Transforming Shellfish Farming with Smart Technology and Management Practices for Sustainable Production

NIFA

Lori Tyler Gula, Senior Public Affairs Specialist

Shellfish aquaculture is perhaps the most sustainable form of aquaculture. Oysters filter water and provide habitat for many marine species. They contribute to national food security and provide numerous health benefits. Shellfish aquaculture is also an important economic driver for rural coastal areas, providing jobs and sustaining economic viability.   

However, domestic shellfish aquaculture is bottlenecked by outdated technology and tools, preventing high-volume production. For example, on-bottom oyster farming methods have not substantially changed since the 19th century. Planting and harvesting methods are random and lack precision, leading to extremely low survival rate and production.  

To address the sustainability issues of the current shellfish farming, University of Maryland scientists are developing smart precision farming practices with support from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture that will lead to sustainable shellfish production and improve farmers’ lives.  

“The robotics and artificial intelligence technologies being developed would bring significant advances to shellfish farming industry, enhancing productivities and profitability,” said Miao Yu, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Maryland. “Although the oyster farmers don’t fully understand the technology tools that we are developing, to our surprise, we received tremendous support on our project. The farmers are very interested in accessing the environmental and crop inventory monitoring data and using precision farming practices to improve farm management.” 

Currently, scientists are developing underwater robotics-based monitoring and smart-harvesting technologies to enable precision shellfish farming. In the long term, researchers will go from precision shellfish farming to digital, programmable aquaculture that would help address food insecurity and mitigate climate change, ultimately addressing the grand challenge of global ecosystem sustainability. 

Preliminary economic studies show that modest increase of 10% oyster production will result in an annual increase in revenues of more than $11 million for Maryland farmers and more than $228 million nationwide.  

“This production increase will lead to the removal of over 65 tons of nitrogen fertilizers from sea water,” Yu said. “More production will lead to expanded sales and increased consumption. Research suggested that 10% replacement of beef consumption with oysters would result in greenhouse gas emission reduction equivalent of having 10.8 million fewer cars on the road. Ultimately, this project will lead us to a more sustainable future.”  

Additional information about this research will be presented at a NIFA education session at Aquaculture America 2023 Feb. 23-26 in New Orleans. NIFA national program leader Dr. Tim Sullivan, who provides leadership for programs in aquaculture, animal health and biotechnology, will moderate a session highlighting the breadth and impact of NIFA-funded aquaculture research and outreach.  

Top image: University of Maryland scientists are developing smart precision farming practices using robotics and artificial intelligence technologies that will lead to sustainable shellfish production and improve farmers life. Credit: University of Maryland. 

Full Article: https://www.nifa.usda.gov/about-nifa/blogs/transforming-shellfish-farming-smart-technology-management-practices-sustainable

Alternative oyster culture, a different way to farm, is gaining popularity in Louisiana

GRAND ISLE, La. —
Full Article: https://www.wdsu.com/article/alternative-oyster-culture-a-different-way-to-farm-is-gaining-popularity-in-louisiana/42925622

Lee Southwick

Alternative oyster culture, also known as "AOC," is a different way to farm oysters.

Farmers buy the seed from a hatchery and grow the oysters in floating cages.

“It’s got some advantages to it,” says Kirk Curole, owner of Bayside Oyster Company. “The wild oysters are great. But these oysters are grown about 2 inches underneath the surface of the water, and it's where all the good phytoplankton and dissolved oxygen is. So they have the perfect environment.”

This ideal environment, and the fact that they are cross-bred, two-chromosome oysters, means they grow quickly. For perspective, it can take two to three years for a wild oyster to grow to 3 inches. An AOC oyster can get to that size in under a year.

They also shake the cages to break the beak off the shell, which promotes shell growth.

“I’m saying anywhere from about 35 to 45% of this is meat, when a wild oyster might be in the 20% range because the shells are so thick,” said Curole.

Some farmers, like Curole, are able to move their oysters to safer locations during hurricanes, saving the harvest.

Another benefit of AOC oysters is knowing what you're buying. A farmer can tell you the salinity of the oysters. They are individual oysters, never in clusters. They are all the same size with an identical shape. They pressure wash each shell clean. The inside liquor is clear and never chalky.

