Credit: Susan Allen/Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration (SOAR)
The oysters bought back about 50 tons worth were brought by barge to a designated restoration reef in Tuckerton Bay.
For the small-scale oyster growers of Barnegat and Delaware bays, the challenge of finding enough customers to buy their harvest is growing more difficult by the day, as the still-surging pandemic converges with winter, forcing restaurants to scale back orders or shutter altogether.
But a partnership recently forged between The Pew Charitable Trusts and The Nature Conservancy is working to counter the ongoing economic impact of the pandemic on the oyster aquaculture industry, which supports around 3,000 jobs nationwide.
New Jersey growers deliver 240,000 oysters for reef restoration
By
Share
In a year of brutal downturns in demand, struggling oyster growers in the United States have one faint bright spot: A USD 2 million (EUR 1.7 million) national initiative to buy five million surplus oysters for use in habitat restoration projects.
On Thursday, 3 December, 240,000 of those shellfish were barged to a reef in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, for planting on the Tuckerton Reef site. Growers converged the day before at the Parsons Mariculture dock in Tuckerton, New Jersey, meeting with owner Dale Parsons and Bill Shadel, the coastal project manager for The Nature Conservancy.