You’ve heard of fish farming. What about “Oyster Gardening?”
Owners of private piers on Mobile Bay can help the health of the Bay and grow tasty oysters. It’s all part of “Oyster Keepers Program.”
The program gives the pier owners the knowledge and ability to create small private oyster reefs on their own property. An idea whose time has come.
From Baldwin County’s eastern shore to Mobile County’s west bay, the program returned over 61,000 oyster shells to the Bay using volunteer private piers in 2024. As they scale up the oyster gardening efforts, their goal is to deploy 150,000 oysters in 2025 and a total of 500,000 oysters by 2027.
Here is the official explanation of how it works:
The Oyster Keepers program grows young (spat-on-shell) oysters in basket-like containers that provide a place for oyster spat (baby oysters) to grow safely. Approximately 20 of these baskets are hung on a volunteer’s pier or dock. Each basket can grow approximately 1,000 oysters, which means that your dock has the potential to produce as many as 20,000 oysters each year. Oysters grow in cages over the course of six to nine months, starting in late May or early June, and are introduced as adults to larger reefs designated for restoration in late fall or winter each year.
Mobile Baykeeper staff does the work to place, maintain, and grow the oysters. This consists of bi-weekly maintenance during the growing season (June – December), where our staff assesses growing conditions, water quality, and cleans the oysters’ cages to remove biofouling (too much algae clogging up the baskets). Your pier is still usable by you and your guests throughout the growing season. We know many of you love eating Gulf oysters but for this program, eating the oysters you grow is strictly prohibited due to regulation. These oysters are for restoration only.
For our program to succeed, we need sites that are close together (ideally next door) and have high salinity. The higher the salinity the faster the oysters grow. This year we are focused on sites on the Bayside of Fort Morgan and Dauphin Island. In future years, as our program continues to expand, we will expand our geographic footprint with it.
“Oysters are a vital keystone species in estuaries and are a cultural touchstone for coastal Alabamians. By collaborating with volunteer piers and the Auburn University Marine Extension and Research Center, Oyster Gardening is increasing the number of live oysters being returned to the Bay each year, and I'm looking forward to seeing the reefs continue to grow. Restoring our oyster reefs takes a community effort, and we are committed to working with our partners across Mobile Bay to ensure that our reefs survive and thrive for many generations to come," Dr. Kayla Boyd, oyster project manager, said.
Learn all about native Alabama oysters and Baykeeper’s Oyster Keepers Program here. The work is made possible thanks to a generous grant from Impact 100 Baldwin County, according to Mobile Bay Keeper.
Oysters are filter feeders, meaning they feed by pumping water through their gills to trap plankton, algae and other nutrients. If they trap undigestible particles like silt or sand, they can coat the unwanted material with mucus and spit it out as "pseudofeces," or pearls.
When the water temperature warms, oysters are triggered to release reproductive material into the water column. This forms larvae which actually swim, settle and fuse onto a reef or other hard structures as "spat." It takes spat 1-3 years to mature into adult oysters.
“We are working toward a future where our oyster beds make a resilient recovery.”
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at [email protected].
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