Survey shows native oysters are breeding in Loch Craignish

A recent academic study revealed that native oyster reefs once covered 1.7 million hectares of the seabed from Norway to the Mediterranean before being overfished by humans. Now they are so rare, they are locally extinct in most places.

“Our efforts to bring them back are pioneering,” Philip explained. “Two volunteers from a similar project in New Jersey, called Reclam the Bay were so interested in what we were doing that they came over to help with our crucial and exciting survey.”

On October 19 Seawilding ran a training session to inform and train volunteers on how to survey for oysters.

Philip said: “To do the practical part of this training, we surveyed one of our areas that would be good for baby oysters, but not an area where we had put down oysters ourselves.

"We found a good number of oysters that were young, meaning they are most likely the babies of the oysters we have released. This is a major milestone for our project.”

Throughout this year Seawilding has been surveying all its restoration areas to see if the project is encouraging natural reproduction.

“For five years now we’ve been putting down tens of thousands of oysters on the seabed at Loch Craignish in an effort to bring back this keystone species and to restore lost biodiversity to our Loch,” a spokesperson for the charity said.

“Finally, we are seeing the results of our efforts - significant numbers of young native oysters fused onto shell around the loch - a clear sign that the restored population is reproducing and multiplying in number. 

“Hats off to all the community members, and volunteers from afar (including the wonderful ReClam the Bay from New Jersey) who came to help survey new release sites at Loch Craignish.”

However, there is still a very long way to go for this population of young oysters, as Philip explained.

“It is just the beginning,” he said.  “Yes, we are now seeing new young oysters in the loch, however nowhere near enough, as the population in the loch was likely in the multiple millions before humans fished them out. 

“Therefore, our ambition is to keep going until one million oysters are released and the numbers are at a level that naturally sustains the population.”