Loch Craignish oyster project ‘powering ahead’
Recent low spring tides allowed volunteers a rare opportunity to survey on foot the progress of native oysters reintroduced last year to Loch Craignish.
The charity behind the project, Seawilding, is working to restore degraded inshore marine habitats, including its primary focus – a National Lottery funded project to restore native oyster beds to the loch.
And the verdict following the socially-distanced survey of release sites?
According to Seawilding social media platforms, the volunteers witnessed ‘fabulous results’. The group posted: ‘Native oysters in numbers, growing well and very low mortality. Community-led marine habitat restoration powering ahead.’
It all began with a pilot project conducted by volunteer group Craignish Restoration of Coastal and Marine Habitats (CROMACH) in 2020.
The charity Seawilding was formed and secured a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant for a five-year project to grow up to one million juvenile native oysters in Loch Craignish to restore natural beds.
The process involves juvenile native oysters – spat – sourced from Morecambe Bay Hatchery, which arrive weighing approximately one gramme. These are grown on in a floating cage nursery until they weigh approximately 12 grammes.
This takes approximately three to four months in the summer. At this point they are big enough to sit on the sea-bottom and survive a degree of predation from starfish and crabs.
After extensive surveys around the loch, release sites were selected with good substrate, shelter and depth. So far, more than 60,000 young oysters have been broadcast by hand into the water.
Seawilding has teamed up with the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) and the School of Aquaculture, Stirling University to help MSc students research, monitor and survey the restoration effort.
The project has caught the attention of schools around the area, with science site visits planned with the help of Heart of Argyll Wildlife.
The pandemic interrupted school trips in 2020, but Pete Creech of Heart of Argyll Wildlife said last week: ‘Thankfully it’s a five-year project and we hope to be able to make a start later this year.
‘In the meantime we’ve put together a video for interested schools to show some of the things we will be doing and what we are likely to find.
‘This was filmed in mid-winter, but we still found a fascinating variety of life; there will be even more to see as we head into summer.
‘Several primary schools have already signed up to take part. If your school is in Argyll, primary or higher, and you would like to be involved, contact us at info@ heartofargyllwildlife.org.’