LEWES, Del. -- The first oyster hatchery in Delaware is making strides as it recently shipped out its first batch of baby oysters or 'spat' to commercial oyster growers in the state.
The hatchery, a pilot scale program run by the Delaware Sea Grant, has only been in operation since 2022, a big reason why the researchers and scientists involved say they weren't expecting success so soon. They reared 100,000 oysters from microscopic larvae to fingernail sized oyster spat.
"We had to keep those animals alive for three weeks, all the way to the end," says laboratory coordinator Alyssa Campbell. "That was really just a surprise and really rewarding."
Campbell says the labor intensive process required a lot of moving parts, from filtered water from the Broadkill River to cultured algae to provide the young oysters with nutrients. Once the spat settled on adult oyster shells, 200 bags of shells and spat were sent to oyster growers in Kent County.
Campbell adds that her team's success opens a door for economic and ecological benefits to Delaware and its waterways.
"Right now growers have to buy their seed out of state," says Campbell. "They have to go through see testing and it's already a pretty big bottleneck for the industry. It's really hard for our people here in Delaware to get their hands on seed, so this is that next step in pushing our industry forward. Oysters have so many ecosystem services. They filter the water. They provide habitat, so there's just all good, all around."
Hatchery overseer and University of Delaware professor Dr. Edward Hale, Ph.D., says this is only the beginning. He says the goal is to eventually one day supply the state's entire industry.
"The hope is that one day when we have an industrial scale facility, we'll be able to moderate things like temperature, and have more environmental control, so that we can continue production and hold different organisms for cultivation," says Hale.