Seafood workers and staff with the Estuarine
research reserve have agreed to test oyster bars on the western end of the bay
to see why there isn’t much spat on those bars.
Spat are baby oysters.
County administrative director Alan Pierce said there
appears to be a strong spat set on the eastern end of the Bay, but that is not
the case on the western end.
There is some spat on the Miles and Hagan’s Flat
oyster bars, but not nearly as much as there is around Cat Point and East Hole.
One of the reasons for that is because there
aren’t as many mature oysters on the western end of the bay to produce spat,
but there is also a concern that the fossilized shell the Department of
Agriculture used in 2009 is somehow causing a problem.
The concern is that there may be some contaminant
on the fossilized shells used in the western Bay that is leaching into the
water and contributing to the poor spat set.
To see if the concern is justified, The
Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve along with oyster harvesters
will take substrate samples from the Miles, Hagan’s Flat, Summerside, and then
as a control site- Cat Point.
The substrate will be tested for the presence of
oil, dispersant, and any other foreign factor that could somehow affect spat.
The testing will serve another purpose.
If there is going to be extensive re-shelling of
the oyster bars to help rebuild the oyster population, then the county needs to
know that the shell stock that they are using is safe for the Bay.
And the only stock they can get in enough quantity
to do the job is the fossilized shell.
A date for
the testing has not yet been set.
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