“They are the most delicious oyster you’re ever going to try because they are grown at the surface, they’re not in the mud, they’re clean, they’re very fresh tasting,” said Curole.

Curole added, “This is just a different way of growing it. I think it is the future of growing oysters.”

Traditional oyster farmers disagree it's the future of oyster farming because they say AOC farming won't be able to keep up with the supply and demand.

Both types of farmers do agree these are what they call "boutique oysters."

“I do strictly retail, which is kind of a niche market,” said Curole. "I kind of compare myself to a small-craft brewery, small-batch beers or wine or whatever; we do small-batch oysters because I only grow 80,000.”

The Louisiana Oyster Task Force represents both traditional and AOC farming.

Mitch Jurisich, chairman of the task force, says though this will not overtake traditional oyster farming, he wants to see this type of farming succeed, as it is bringing new types of people into the oyster farming industry.

AOC is a growing practice. There is a program by the Louisiana Sea Grant to expand the industry.

There are currently 24 AOC oyster farmers in the state of Louisiana, with 164 acres in use, and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries expects those numbers to grow this year. They have already begun processing AOC farming applications for 2023 and are projecting more AOC parks to begin operation this year.

Islip Town adds hundreds more acres to oyster farming program in Great South Bay

Credit: Newsday

By Brianne Ledda

Chuck Westfall doesn’t golf. So when he retired, what else was there to do but start farming oysters?

The Wantagh resident leases seven acres from the Town of Islip’s Bay Bottom Licensing Program in the Great South Bay. That number will eventually rise to 17, with the recent launch of the program’s third phase that has added approximately 1,300 acres off the coast of Heckscher State Park in East Islip to the program’s existing 125. 

“I had been reading about the ecological advantages and the restorative value of aquaculture, and specifically oyster aquaculture, which plays a role in restoring some of the damage done to the estuary,” said Westfall, 70. “And I got interested in it.”

He started oyster farming a little more than a decade ago and was one of the original farmers registered in the program's first phase, according to town officials. Westfall owns Thatch Island Farms and is president of the Long Island Oyster Growers Association. 

Martin Bellew, president of the Islip Resource Recovery Agency, oversees the Bay Bottom Licensing Program. He said Islip started leasing out parcels for phase three in November, at $750 per acre annually. Farmers registered for the third phase can lease up to 10 acres.

The program is run in partnership with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which issues permits to farmers, and with the Army Corps of Engineers, which issues authorization for farmers to work, according to town officials. 

Bellew said that under an agreement with New York State, the town can grant a maximum of 10 new leases per year. Farmers grandfathered in through the first two phases have priority. The third phase may eventually accommodate up to 140 farmers, Bellew said. The town website shows that as of December 2022, 270 people are on a waiting list. 

The program is “providing tremendous environmental benefit to the Great South Bay,” Bellew said. Islip Town is trying to repopulate the bay, once famous for its shellfish production, and restore water quality, according to Bellew. Shellfish are filter feeders and help remove excess nitrogen from the water, which contributes to Long Island’s annual spate of harmful algal blooms. One oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day. 

“It’s been shown that shellfish can actually reduce harmful algal blooms,” said Gregg Rivara, an aquaculture specialist with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County. “They can keep a bloom from happening by cropping down these harmful algae.”

Shellfish farming equipment also creates underwater habitats by acting as reefs, he said. 

Westfall said the added acreage to the town leasing program “provides the possibility of economy of scale,” allowing Long Island farmers to better compete with out-of-state producers. 

“I tell you, once you start to grow your own food and bring it to market, there’s something primal about that, something that is extremely satisfying, to actually grow a food source and bring it to a marketplace and see people actually consume it,” he said. 

By Brianne Ledda

brianne.ledda@newsday.com

Brianne Ledda covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. She previously covered Southold and Greenport for The Suffolk Times and is a graduate of Stony Brook University.

Hurricane Sandy battered NYC 8 years ago. Since then, how has the city shored up against future superstorms? Oyster castles

By Carmen Russo @ The Counter

An artificial oyster reef in upper Manhattan is part of the ongoing effort to use “green” infrastructure to mitigate rising sea levels and increased flood risks.

