Sometimes, we'll grow oysters in a bag for a year, and then, when the bags get crowded, we'll dump the oysters on the beach for a few months before harvest. For instance, in areas with lots of wind and wave action, or maybe lots of predators, we'd use a bag on beach method to protect the oysters. Some of the oysters we plant on the tumble farm (where they grow into Blue Pools), some we put into bags that lie directly on the beach, and some we scatter directly onto the tideflats. We graduate oysters from the nursery to the farms when they're about 1/2 inch big. Sometimes we buy cluster oyster seed - this is called 'spat on shell' - keep that in your back pocket for our next oyster trivia competition!) (Usually when we buy oyster seed we're buying single seed. this means they have more food, so they grow faster. The nursery system, aka FLUPSY, lets us keep oysters in tanks with water flowing continuously through them. We have a nursery system, so we're able to buy very very small seed. We don't have a hatchery at Hama Hama - instead we buy oyster seed from other companies, usually Taylor Shellfish, Hog Island, Coast Seafoods, or Goose Point Oyster Company. If you've ever found a Hama Hama with a rock attached to it - it was likely born in the wild.Дў) We grow oysters from seed. However, sometimes wild oysters turn into pebble sets - which we can sell as singles. Usually, when oysters reproduce in the wild, they grow into oyster clusters, you can read about that process here. How do we farm oysters? Two ways.ДЎ) We make our beach as hospitable as possible for wild oyster reproduction. So every day, our farmers bring oysters in from the beach, spread them out on a table, and sort them into different size classes, including the 'market ready' oysters - or those big enough to ship to restaurants.Д«ut we're getting ahead of ourselves. If you get too many grunts in the bunch, they take up more and more of the food. The oyster at the top of a pile has more access to current (and therefore food) than an oyster in the midst of the pile. We call that last bit 'sorting the grunts from the runts.' Oysters grow at different rates - sometimes this is related to genetics, but most often it's simply a matter of food availability. So you gotta stay on your toes.ДЄnd by 'handle oysters,' we mainly mean: rinse them, agitate them to strengthen their shells, and sort them by size. Growth rates are site specific, vary seasonally, and change year to year. the faster your oysters grow, the more you'll need to handle them. Part of art of growing oysters lies in timing your interventions to match their growth rate. Our farm interns often say that their main takeaway from their internship is that oyster farming is a ton of work. This is not to say that we don't handle the oysters a lot. Oysters and clams are definitely animals, but shellfish farming is unlike any other form of protein production in that it consumes no fresh water, uses no chemicals or added feed, and requires little daily intervention. Rest assured: we don't actually grow vegetables. We buy oyster 'seed' and we 'plant it' on the beach. Sandstone does not appear to be a suitable alternative to limestone as a cultch for oysters.As we talk about our farm operations, you'll notice that much of the language we use makes it sound like we're growing plants.

There was thus a clear preference of oyster larvae for limestone at high salinity and high-larval abundance, and at low salinity and low-larval abundance. The difference between sandstone and limestone was highly significant (P 0.0001) at both sites. The mean number of oyster spat per bag at SSL was 2156.5 for limestone and 338.5 for sandstone at NSL mean number of spat per bag was 315.3 for limestone and 16.8 for sandstone. South Sister Lake had higher salinities and higher spatfall than did NSL. (The Bay Junop bags were missing upon retrieval.) All recruits to the substrate (live spat, articulated dead shells and single shells) were counted as spat.

The bags were deployed in late May and retrieved in early to mid July. Thirty bags of sandstone and 30 bags of limestone were placed on each of 3 sites in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana-South Sister Lake (SSL), North Sister Lake (NSL), and Bay Junop. ABSTRACT Field studies were conducted to compare quartzitic sandstone to siliceous limestone in its ability to collect oyster spat, and to determine if sandstone is a suitable cultch for oysters.

Collect wild oyster spat