The oyster farming area southeast of the town of Panacea will provide jobs for area residents, he says, adding it should help the wild oyster population rebound after years of overharvesting and adverse water conditions.“Seventeen people that received permission to move forward today, instead of them being out there harvesting from the wild, now they’re going to be culturing a crop of their own,” he says.
The state has reserved 10 of the oyster plots for the inaugural graduating class of the Tallahassee Community College Wakulla Environmental Institute.
Institute Executive Director Bob Ballard says, “The first set of oysters are about to be put into the water.”
Ballard says the recently trained oyster farmers will grow 1 million oysters between them. And each oyster filters and cleans 14 gallons of water every day.
“That’s an amazing amount of water,” he says, “and as far as environmentally friendly, it doesn’t get any more environmentally friendly than this.”
The Aquaculturists
This blog is maintained by The Aquaculturists staff and is supported by the magazine International Aquafeed which is published by Perendale Publishers Ltd.