February 15, 2016 — A native of Ecuador, Marcos Guerrero has always believed there is a future in food coming from the sea. The Baton Rouge contractor and his family are now investing in sustainable seafood coming from oysters cage-grown in the waters off Grand Isle, Louisiana.
Approximately eighteen months ago Guerrero, his wife Lali and two sons, Aldo and Boris, founded Caminada Bay Premium Oysters and planted more than 170,000 seed oysters in 200 cages a few hundred yards off the island’s bay bridge, a pre-permitted farming zone for the oysters.
“Oyster are a sustainable source of food and at the same time provide a service of cleansing the water. We are from Latin America and grew up in a seaside town where seafood was the order of the day,” said Guerrero. “I started to read articles about off bottom oysters and the hatchery on Grand Isle. My sons and I started a conversation with the Grand Isle Port Commission and received one of the first plots to grow oysters in the new program they were starting.”
“Our cages are floating cages because oysters grown in these are sustainable, it is not something that can be fished out of existence. It is a renewable resource for food,” said the aquaculture entrepreneur. “Why floating cages? The majority of the nutrients are in the first twelve inches of the water column, that is why we decided to go with the floaters. I think it was a good decision because the oysters are growing pretty fast. Within a year we were harvesting.”
Floating oysters off-bottom keeps young oysters, called spat, from smothering under sediment and away from predators.