How to start oyster farming

Oyster farming is a lucrative and diversified business that is popular in many countries around the world.

With oyster farming, you don't need much land and you don't need to feed crops. Oysters are a more resilient form of shellfish farming than clams or scallops.

Just one acre or less of shallow water is enough to start an oyster farm. Because oysters filter the water for food, you're not spending any feed while helping the environment. Contrast this with the 5 pounds of fish needed to raise 1 pound of farmed salmon.

How much to start?

Cost estimates are based on starting with an acre or more of oysters and a few thousand or more bags or cages. This can cost up to $60,000 depending on many variables.

We recommend starting small, using only 25 oyster bags or cages. Counting equipment, small oysters and getting permits, if you already have a truck, boat and dock, then you can start for less than $5,000. Add another round of bags or cages and oysters each year and you could be profitable within three years. At this scale, you can manage without help, but typically oyster farm employees can make $15 to $25 per hour, depending on experience.

Farm equipment

A pickup truck, a small work boat and a dock will get your farm up and running. Oysters can only eat underwater, but that's also when their shells and containers become soiled with algae, seaweed, mussels, barnacles and predators. A setup that allows oysters to be above the surface so they can dry out, thus killing these contaminating organisms and making the shells cleaner and more profitable at harvest time.

Many oyster farmers use what is called an off-bottom system to grow oysters. In them, oysters are suspended near the surface in baskets, bags, trays or cages called oyster apartments, racks, Taylor floats or adjustable longline systems. These devices keep the oysters above the water surface part of the time.

Some of these containers have floats that flip the racks over, while others hang from the dock like soaked sheets on a clothesline. At low tide, the hanging oyster bags dry out. Floating cages can be flipped over once a week so they can dry out and kill fouling organisms. Flipping also results in deeper shells and fatter oysters.

Oyster schools

You can start increasing your knowledge of aquatic mollusks at a low cost by working with your local agricultural extension and doing what is called oyster gardening. Many extension oyster hatcheries give away button-sized baby oysters to people who commit to nurturing them for a year so they can repopulate depleted oyster beds with young oysters. Some hatcheries want all their oysters back, so you may not be able to eat them, but you do get a low-cost education in oyster management before taking the next step.

Another option: look into a sustainable franchise model called GreenWave. It trains and assists farmers in implementing a mixed farming model that adds seaweed, sea vegetables, mussels and other marine crops to oyster operations to better respond to market and weather fluctuations.

Several methods of oyster farming

Different farms employ different farming techniques, with farmers using the rack-and-rail method, the longline method, or a combination of two or more methods to farm oysters. Different farming methods can produce completely different oysters, and there are many varieties! Growers choose their preferred method of raising oysters based on many factors, including their geographic location, potential predators, town regulations, and climate. We will expand on the most common methods.

Bottom vs. off-bottom

Rearing methods generally fall into two categories: bottom culture and off-bottom culture. The term "bottom" simply refers to the bottom of the ocean. Thus, bottom culture methods mean that oysters are grown on the bottom, while off-bottom culture methods grow oysters without touching the bottom. These two categories are not mutually exclusive. Farmers can use both methods throughout the life of the oyster to obtain the desired appearance or yield.

Bottom culture is the method of farming that most closely resembles oysters such as wild oysters. Although cultured oysters do not grow on the surface like wild oysters, when dispersed on the bottom, they are raised in the same pattern as their native cousins because they filter the same water and live on the same bottom, which can affect their shell color and rigidity.

The main benefit of substrate culture is the ability to produce firm and full shells. However, the biggest disadvantage is that growers may lose many oysters to nature. Oysters may die from suffocation on the bottom, be attacked by predators, or be frozen in the ice that carries them into the sea. For every oyster lost, the grower has one less oyster to sell.

The main advantage of the off-bottom method is the opposite of the disadvantage of bottom culture. As you will see, oysters are usually enclosed and protected using the off-bottom method, so growers are likely to lose fewer oysters to weather. This means better overall yields. However, the disadvantages include more money spent on gear and more work to prevent gear fouling. Sometimes oysters tend to become brittle because they are spoiled, but growers use many techniques to strengthen the shell (such as tumbling).

Here are some common methods used to get off the bottom

Surface or floating culture

For surface or floating culture, growers can choose from many different types of gear, systems and equipment, but basically, all surface culture gear will float on the water. Surface culture oysters typically never dry out and are subject to a lot of wave action and natural tumbling. When fouling occurs on gear, the gear will flip over, exposing seaweed and other attached marine life to the air.

Pallet culture

Different off-bottom methods depend on the gear used, and in tray culture, oysters are grown in oyster culture trays. These trays perform the same function as oyster culture bags and can be stacked to save space.

Netting culture

Cages are exactly what they sound like. They are fitted with oyster culture mesh bags and ensure that they do not float or touch the bottom. Cages need a very stable bottom because they are heavy and may sink into the mud if the bottom is too soft. We use cages when the oysters are young and not yet ready for bottom planting. This provides them with more protection than open water and offers more room to grow than upwelling. Farmers may decide to use only netting as their only method of raising oysters, but we combine oyster netting and bottom farming - an example of how bottom and non-bottom methods are not mutually exclusive.