It’s that time of year when the water starts to cool down and the oysters start to slow down. That means it’s time to start planning for the winter. Things change a bit on the farm as we go into winter. Right now the water is still in the low 70s and the oysters are still growing. This is a sweet spot for growth, and we’ll get one last surge as the oysters start to fatten up for hibernation. Once the water gets below 60, growth will slow, but won’t really stop until it gets down to the low 40’s; with that said, growth is effectively done below 50. This means we are making a last push to get everything...
So what is an oyster nursery? It will look a bit different depending on the farm, but generally a nursery is a collection of equipment designed to make it easy to grow and manage a very large number of very small oysters in a relatively small space. In one part of our nursery, we have as many as 500,000 oysters in a land-based tank that is 10’x4’x3’ — basically the same volume of water as a large hot tub. Having so many oysters in a relatively small space makes taking care of them easier as there all easily accessibly so can quickly clean their temporary and make sure they’re not too crowded. As Taryn likes to say, it’s like running a hostel...
