County commissioners voice concerns about lack of assistance for seafood workers

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have received a 4 million dollar grant to study oyster reefs in the Apalachicola Bay.

The money is being provided through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation as part of a multi-year project to test different methods to make oyster reefs more resilient and productive.

The money will be used to study 9 sites around the bay between1 to 2 acres each where different densities of shell will be put out, and the resulting spatfall and oyster recovery will be measured.

The project is designed to give FWC a better idea of how much shell to use in different areas when a larger restoration project gets funded.

The county commission was concerned that the money would not be used for shelling which is badly needed now when many local people are struggling before Thanksgiving and Christmas.

There will be a small shelling component to the grant – Seafood workers association president Shannon Hartsfield said his understanding is that some oystermen would be needed for 9 days to shell some of the bars while a barge would be used for shelling other locations.

The work won’t even begin until January the 1^st.

Commissioners said there are a lot of groups getting money to study the bay but no one is getting money to actually help seafood workers.

Commissioner Cheryl Sanders said pretty soon someone is going to have to get money to study what happened to the seafood workers because they are all going to be gone.

The Small Business Administration has made small business loans available to people in the seafood industry, but commissioners and seafood workers agree that is very little help because most oystermen can’t meet the requirements for the loans and even if they did they couldn't repay them.

The commission did vote to send a letter to the Fish and wildlife commission asking that it find shelling money as soon as possible because that is the only thing that will help oyster harvesters in the short term.

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