 The Sherman Creek shoreline in upper Manhattan, which has seen rapid erosion in recent years, remains an important flood buffer for residents of the Dyckman Houses, a collection of seven 14-story buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority that is home to more than 2,000 people. This low-lying part of the Inwood neighborhood is already prone to flooding, and suffered significant damage when Sherman Creek overflowed at high tide during Hurricane Sandy. 

Residents at the property reported knee-deep flooding in the lobby of the building and even deeper flooding of the surrounding streets. Since the Dyckman Houses were developed on top of the river and Sherman Creek now flows through the building’s sewer pipes, the property’s sewage system is at risk of being destroyed if another storm were to flood the area again.

Many environmentalists argue that green barriers, like oyster reefs, are a better solution because they will grow over time and adapt to the changes in sea levels.

Fortunately for Dyckman House residents, a newly installed oyster reef now spans 500 feet of Inwood’s Sherman Creek wetland. And this is simply the most recent of many coastal restoration projects in the eight years since Hurricane Sandy slammed New York City, adding oysters as a natural barrier to protect waterfront areas from storm surges. Installed by the New York Restoration Project, the reef is the latest effort to keep one of New York’s last stretches of undeveloped shoreline from disappearing, leaving nearby residents vulnerable to extreme flooding. 

Made with oyster castles—interlocking cement blocks that are fitted together like giant Legos—the reef will protect the shoreline from the battery of rough surf by absorbing the shock of the waves and letting smaller amounts of water trickle through to the shore. As the water flows through the castles, sediment is also deposited on the land, which not only protects the shoreline from erosion, but also slowly builds it up over time. 

“We aren’t only preserving wetlands. We are creating them,” said Jason Smith, NYRP’s Director of Northern Manhattan Parks. “When you rebuild New York’s shoreline to welcome the tides and to deal with storms, you actually can create really beautiful, really healthy, fun, engaging, shorelines.”

Centuries ago, there were an abundance of oyster beds in New York Harbor but the population was decimated through over-harvesting, pollution, and rapid development of the waterfront. Research has shown that increasingly severe storm damage has a direct relationship to the loss of these oyster reefs. A 2016 study by the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, found there has been as much as a 200 percent increase in wave energy in the harbor in recent decades. 

But the tides are turning.

Soon after the Sherman Creek reef installation was finished in July, it was colonized by oysters that seeded themselves naturally. The creek already had a sizable population of oysters that grew from an oyster garden started in 2014 by Friends of Sherman Creek Conservancy, a volunteer group that helps maintain Sherman Creek Park. Middle schoolers from upper Manhattan and the Bronx worked with director Obed Fulcar to care for four oyster cages that were acquired through a Billion Oyster Project research station program. Knowing that most of the Dyckman-207th Street area is classified as a flood zone, Fulcar wanted to teach his student volunteers the importance of installing natural defenses against future superstorms, known as “green” infrastructure, or green barriers.

“Building green barriers is very cost-effective and is a great way to use nature to prevent flooding,” said Fulcar. 

More traditional solutions to protect against flooding, like seawalls, can cost millions of dollars to build, and risk becoming obsolete as sea levels continue to rise. Many environmentalists argue that green barriers, like oyster reefs, are a better solution because they will grow over time and adapt to the changes in sea levels. According to a 2015 report by The Nature Conservancy, protections against flooding that combine both green and “gray” infrastructure are more cost-effective and have the added benefits of creating functional green spaces and more biodiverse ecosystems. Using Howard Beach in Queens as a case study, the report estimates that hybrid infrastructures that include features like oyster reefs could save more than $200 million in damages during a storm event like Hurricane Sandy. Green coastal defenses also offer protection against multiple effects of the climate crisis, such as water pollution and dangerous levels of carbon emissions. 

Features like oyster reefs could save more than $200 million in damages during a storm event like Hurricane Sandy.

