Stockton Alum, Students Work To Foster Barnegat Bay Oysters

PORT REPUBLIC, NJ — Stockton University alum, students and New Jersey shellfish farmers are working together to foster oysters for conservation, according to a news release from the school.

Farmers from Tuckerton to Mantoloking are getting paid to foster oysters for conservation alongside market oysters sold in seafood restaurants through a $961,227 award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture–Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP).

The RCPP funds private and public partnerships for conservation; in this case, contributing to the restoration of rare and declining natural communities of oysters.

Kristin Adams, a 2017 Stockton University graduate who studied oysters as a graduate student, was awarded the grant to involve commercial growers in the restoration of the bay, the school said. The oysters that grow up on commercial leases will move to two restoration reefs monitored by Stockton’s Marine Field Station. These reefs, the Mill Creek Reef (located between Beach Haven West and Ship Bottom) and the Tuckerton Reef, were created by Stockton students and staff as restoration projects.

Adams, a conservation and aquaculture specialist for the Ocean County Soil Conservation District and a U.S. Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service partner, brought Stockton on board to help monitor changes in water quality and to sample marine life on and off the participating oyster leases with seine and gill nets.

The four-year pilot project began this year with nine farmers fostering baby oysters, known as spat, from June through November. The spat are currently growing on shells in floating mesh bags or bottom trays in the bay.

Baby oysters grow by sticking themselves to a hard substrate.

The spat-on-shell method gives oysters a head start. The larvae grow up in tanks on land that are filled with shell. Once the larvae stick to the shell, they are moved to the oyster leases to grow up in the bay.

“For most of the producers, spat-on-shell is new. They are used to growing the single cocktail oyster for raw bars where they use single oyster seed to grow a beautiful, tasty product for restaurants. This is a different technique and gives producers with smaller leases a way to farm for restoration,” Adams said.

Farmers will plant the foster oysters on the reef sites in late November.

This August, Adams joined Christine Thompson, associate professor of Marine Science, and student researchers Landon Gedes and Samantha Gransee to monitor water quality and sample biodiversity with a seine net at an oyster lease in Great Bay.

Thompson explained the partnership as paying experienced shellfish farmers to use space on their leases “to foster oysters” for conservation.

“Stockton’s role is documenting the ecosystem services at four of the oyster farm sites and then long-term monitoring at the reef sites,” she added.

Thompson said they were looking to see if the water was clearer on the reef sites - and it was.

Dale Parsons Jr., a fifth-generation shellfish farmer, calls the opportunity a “win-win-win-win.”

“There are few opportunities where oyster farmers can work together,” Parsons explained, but conservation is a team effort, and the grant project is looking to reach enough farmers to make a difference in the bay.

“It's not for my immediate benefit. It's for generations down the road, whether it be my daughter or someone else's children, if they decide they would like to venture out to the bay to experience what it is to produce income from a limited resource, they're going to have a place to work,” Parsons said.

Learn more about Stockton's Marine Field Station and how it provides coastal teaching and research opportunities for students in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.