Roger Williams University’s Aquaculture Program; Bringing Oysters to the Bay – Constitution Seafoods, To Your Table

For the past five years, Roger Williams University marine biology students from the Aquaculture Program have been studying the oyster population of Narragansett Bay and implementing experiments to increase the oyster population and to improve and clean the ecosystem there. The bay, once one of the largest resources of shellfish in the 1900s, has been in significant decline since the Great Hurricane of 1938 when much of the bay’s coastal plains were laid to waste. In the past decades, the oyster beds were further decimated by a parasite that hurt the oyster population as it struggled to regain their foothold in the waters of Bristol Harbor and Narragansett Bay. Today, students, professors, and volunteers are coming together to replenish the oyster population of Narragansett Bay.

In 2005, the program transferred approximately 50,000 spat, or baby oysters, to hanging baskets in a number of rivers and ponds and at the mouth of Bristol Harbor. By the next year, the Aquaculture Program released over 100,000 oysters into the Narragansett Bay. This past December of 2007, 276,000 oyster spat were released to the waters of Narragansett Bay, according to Dale Leavitt, an Associate Professor of Aquaculture at Roger Williams University. The replanting of the oyster gardens is now in full-swing.

Shellfish farming has been traced back to mid-13th century France to a practice known as the “bouchot” method. Nets strung between posts in inter-tidal areas allow shellfish to find the nets and latch onto them, getting them off the bottom and away from predator threats like starfish and crabs. Today, this technique has been modified to cages hanging in the sea, away from the bottom and the starfish, but far enough down to be bathed in the life-giving sediments of the intra-tidal waters.

Dr. Timothy Scott from the Aquaculture Program at Roger Williams University was quoted as saying, “Under normal circumstances (no disease pressure), a healthy oyster can live to 25-30 years. The disease that has become common over the last several decades, a protozoan parasite, causes the death of the majority of the oysters in 2-3 years. This is normally before they would be harvested for sale. This applies to both wild harvests by the commercial shell fishermen and the cultured oysters through various aquaculture programs and commercial businesses. The "disease-resistant" oysters that have been developed for other areas (e.g., Chesapeake Bay) and those we are working with in Narragansett Bay are still infected, but live to be 5-6 years and can therefore be harvested for sale. Oysters are usually large enough to harvest and sell by 2-3 years of age. They will also start reproducing by that age as well, so the oysters we plant on our artificial reefs may only live 5-6 years, but will have several years of reproduction and their larvae will carry the disease-resistant genes into the next generations. In this way, we hope to establish a commercially viable, harvestable oyster population in the bay and be able to sustain shell fishing into the next century.”

Recognizing that this new program potentially has a very real commercial focus, President Roy J. Nirschel set out to develop the business side of the venture. He caught wind of a student at Roger Williams whose father owned a seafood business operated out of Boston, MA. He knew that talking to someone in the business would offer real insight into the commercial side of the seafood industry.

“When I got the call from the office of Roy J. Nirschel, President of Roger Williams University, my first thought was ‘What did my daughter do now?’ as she was a student there at the time. After talking with Nirschel and learning out about the Narragansett Bay Oyster Project, I knew I could be of assistance. So we set up meetings to discuss the wholesale shellfish industry.” said James Faro, owner of Constitution Seafoods. Faro has a unique perspective having been in the seafood industry for over 30 years and coming from an extended family of seafood distributors.

In December of 2007, Jimmy and his wife, Marie, were invited by President Nirschel to the Oyster Fest at the Marine and Natural Science Building at Roger Williams University. During this kickoff event, students planted a few of the more than 275,000 baby oysters that moved out of the confines of the classrooms at RWU and into the larger aquatic world of Narragansett Bay “This is just the beginning of a very exciting and profitable venture for Roger Williams University and I am happy I will be part of it” Faro said.