While the oyster reefs offer a buffer along the shoreline, the oysters themselves are also hard at work filtering nitrogen out of the water. As flooding worsens with climate change, excess nitrogen is deposited in the water through overflow of raw sewage. As climate change causes stronger storms and heavier rain events, more and more sewage flows into the city’s waterways. Adult oysters can filter as much as 50 gallons of water per day, absorbing the excess nitrogen as they grow and feed. Also, as the reef presents the erosion of marshes, these environments are naturally able to sequester more carbon from the atmosphere, which is stored in the soil of growing wetlands. 

New York City’s shift to green infrastructure began in 2013 with the launch of the Rebuild by Design competition, developed by President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Taskforce. One of the winning projects was the Living Breakwaters initiative, which was awarded $60 million to build a green barrier off the southern shore of Staten Island. That project will include an oyster reef, which is expected to be completely installed by 2021. In 2022, the Billion Oyster Project will begin seeding oysters there, according to director of restoration Katie Mosher. 

In New Jersey’s Sandy Hook Bay, an oyster reef barrier was installed by Naval Weapons Station Earle in 2016. By 2017, baby oysters were found to be growing naturally, and in 2019 the naval base added one million more oysters to the reef. At the mouth of the Bronx River, Billion Oyster Project has helped to build the city’s largest oyster reef with 15 million live oysters. 

As New York continues to expand its efforts to use oysters as a natural protection against storm surges, Mosher believes that the most important component of a successful green barrier is the monitoring and care-taking that happens after the oysters are seeded. 

“It’s never one and done,” she said. “You can’t put [oysters] in the water and walk away from them.”

Carmen Russo is a freelance food writer with work in publications including The Interlude, Wine4Food, Slate, and Saveur. She also writes features for a newspaper in her home state of Rhode Island and is a passionate home cook.

Aid for Growers With Oysters Too Big for the Half-Shell

From The East Hampton Star - Jon Diat

The pandemic has seriously impacted many who fish or work on the water for a living. With restaurants and the food service industry taking a big hit, the demand for various seafood products, including oysters, has been severely curtailed. As a result, many of the oysters raised by oyster farmers have grown to a size that is considered too large for sale and general consumption. 

The good news is that a lot of those oysters, which can live well over 10 years, will find a new home, back in the water and not served on a restaurant plate, thanks to a partnership between the Nature Conservancy and the Pew Charitable Trusts. 

Last month, the organizations combined forces to launch the Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration program, which will extend $2 million in payments to oyster farmers to support more than 100 shellfish companies and help preserve over 200 jobs in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and Washington State. Simultaneously, over five million of the older oysters will be deployed to rebuild 27 acres of imperiled native shellfish reefs across 20 restoration sites. 

On Long Island, the program will begin to buy oysters from local farmers to use in nearby oyster reef restoration sites, including ones in Shinnecock and Moriches Bays. Over the next few weeks, several Long Island oyster growers will deliver 350,000 oysters so that they can be counted, cleaned, recorded, and, most importantly, replanted for restoration.

Oyster beds are an important part of the marine ecosystem, serving as nurseries for fish and wildlife, as well as reducing the dangerous action of storm waves. Oysters also act as a filter, helping to provide clean water for swimming, boating, and fishing. A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. 

The sight of oyster dredge boats working the bays was a common occurrence on eastern Long Island, especially in the Peconic Bay estuary system, for nearly a century. Several oyster companies leased bottomland to farm vast acres of oysters until the late 1970s, when the beds died off due to disease and other factors. But over the past 25 years, a number of independent oyster growers have sprouted up across Long Island and the East End, reviving the industry as the demand for the tasty bivalves increased.

”The oyster industry on Long Island has grown significantly over the past two decades,” said Adam Starke, an estuary specialist with the Nature Conservancy, who co-leads the Long Island oyster buy-back project. According to the Long Island Oyster Growers Association, the Long Island oyster industry generates over $30 million a year for New York State. “We’re glad that this initiative is underway to support local growers, as well as help rebuild these beds,” Mr. Starke said. Over 30 Long Island growers have applied to be a part of the program, including 16 in eastern Suffolk County.

Mike Martinsen, the owner of the Montauk Shellfish Company, who raises his line of oysters -- Montauk Pearls -- in Montauk Harbor and Block Island Sound, expects to deliver 20,000 overgrown bivalves to the Nature Conservancy office in Cold Spring Harbor next week.

