The Delicious Reward of an Oyster Garden

Early every Tuesday morning, from late spring to late fall, Tiana Bayside is bustling with activity. Wearing rubber boots or maybe flip flops, dozens of people are pulling plastic cages from the bay with the buzz of a power washer in the background. Above the clatter, you might hear someone whispering sweet nothings to the creatures in the cages: They are oysters.

Everyone there has signed up for the Cornell Cooperative Extension’s SPAT program — the Suffolk Project in Aquaculture Training — that aims to use volunteers and members to help revitalize habitat for marine life, including oysters. In the SPAT program, which started at Tiana in 2008 but already existed at the CCE Marine Program in Southold, members pay for the spat and, if their efforts are successful, the end result is a delicious reward, oysters that they grew themselves.

Members grow oysters in containment, away from predators, until the bivalves reach an adult size and release their spawn into local creeks and bays, which builds natural settlement of the shellfish in the area. Through the SPAT program, volunteers and members are offered monthly workshops and provided with shellfish seed and the tools needed to grow their shellfish gardens in the SPAT community garden. Members may also grow in waters abutting their own property, if the waters are certified. The program arranges for all required permits.

SPAT, besides being a funny acronym, is the smallest form of shellfish that has attached itself to the place where it will grow for the rest of its life.

Kim Tetrault, a community aquaculture specialist with CCE, said part of the reason the program is so successful — it has to cap the number of allowable membership to a manageable number — is because “every member can fit what needs to be done into their own schedule.”

While the goal for members is to have edible oysters, the overarching reason for CCE to have such a program is to encourage members of the community to become stewards of their environment and, ultimately, bring viable shellfish back to the bays.

Oysters act as natural filtration systems thus making the bays and creeks healthier for all marine life.

Members sign up for the program at any time but they don’t get seed until the first or second week of May because the babies need to be a certain size before moving to the new environment.

The first spawn (when the females extrude eggs and the males extrude sperm) at CCE in Southold is on Valentine’s Day, something of an oyster orgy.

“We hold a party each year for spawn day,” Tetrault said. Interestingly, he noted, the female oysters started spawning when Robert Palmer’s “Some Like It Hot” was blaring through the speakers.

Female oysters can extrude millions of eggs in one spawning. Outside of the ideal conditions of a hatchery, those millions may get one to 10 viable oysters; in a hatchery the number is far greater.

Once members have gotten their spat, which is about the size of a dime at this point, they meet Tetrault at Tiana (or in Southold where there is another oyster garden) where he gives a tutorial on what’s ahead. Then it’s time to work. Members assemble their own cages, which are a heavy duty plastic mesh about 18 inches by 30 inches. Then the cages are tied to dedicated lines and pulleyed out to a designated spot where the oysters inside will grow. Most members return once a week to tend to the cages.

“Oystering is hard work, but satisfies all my senses and leaves me feeling fulfilled,” said Pat Sanders of Hampton Bays, who has been a member of the SPAT program at Tiana for seven years.

Tending involves keeping the cages clean. Sea grasses, seaweed and, most unwanted, fouling organisms, attach themselves to the cages and the growing shellfish, which restricts the flow of water and inhibits growth of the oysters.

Oysters are often “tumbled” either mechanically in a drum or by scraping on the concrete to chip off new growth. This creates a prettier oyster, said Tetrault, and it’s not uncommon for members to comment on particularly beautiful oysters. It’s a form of art to them.

As the oyster seeds grow, members start to sort their own by size. It usually takes about 18 months for an oyster to grow to a size suitable for consumption but Tetrault says he’s seeing it happen in less than a year in some instances.

Eventually, they get crowded and the larger oysters get moved to a new cage. Members who have joined for a second year or more often have oysters that are babies in one cage, teenagers (in oyster years) in another and adults, nearly ready to be eaten, in another.

Come October, all the plastic cages at Tiana are labeled with members’ names and then taken out of the water because the docks are removed by the town in November. They are taken to Southold to overwinter in the water by the CCE Marine center in Southold. At this point, members no longer have weekly access to their oysters, but in November, CCE encourages all members to visit them at the Southold location and take home adult oysters for friends and family to enjoy for Thanksgiving.

“Over the years I have developed an impressive collection of oyster recipes and enjoy taste testing them out. After all, receiving 1,000 spat each season results in a lot of oysters to eat and give away to oyster loving friends,” said Sanders.

In the spring, the process starts all over again, with the cages returned to Tiana Bayside, and members come down to eagerly check on their “kids.” Some purchase more spat and raise more oysters from babies.

“The SPAT program is a remarkably unique opportunity,” Tetrault said. “The oyster is a very interesting creature that teaches us so much, he added. The program touches on why local waters are sometimes closed to shellfishing and the harmful organisms that might prompt a closure. In addition, members learn about the interconnectedness of all organisms in the environment.

“The program focuses on environmental stewardship … eating oysters is the gravy,” Tetrault said.