In fine restaurants across the region now, an oyster lover can often find beautiful, plump oysters grown by hard-working men and women along the Alabama and Mississippi coasts, each named for where it’s from or who grew it. On the coast, it’s not unusual to see a pickup truck hauling oyster farming bags and baskets, or a farm’s workboat hauling out at a local boat ramp.
There are a couple spots where you can look out over the water and see “off-bottom” oyster farms. And there are similar scenes in Florida, Louisiana and most recently Texas, with this new, sustainable industry flourishing along the entire U.S. Gulf Coast.
How did we get here?
Back in 2008, there were no commercial off-bottom oyster farms anywhere on the Gulf Coast. This was despite Sea Grant-supported research in 1972 that revealed that oysters raised in our region could be grown to market size in as little as eight months. Off-bottom oyster farming was attempted in the 1990s in Alabama and Florida but was rejected due to concerns about the high labor costs and ability to get a profitable price.
What changed?
First, a market developed in other parts of the country for hand-crafted oysters, sold by the name of the farm or the bay where they were grown. Second, new, more efficient types of growing methods were developed that reduced labor inputs (though there’s no escaping that today’s off-bottom oyster farming is still labor intensive).
An initial investment by Sea Grant programs in 2009 and 2010 allowed universities (with my colleague, Dr. John Supan at Louisiana Sea Grant), extension programs and private partners to see if those methods and those markets could work in the Gulf region.
This initial investment looked relatively small, with one commercial oyster farm each in Alabama and Louisiana as real-life testing grounds. This small start, however, allowed not only testing of methods from a rigorous, scientific approach, but also hands-on demonstrations for local oyster catchers, commercial shrimpers and others. On top of that, these farms produced amazing, world-class oysters that helped establish and build a market for premium, hand-crafted oysters raised here along the Gulf Coast.
A series of public and private investments, collaborative research and extension efforts, commercial off-bottom oyster farming followed from this start. Sea Grant, Cooperative Extension, academia and private industry partners collaborated to work through the biological, regulatory and market hurdles as the industry grew. In addition, practical, hands-on training programs helped would-be farmers get the real-world experience they needed to get started.
Where are we today?
There are at least 11 oyster farms in Alabama and at least 15 farms in Mississippi.
Our research, extension and legal programs have helped build an oyster-farming industry in the northern Gulf.
*Bill Walton formerly worked at the Auburn University Shellfish Lab and the Alabama Cooperative Extension System and was a member of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium Education, Outreach and Extension Team. He currently is the president of the United States Aquaculture Society and a professor of marine science and the shellfish aquaculture program coordinator for the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, William & Mary.