”It’s a great idea, as the pandemic has really hurt all of us in this industry,” said Martinsen, who started his business in 2009 and in normal times would regularly supply his prized oysters to a number of restaurants in Manhattan and the Hamptons.

”I like to say that an oyster in the wild is way more valuable than an oyster on your plate,” he added. “Wild oysters have been overharvested and human population density issues have hampered their comeback. As filter feeders, habitat oysters are a priceless piece in the balance of life. Farm-raised oysters add to the wild population and provide both habitat and water filtration for our bays.”

Martinsen, who estimates that he currently has about one million oysters in his holding cages, said that while summer saw a slight uptick in business, the now colder months have once again brought business to almost a standstill. 

”It’s been very tough for all of us who work on the water,” he said, noting that he has resorted to selling and delivering his oysters to directly to East Enders at home. “We have to find a way to survive and pay the bills,” he said, and “the response has been good.”

”It’s nice that this is being done and it should help the industry,” said Kim Tetrault, a community aquaculture specialist who oversees the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s hatchery in Southold. 

With my own boat out of the water for the season, it was time last week to refocus attention on my crop of oysters growing in two vertical netted cages at the end of my next-door neighbor’s dock on Shelter Island Sound. I had been a bit negligent since receiving my yearly allotment of young spat in early June from the Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Back then, Tetrault, the resident chief oyster guru, provided me with an even split of my 1,000-count of the bivalves. The first batch were hatched the previous year and were a bit smaller than a silver dollar, while the remainder were newborns about half the size of a dime. They were so small that all 500 of could fit in the palm of my hand.

A quick check on the oysters in August revealed that all was well, but when I did a thorough inventory last week to replace the cages and cull out any dead loss, I was stunned to see that all of them had survived and thrived over the past six months. 

The growth was remarkable, and the older ones from last year were already at prime eating size. I was also surprised to find about 200 young scallops in my cages that were likely hatched in June and found a safe home inside the mesh netting. Life, underwater at least, was much more blissful than what we’ve experienced on land this year. 

On the local fishing scene, when the winds allow, blackfish, sea bass, and cod can be had in good numbers off of Montauk and Block Island. In addition, schools of striped bass continue to please shoreline anglers along the ocean beaches as well as at bayside locations such as Albert’s Landing in Amagansett.

”The bass are small, but there are plenty of them around,” confirmed Harvey Bennett at the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. Looking for some holiday gifts for the angler in your life? Bennett, with his Santa-like beard, is conducting a 50 to 70 percent off sale at his shop on Montauk Highway. He will be open on Friday afternoons, Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and by appointment. He will also be open the week leading up to Christmas.

Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor is also offering a number of items on sale in his establishment, which is open Thursday through Monday. 

By the way, both establishments sell oyster knives. 

Full Story: Link here: https://www.easthamptonstar.com/outdoors/20201211/aid-growers-oysters-too-big-half-shell

Oysters as Super Food

From AARP!

Shellfish like oysters are among the best sources of the mineral zinc, which protects the eyes against the damaging effects of sunlight, McDonald notes. In high doses, zinc also appears to slow the progression of macular degeneration once you have early stages of the disease. But you don’t need more than the recommended dose — 8 milligrams a day for women and 11 milligrams a day for men. Oysters deliver more of the mineral than any other food, but you also can get plenty of zinc from lean red meat, poultry, beans, legumes and fortified cereals.

Texas to start issuing oyster farming permits: ‘For those who are well-informed it can be a profitable endeavor’

(The Center Square) – The application process is getting started for farmers looking to join the newly launched oyster mariculture industry in Texas, the last state on the Gulf of Mexico to allow it.

The new industry’s projected economic contribution to the Texas economy is expected to be significant.

“The primary goal of this new industry is to provide jobs to restore working waterfronts in Texas damaged three years ago by Hurricane Harvey,” Dr. Joe Fox, Chair of the Marine Resource Development, Harte Research Institute (HRI) for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University Corpus-Christi, told The Center Square by email.

