B&G Oyster Event Spring Check on Charles

The B&G Oyster event for Sunday May 3 is sold out. If you do not have a ticket yet, we are sorry there is no more room.

Today our intrepid divers Mathew Brevard and Rich Bradshaw braved 53 degree waters to check on our bivalve friends. The results were encouraging. Survival since the placement last fall was 50%, a bit below what we had hoped for, but still quite respectable. Importantly, the oysters that did survive grew approximately 25%. Matt will be performing measurements on a small sample and compare them to oysters taken from the batch at the time of the initial placement. The numbers will be used for his poster presentation at the NOAA Coastal Zone Meeting in July.

There was no obvious cause of the mortality, but we will be conducting some work with caged populations and examining pictures taken with an underwater camera graciously loaned to the program by UMass Boston Professor Anamarija Frankic. We will be working with her organization on our next placement that will probably be in the vicinity of the Neponset River. We are learning a lot and this knowledge should lead to even better results in later placements.

Our efforts to win a grant from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust (environmental license plates) were not successful. However, our Grant Coordinator Hannah Dale will have two more going out shortly.

We also have had a terrific meeting with the MWRA and there may be some ways for us to work towards mutual goal of making Boston Harbor as clean and healthy as possible.

In the coming weeks we also have a meeting scheduled with Boston Water and Sewer who also appears favorably disposed.

Over the next few days, we will update the website to reflect the information and bottom photos from this dive and information from the B&G event.