population—say the farm share program’s first oysters will be harvested in summer 2017.
Indian River Shellfish sustainably grows and harvests eastern oysters, Crassostrea virginica, also known as blue points (in New York) and Wellfleets (on Cape Cod).
“We grow our own crop in Long Island Sound, right along the Connecticut shoreline,” said Gilman, “although quite a few things have worked against oysters in Clinton Harbor, causing their natural population to dwindle.”
In the late ’90s and early aughts, oysters throughout the Northeast suffered a die-off due primarily from two diseases, MSX and Dermo, he said.
“Our oysters had little to no immunity to fight the parasites. Slowly, there has been spotty natural growth in areas like Clinton, but their numbers have not rebounded,” he said. “Another factor working against oysters in Clinton is a lack of suitable areas in which to grow. There is very little substrate for oyster spat [a juvenile growth stage] to attach to. We still get some on marina bulkheads and pylons, but the ground in the inner harbor and up most of the rivers where they would naturally accumulate is nowhere near hard enough to support any natural oyster set. They would be silted over too quickly.
“In terms of what we are trying to do, it’s a few things really. In the last week of June we planted 200 cubic yards of clam shell to be placed in areas of the harbor where the ground is either hard enough, has had some semblance of natural oyster growth in the last 10- to 15 years, or has been enhanced by the Clinton Shellfish Commission. It was quite an undertaking. These areas of Clinton Harbor will serve as substrate for oyster spat to settle on,” he said.
“The idea is to divide the shell among those areas and hope that we can get some natural oyster set on them,” he said. “The shell was planted strategically about a month or so before the oysters spawn and start looking for a place to attach.”
Oysters are spawned at a local hatchery and within six months are brought to the Indian River Shellfish farm, when they’re about the size of a baby’s fingernail. They spend the next 18 months in Indian River’s nursery, growing to maturity, and are farmed in a system of bottom cages that Gilman says provide protection from predators and have little impact on the environment.
“Because they’re not spread out across the sea floor,” he explains, “they don’t have to be bottom-dredged or trawled,” which he says has a highly negative impact on the environment.
Two million oyster seed ordered in January is being delivered and brought into the harbor throughout the summer.
Gilman is optimistic that some or all of the sites will collect spat, and he and Harris and their team will monitor them for growth and success. He hopes to be able to harvest some of the natural set, depurate them (a process of cleaning them in deeper waters), and bring them to market as naturally homegrown Clinton oysters.
“Ideally, the process would become continual: shell, spat attach, harvest in two years, reshell, and so on.”
Details of the farm share program are still being worked out, but the plan is to make it self-sustaining. Income from the program will go back into buying more seed and gear.
Shellfish harvesting and consumption are currently prohibited in Clinton waters, says Gilman, mainly because of water quality. Environmental factors such as stormwater runoff, the dumping of leaves, and unmaintained septic systems have raised bacteria counts, and the number of boats in the lower harbor, where the marinas are concentrated, are also a factor in the way the water is classified.
“Prohibited waters are those in which only seed oysters can be removed to be grown in other areas long enough to cleanse before harvest,” he explains. “Restricted relay oysters can be relayed for depuration at any size, but can require cleansing times that range from two weeks to six months, depending on the areas where they were grown. You can find these classifications all throughout the state. This is how the Department of Agriculture classifies its shellfishing grounds.”
For more information on the town’s Shellfish Restoration, Education, and Farm Share Program, visit www.clintonshellfish.org.