“It is also being developed to provide oysters to Texas retailers and that entire value chain to offset a declining and unpredictable natural fishery,” Fox said. “Overall economic input to the Texas economy could be in the tens of millions of dollars or more if you consider everyone who will benefit from it.”

The farms, which are habitat for sport fish, also would support the Texas recreational fishing industry, Fox added.

The state legislature voted to approve oyster farming in 2019.

HRI is building the first research oyster hatchery on the Texas coast, the Texas Oyster Center, which will grow oyster larvae to both support reef restoration and train a local workforce in oyster mariculture and sustainable seafood careers, Fox said.

Oyster farming is rigorous work and must be managed like any agriculture business on dry land, said Fox, who worked with state officials to develop regulations for the new industry, overseen by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD).

“The rules/regs farmers will follow are relatively similar to those for other coastal states, but with modifications specific to Texas waters and regarding siting of farming leases, documentation of culture practices, and transport of product,” Fox said.

Emphasis will be on safety of product, he added.

“Farmers will likely be able to access application forms between now and August 31,” Fox said. “The application process will also likely require a natural resource survey and preliminary approval of TPWD regarding site.

“The various permits that need to be obtained include the majority of state agencies having purview over natural resources of the state – TPWD, the Texas General Land Office, and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality – as well as U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

Once forms are submitted, then it’s a waiting game, Fox said.

“State agencies have mounted a coordinated effort to process these forms/applications as quickly as possible, but it could extend the actual ‘oysters in the water’ date for farmers,” Fox said. “It is important to note that state agencies were given a deadline of September 1, 2020, to have everything ready. That was, and is, a short fuse. It is an evolving process.”

When it comes to the work involved, there are many factors to consider.

“Not the least of which is the whim of nature in terms of storms and freshwater intrusion,” Fox said. “It will be critical to identify an appropriate site, experienced workers, undertake adequate cost analysis (can I make money), secure adequate capital investment, and engage in product marketing/development.

“You are dealing with a live animal and, therefore, a perishable product,” Fox added. “For those who are well-informed it can be a profitable endeavor, putting Texas oysters in Texas restaurants for Texas consumers.”

https://www.thecentersquare.com/texas/texas-to-start-issuing-oyster-farming-permits-for-those-who-are-well-informed-it-can/article_c11da43c-cf4d-11ea-8e20-db93749204d3.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share&fbclid=IwAR3axkzLpN6y8-xt-oY88hzXkQ7gAJSZ5KdMzl5JcJMbzmUu0yM3Ps2pXAs

Turning Sales Into A Cleaner Bay

By Alec Giufurta

The Relic team, left to right, John Fink, Alex Kravitz, Tahsin Korur, and Aiden Kravitz.

From an old horse barn on his family’s Westhampton property, Aiden Kravitz is helping to save Moriches Bay by funding the replenishment of over 10,000 oysters in the bay through sales of his sustainability oriented apparel brand Relic.

Mr. Kravitz, a 2014 graduate of Westhampton Beach High School, founded Relic in 2016 with his younger brother, Alex Kravitz. With the help of the Moriches Bay Project, a local nonprofit dedicated to improving the health of the bay, the two fund the planting of five oysters with every Relic shirt told.

The brothers, who grew up close to the bay, noticed a significant deterioration in water quality over recent years.

“I think anybody who spent some time down there can attest to the fact that it’s definitely gotten more brown,” Aiden Kravitz said.

An adult oyster, which feeds on algae, can filter almost 50 gallons of water per day. Excessive nitrogen and nutrient levels act as fuel for harmful algal blooms, which in turn deteriorate conditions for fish, clams and other species dependent on oxygen for survival in the water.

The 10,000 oysters funded by Relic since 2016 have the capacity to filter a half million gallons of water per day. By comparison, in 2017, the Moriches Bay Project, in cooperation with Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension, the Southampton Town Trustees and Brookhaven Town, placed 400,000 oysters in the bay with the capacity to filter 21.5 million gallons of water per day, according to the nonprofit’s website.

“On the East End of Long Island, the beach and the ocean are such a big part of growing up here and now,” Aiden Kravitz said.

