October 11th, 2016 — Your thoughts about oysters may not extend beyond the dinner table, but it turns out the little critters are pretty important to the ecosystem.
Realizing that the local oyster population was greatly depleted, the University of New Hampshire and The Nature Conservatory launched a program in 2009 to bring them back by nurturing millions of microscopic larvae each year and “planting” the surviving young oysters in Great Bay.
Friday was the culmination of the eighth season, when some 40,000 new oysters were heaved into the bay near Nanny’s Island by a group of about 30 volunteers and conservation workers, both adults and children.
“To the oysters!” said Molly Bolster, over an apple cider toast. “May they flourish and spend a lot of time down there,” said Bolster, who is executive director of the Portsmouth-based Gundalow Company, which provided the boat.
Oysters help filter the water, reducing pollution. However, due to diseases, excess silt, climate change and past over-harvesting, the population has greatly declined over the last few decades, said Ray Grizzle, research professor of biological sciences at UNH. Many oysters were not living long enough to produce offspring.
So how does one go about “planting” an oyster?
Millions of larvae each year are sent to the UNH Jackson Estuarine Lab, where the microscopic oysters are reared using shells collected and donated from restaurants around the state. The vast majority of larvae die before reaching adulthood, but those that survive are placed back in the bay after they have matured for several months.