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Domesticating the Wild Oyster
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13619 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1988 |
2,792 Words |
| Author
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Merrill Leffler
Merrill Leffler is a writer with the Maryland Sea Grant
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When the tide goes out on Willapa Bay in Washington state, it leaves behind muddy flats that from a distance appear littered with clumps of rocks. These small outcroppings are anything but inanimate--they are oysters, acres of them, planted there by oyster farmers. Unlike oysters grown in nearly all parts of the sworld except the West Coast of the United States, these oysters began life in a hatchery.
Although oysters have been harvested for hundreds of years from many highly productive beds--usually in bays or estuaries--throughout the world, domestication of the oyster is only now beginning. At the forefront of this activity are several oyster hatcheries on the West Coast of the United States. Domestication implies more than just raising a species in captivity; it also implies the systematic adaptation of a species for use or harvesting by man. Oyster growers are now beginning to dream of breeding oysters to bring out a variety of specific traits--from disease resistance to preferred size, taste, or texture.
Until ten years ago, oyster farmers on the Pacific Coast of the United States depended on imported Japanese "seed" oysters--small, juvenile oysters attached to solid objects, such as an oyster shell, and planted in growing beds. This seed, however, did not come from hatcheries but from naturally productive areas such as Hiroshima Bay.
Now these same West Coast farmers raise their own oyster seed, starting with tiny oyster larvae supplied by a handful of local hatcheries. Oysters grow from eggs that mature within one or two weeks into their swimming stage--"eyed larvae" no bigger than the dot over an "i." Local hatcheries produce billions of these eyed larvae through artificial spawning methods, then sell them to growers who then can raise their own seed. As the larvae mature, they seek out a solid surface, often oyster shell, on which to "set"--to adhere and complete the metamorphosis to the adult oyster form. The growers set the larvae in tanks close to their own oyster grounds, then grow the seed, or "spat," into the proper size for planting, and finally, plant them on leased grounds.
"Business has changed drastically since hatchery technology was introduced," says Lee Weigardt of the Jolly Roger Oyster Company, which farms oysters in Willapa Bay. In 1981 oyster production has nearly bottomed out. The Japanese sources of spat had proven unreliable, even though Japanese oystermen cultivate their ground to maximize natural production of spat. Furthermore, Weigardt adds, "The price had gone out of
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