He explained how watching fish kills, algal blooms and the deterioration of fishing quality served as his motivation: “Feeling that in our own backyard … motivated us to want to do something about it.”

With a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Brown University, Aiden Kravitz focused on the environment. With Relic, he was able to use marine chemistry knowledge he gained in the classroom to help his community.

The two brothers used an old horse barn at their family’s Westhampton home to set up a screen printing workshop in 2016. In their first year, their sales totaled $25,000, Aiden Kravitz said. He noted that it was originally his younger brother’s idea to couple the ocean-inspired designs on Relic apparel with a sustainable cause.

Relic currently sells T-shirts and sweatshirts featuring sketches of marine life — including, of course, oysters. Their shirts start at $25, and each oyster costs around 10 cents to plant, Aiden Kravitz said.

And this year, with added help from two high school friends, the brand has grown beyond just merchandise: they’re funding beach cleanup efforts.

John Fink and Tahsin Korur, both 2014 graduates of Westhampton Beach High School, joined the Relic team this year — Mr. Fink proposed the idea of working with the village this summer to install beach cleanup stations. The stations house a number of baskets — similar to hand baskets found in grocery stores — that beachgoers can take with them as they walk the beach, to collect litter and other debris.

Aiden Kravitz explained that the concept took off. “The intersection of the community, the town and a small business all for a good cause I think kind of felt good to everybody,” he said, “and so we’re able to get it up and going quickly.”

In an email, Aiden Kravitz wrote that the baskets are currently in place at Lashley Beach and Rogers Beach in the Village of Westhampton Beach. At the beaches, the basket holders have a sign directing users to Relic’s website to read more about their sustainability goals.

The four graduates are looking to expand their reach. Aiden Kravitz asks that “if anybody has information on how we can, like, take this one step further or would like to help us get this installed in their community,” they email the team at RelicArtAndDesign@gmail.com .

Shellfish motivation: the climate crisis could be solved with seas, not trees

 Dr David Moore

Shellfish cultivation, rather than tree planting, holds the key to carbon sequestration and the bid to battle global warming, according to Dr David Moore.

Many efforts have been made to promote forest conservation, afforestation and restoration on a global scale – such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report of 2018, which suggested that an increase of 1 billion hectares of forest will be necessary to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2050. The following year, Jean-François Bastin’s group mapped the global potential tree coverage and estimated that the world’s ecosystems could support an additional 0.9 billion hectares of continuous forest (corresponding to a more than 25 percent increase in forested area) and that such a change has the potential to cut the atmospheric carbon pool by about 25 percent.

Trees can store gigatonnes of carbon but forests also contain wood-decaying fungi that digest that wood, release the CO2, and other greenhouse gases, back into the atmosphere

© Rob Fletcher

I like trees and I am all in favour of planting more of them, but as a mycologist I have to say that there is a negative side to these estimations that seems to be escaping notice: forests don’t only contain trees that can store gigatonnes of carbon in the wood they make; forests also contain hundreds of wood-decaying fungi that can (and do) digest that wood, releasing all that sequestered CO2, and other greenhouse gases, back into the atmosphere. Those other greenhouse gases include chlorinated hydrocarbons.

Watling & Harper (1998) estimated that the fungal chloromethane contribution to the atmosphere is around 150,000 tonnes per annum, which is about 60 percent more than was released into the atmosphere by industrial coal burning furnaces worldwide in the year of publication.

I’m used to academic biologists being ignorant about fungi – but it’s unforgivable that they’ve not noticed that trees seasonally shed leaves, petals, ripe fruit and dead wood, which are digested and respired to CO2 in the same year that this very same CO2 was fixed from the atmosphere.

These doubts about the “plant trees to soak up CO2” remedy prompted me to check out current research on aggressive emission reductions. I found that most focused on the integration of new technologies to capture CO2from flue gasses in power plants, which are responsible for about 80 percent of the worldwide CO2 emissions (Romano et al, 2013). Exposing flue gas to water under suitable conditions (hydrate-based processing) is a promising and high-efficiency technology for CO2 capture, but the high cost of maintaining suitable conditions for hydrate formation is preventing wide industrial application of this technology (Li et al, 2019).

