Current Oyster Gardeners

In the Fall

Pick up new oyster spat at any of the POWeR or CBF spat handout days. The POWeR handout day will be announced by e-mail and on this web site. CBF handout days will be on their web site. Oyster spat are usually available from August through early November. Once you have your spat in their cages, you may need to clean the cages once or twice before winter.

Preparing for winter, you should

• Lower your ages to near the bottom (but NOT on the bottom), so that they will not come out of the wateer during very low tides
• clean the cages so that they are reasonably free of algae
• watch them to see that they are not pulled loose by ice

In the Spring

Now that the winter is over, you should

• Raise the cages so that they are nearer the surface. They can be exposed at low tide. There is more oxygen and nutrient flow near the surface.
• Clean the cages of the algae that has accumulated over the winter, so that water can flow through them. You may need to do this a couple of times in the spring.
• Shake them every once in awhile - up and down in the water is good to rinse off the mud that forms.
• Pull them out in the sun to dry and kill any "flat worms". This should be done every few weeks or so.

In June

Be prepared to turn them in so that they can be planted on the Elmer Carroll Benning Sanctuary Reef in the West River. The return day is planned for June and we will send you an e-mail - also watch the web site.

We want you to turn in your oysters EVEN if you think they are all dead. If you need replacement cages due to damage or loss, we will provide them.

You may receive a notice about oyster returns directly from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. You are welcome to bring your oysters to those events instead of to the POWeR Return Day and they will be planted on the Elmer Banning Sanctuary Reef in the West River. (Remember that oysters can only be planted SOUTH of where they were grown, to avoid spreading any diseases.)

In September

Pick up new oyster spat.

If you have any questions, please check the web site www.west-river.org or contact me, Steve Gauss at astro@chesabay.org. We look forward to seeing you and your babies.

Want to Grow oysters?

You must have:

• a dock, pier, bulkhead or some access to the water
• at least one foot of water at the lowest tide
• salinity - at least 3 ppt; cannot grow oysters in creeks or very far from the river mouth, but most areas of the West River are suitable

The schedule:

• attend a workshop for gardeners and receive your spat in late summer/early fall
• let the oysters grow in the cages from late summer/early fall till June the following year
• clean the cages regularly - every two weeks in prime growing season, once in awhile during winter
• return your oysters in June
• pick up new spat and start again in late summer/early fall
• When possible, your oysters will be planted in your river. However, a number of factors may prevent this. The oysters you grow will improve the quality of the Chesapeake Bay no matter where they are planted.

See the next section for information about the CBF workshops.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation Oyster Gardening Workshops

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation oyster site has information and schedules.

Workshops are held from September to November and the schedule and complete instructions are given on the above page under the section on Maryland's Oyster Gardening and Oyster Restoration Programs and then under Oyster Gardening.

What can you expect:

• a lot of algae and barnacle growth in the hot weather
• lots of "critters" (Clingfish, Gobies, Blenys, eels, grass shrimp, mud crabs, etc.) typically live in the oyster "bars"
• "flatworms" (not actually worms) are the only really harmful critters - letting your cages sit in the sun for a few hours every few weeks helps control them
• Blue Crabs love to sit on or in the cages - it is a lunch counter for them
• your oysters will grow from almost invisible to several inches in size
• cleaning the cages may take an hour or two in the hottest months, but otherwise not much time
• typically, four cages produce 800-1200 adult oysters
  • an adult oyster filters 20-30 gallons of water per day (3-year olds filter 50 gallons); 1000 oysters will filter roughly 25,000 gallons per day - about the volume of a swimming pool every two days
  • the cages will increase in weight
  • these oysters will be planted directly on sanctuary reefs and are sexually mature - they can start making baby oysters!

For more details, see the CBF FAQ sheet on Oyster Gardening.

All About Oysters

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has established a facility at Discovery Village on Parish Creek in Shady Side to grow oysters for planting on oyster reefs.

Volunteers put old oyster shell, that has been dried in the sun for at least a year to kill diseases, into mesh bags. Each bag may ultimately provide up to 500 oysters. Here is a way you can help!

There are three large tanks that are used to grow the oysters to a size suitable for planting. The shell bags are placed into the tanks and oyster larvae are added. After a day or two they will attach themselves to the oyster shells and begin to grow as spat on shell. After a few weeks they are ready to be moved either directly to a reef or to an oyster gardener.

At this stage the oysters are barely visible, but each shell may hold many spat. After a little growth, the spat will look like this. The oyster gardener will receive two of the shell bags.
The bags are cut open and the shell on spat are divided among four oyster cages, which the gardeners suspend from their docks. The oysters then grow throughout the summer, eventually going more or less dormant over the winter and then continuing to grow into the following spring. After a year in the oyster cages they will reach a size of anywhere from 1 to 3 inches or sometimes more, depending on the particular site, body of water, and weather conditions.

2002/2003 was a particularly unusual year with a major drought in the fall followed by heavy rains in the spring. Nevertheless, most gardeners turned in lots of good quality oysters. Here's what was grown in the West River. And here's part of the oyster return to CBF at the Calvert Marine Museum.

The oysters are turned back in to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation who then plant them onto reefs. At the same time the gardeners receive a new supply of spat on shell so that they can start the process over again. Whenever possible, the oysters are planted on reeefs in the same river where they were grown. When this is not possible, they are planted in water SOUTH (saltier) of where they were grown. This ensures that diseases are not carried from the saltier (diseased) areas to the fresher (disease free) areas.

Nature is not kind. The diseases MSX and Dermo thrive in saltier water. And so do the oysters. Fresher water will drastically reduce the diseases, but will also slow the growth rate of the oysters. (MSX was introduced when a foreign oyster was brought into the Chesapeake Bay many years ago.)

The oysters are often loaded onto the CBF oyster reef building boat "Patricia Campbell".

Oysters raised at your dock are NOT for human consumption. Aside from the fact that they will not be eating size for three years, there is the danger that they will have picked up diseases or other harmful materials. They are voracious filterers, so concentrate whatever passes through them. This usually does no harm to the oyster - in fact they turn it into more oyster. For more on this, see the Maryland Department of Environment warning.