Sunday was an interesting day. Mat lead our intrepid dive team which has added a cool new member- Dave with the light and pickuptruck shower- to the crew. The tide was medium, the skies gray and the bottom murky making for challenging visibility on the bottom.
The oysters had received considerable silt since the spring dive and the drifting of the boats during lasto October's placment may have hurt the effort dearly. (The oysters were intended to be dropped in a specific area with a hard stony bottom, but many wound up wide of the mark in areas with silt and more silt has subsequently fallen.)
Nonethless a portion are still alive and the divers reported those that were concentrated together are doing best.
We wanted to learn from this pilot and we are. The lesson for this Fall' placement are:
1. place a portion of them in a well anchored cages or apparatuses that is conducive to measurment. (We lost our last cage in the winter.) This facilitates tracking growth and viability.
2. Disburse oysters in a tight pattern in an area with desirable bottom conditions. (The dive team identified and explored such a site, downstream from our initial location.)
3. Establish more caged populations. We put two down off of the Constitution Marinaon Sunday. The oysters supplied by the awesome team at Island Creek were the size of dimes and we had 70 in one device and 121 in the other. These cages were made of milk crates lined with a fine mesh. I will post photos later.
The Oyster Project is dedicated to oyster restoration in the estuaries of Massachusetts. Oyster reefs provide shelter for 100 other species including shrimp, eels, lobsters and the young of many commercial species. Oysters also are tremendous water cleaners as each filters 30 gallons of water per day.
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