So, it seemed that the forests and capture from flue gases can’t save us. And that’s when shellfish came to the fore.

I emailed key figures including science journalists at the BBC and the New Scientist, and academics at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester and the University of Maine – but received no response.

I did get a response from Bill Sanderson, a marine biologist at Heriot-Watt University. He is working on restoring oyster populations in the Dornoch Firth, which was overfished during the 1800s; the project, supported by the whisky firm Glenmorangie, aims to restore the marine habitat. I asked him if shellfish cultivation for carbon sequestration was a daft idea. He responded within a couple of hours: “Not a daft idea at all. We are looking at this right at the moment. It’s not simple, though, because the animals respire over their lifetimes, producing CO2 and the process of calcification also releases a bit of CO2. Our work will look into the overall budget.”

To me, Bill Sanderson’s reply, in focusing on the overall carbon budget, missed the point. The budget is irrelevant: what matters is that when shellfish die, they leave behind a shell that represents about half the fresh weight of the animal that is composed of 95 percent crystalline calcium carbonate made from CO2, which is now permanently removed from the atmosphere.

It was obvious that the professionals weren’t seeing the idea’s potential, yet I was still convinced of its value. So, I did what I did for the 50 years I was a research scientist: I wrote a brief, but well referenced, comment paper, which has recently published in the Mexican Journal of Biotechnology. It shows that the current level of shellfish farming removes about 5.5 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere and argues that this could be increased considerably by increasing the production of shellfish, in particular bivalves such as oysters and mussels.

While this potential role has not been widely examined, it has gained credibility with one of the world’s preeminent mussel farmers. According to John Holmyard of Offshore Shellfish, in England, who is in the process of developing a 10,000 tonne capacity mussel farm: “If we turn a quarter of UK waters over to mussel farming, the shellfish would draw down about an eighth of our total [carbon] emissions.”

And, I remind you, that’s a permanent conversion of CO2 into insoluble mineral, compared to photosynthetic plants, which store carbon on a temporary basis.

There are other socio-economic/geopolitical contrasts between shellfish farming and forestry too. There is a conflict between using land to grow food crops compared to using land to grow trees – and between growing trees for biofuel (which, of course, only releases the CO2 back into the atmosphere when the fuel is burned, though at least it’s not fossil fuel) and growing native trees to repair and re-establish natural ecosystems. There isn’t enough agricultural land on the planet to accomplish all these things.

By contrast, farming shellfish uses the shoreline and continental shelf. You don’t need to provide irrigation, food or fertiliser. Farming shellfish for food can be combined with restoration and conservation of overfished fisheries and usually involves so little intervention (beyond provision of habitats and, where necessary, protection of larvae and juveniles from predation in “nurseries”) that there is no conflict with other activities. About 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water; we might as well use it to rescue the atmosphere.

There is endless scope for expanding shellfish production. The Views of the World website states the total length of coastlines in the world as between 1.16 million kilometres and 1.63 million kilometres. Continental shelves cover an area of about 32 million km2, equal to about 9 percent of the surface area of the oceans.

Read more here: https://thefishsite.com/articles/shellfish-motivation-the-climate-crisis-could-be-solved-with-seas-not-trees

T

East Hampton Town Hatchery Oyster Tasting

From the Independent:

“Science and appetite met at Bel Mare Restaurant in Springs on Sunday, November 3, at the first annual East Hampton Town Hatchery Oyster Tasting and Rating event. Attendees, mostly oyster gardeners for the project, volunteered to taste, compare, and rate pairs of oysters from four of our local harbors: Napeague, Hog Creek, Accabonac, and Three Mile. Rating categories included texture, sweetness, saltiness, and overall. Event organizer Harold Cook from Columbia University will be compiling the results. East Hampton Town Aquaculture Department director Barley Dunne explained the process of oyster seeding to the crowd.”

Gallery below:

https://indyeastend.com/arts/indy-snaps/eh-town-hatchery-oyster-tasting/?fbclid=IwAR3JDyX8j5aLarro6LnZZsJ-_5xJqIvs5WHSbZtL_A2LlwnkNA1oaXDC7Ag