Shelling out pays off
As an organic oyster farmer, Shane Buckley is one of a kind
TO GET to Shane Buckley’s oyster farm, drive past the giant surf of the Pacific Ocean and head through a national park for half an hour. Turn down a corrugated dirt track, avoid a mob of kangaroos and park by a shed alongside an isolated lake.
“We’re the only certified Sydney rock oyster farm in Australia – or the world for that matter (the species is only grown in certain regions of Australia),” Shane said.
“I couldn’t be organic if it wasn’t for the water quality of this lake. We’re surrounded by national park and the estuary would be classified pristine if it wasn’t for the cultivation of oysters.”
When Shane became the first oyster farm to be certified in 2012 at Wapengo Lakes on the NSW Sapphire Coast – now with a 12ha lease producing 50,000 dozen annually – the rules had to be written for him because they didn’t exist.
It’s a process that has paid off, with Shane now wholesaling his Wapengo Rocks Wild Organic Oysters to the public and high end restaurants along the eastern seaboard, including the likes of Movida in Melbourne, while this year he plans to export to Singapore after chefs in that country have been requesting his bounty for years.
“They keep asking for our largest oysters, what I call big rocks, which we grow out to nine years of age or 250g, up to 150mm long and 75mm deep,” Shane said, adding they are the only grower he knows to produce oysters that size and age.
“For some grades we charge nearly double the price for that of a conventional oyster.”
GROUND BREAKER
BEING the country’s only organic Sydney rock oyster farm means Shane gets invited to food festivals (including the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in March), while the likes of Gourmet Traveller has featured his farm and he has won almost 30 medals at Sydney’s Royal Fine Food Show, as well as gold for the past two years running at Melbourne’s Fine Food Awards.
Yet despite this success – or perhaps because of – he still at times cops flak.
“People say to me that oysters are organic anyway – growing from wild caught spat in natural waterways,” he said.
“But I tell them it’s not just about the oysters. It’s the farm that is certified organic.”
Shane was an intensive care paramedic for 20 years before he decided to opt out for a better lifestyle, initially buying a 6ha lease in 2007 and a further 6ha in 2012, the same year he became certified with Australian Certified Organic.
He said initially the farm was a mix of the damaging traditional form of stick culture – which uses hardwood sticks dipped in tar on treated pine (using arsenic) wrack and rail – as well as single seed culture, which is a form of cultivation that uses slats like venetian blinds.
For four years until 2012 he transformed all farm infrastructure, removing stick culture and introducing single seed culture, during which time the business virtually had to shut down, selling enough to pay the bills.
“I didn’t have any preconceptions about the industry when I started,” he said.
“As soon as I started in the farm I realised the old-fashioned ways were not environmentally-friendly, so I bit the bullet and transformed methods.
❝From a marketing perspective there’s definitely a point of difference being organic. I’m much more marketable than if I was simply a commodity.
— Shane Buckley
“It was an expensive exercise to swap from tar to single seed and lose years of crops but worth it.”
PLASTIC FANTASTIC
THE farm now uses no wood, with posts 100 per cent recycled non-polluting plastic, which won’t need to be replaced “for as long as I’m around”.
The slats, which catch the oysters, are all PVC, while he also moved to a floating bag system to grow out oysters in their final stage.
“The old system of cultivation used to use trays which shaded the bottom of the lake and denuded it of weed growth,” he said.
“With that old infrastructure removed and floating bags introduced (about 10,000), these moved with the tide and wind and all the seagrasses and weeds have now regenerated.”
Shane said while most farms take three years to become certified organic, his certification took 12 months thanks to the steps he had already taken.
The NSW oyster industry is run by a sustainable aquaculture strategy that still allows for the use of treated pine and tar.
“I couldn’t see any other way to grow oysters that was more holistic. So we had to come up with it.” Australian Certified Organic then wrote the standard, drawing on a British model, which Shane now uses.
To allow Shane to be certified they tested a range of areas and inspected leases, with a thorough water analysis.
There are 10 oyster farmers on Wapengo Lake who, as a collective, every fortnight test water quality for such issues as ecoli, biotoxins and algae and measurements are always well below industry standards.
They also enforce a high standard for self-imposed shutdown after 40mm of rainfall over 48 hours, or 60mm over seven days as well as salinity of less than 28 parts per million.
Following these initial audits, Shane is now required to maintain annual audits, adding that paper work is the disadvantage of being certified.
SPAT OUT
SHANE’S farm uses largely wild caught spat, but as risk mitigation buys in on average 450,000 spat annually from a Queensland hatchery, which are selected for resistance to winter mortality. “It’s never hit us but just in case. In 2012 we had a low catch as well.”
Oysters from the hatchery are not marketed as organic and sold under the Buckley’s Oysters of Wapengo brand, making up about five per cent of all sales.
Wild oysters spawn in February and again in May/June, allowing for two catches.
Throughout their three to four year growing cycle they are hauled in about 10 times, placed in tumblers that allow them to grow out, and finally put in the floating bags for the final 12 months prior to harvest.
Harvest runs from November to July and Shane sells four grades, starting from the petite at 50mm up to premium at 80g, with a small portion of additional giant big rocks growing out to nine years of age.
Shane said even though he has been certified organic for six years, interest in his product was still growing and he predicted he would more than double production to 120,000 dozen annually in the next three years.
He still only farms a third of his farm, with all profits funnelled back into his leases.
“It’s not cheap – the bags cost $15 each alone,” he said.
“But at the same time I don’t want to get so big I overstock either.”
Ultimately the plan would be for Shane to travel and market the oysters, while his farm is run by his staff of two.
“I love the remoteness of farming, seeing the sea eagles, kingfishers, all sorts of amazing birdlife and thriving aquatic life, but I also love to go to restaurants, eat their oysters, ask them where they buy them from, and suggest they try our oysters.
“From a marketing perspective there’s definitely a point of difference being organic. I’m much more marketable than if I was simply a commodity.”