More clam leases switch to oyster farming

More clam farmers in Alligator Harbor are trying out oyster aquaculture.

The county Commission learned this week that another clam lease has been approved to use the full water column in order to test oyster aquaculture.         

In 2002, the state approved 46 1.5 acre leases in Alligator Harbor near Alligator Point for clam farming to allow local seafood workers to grow clams in Alligator Harbor for commercial purposes.

Last summer the Florida cabinet allowed Spring Creek Oyster Company to use the full water column on their clam lease to grow oysters, making them the first to attempt farming oysters locally.

They weren’t the last.

In October the state agreed to modify 24 more one and a half-acre bottom leases in Alligator Harbor for oyster farming as well as a two-acre parcel within the Apalachicola Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve.

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