A BSAC Marine Champion has signed up to help an oyster restoration project in North Wales with the aim of boosting the number of oysters in our native waters.
Mel Hough-Milton is Flintshire Sub-Aqua Club's designated Marine Champion and an enthusiastic diver, keen to help in environmental projects. She recently spent a weekend volunteering to monitor oysters in the harbour in Conwy Bay marina.
She explained how the opportunity came about:
"I was lucky enough to be a volunteer with twelve other Volunteers for The North Wales Wild Oyster Project, checking the health of every Oyster in our Oyster Nurseries and recording the biodiversity amongst them.
The native oysters restoration under Conwy marina have a monthly monitoring session. The arrangements are coordinated by Marie and Rhianna, Project Officers.
Marie and Rhianne are both enthusiastic and committed marine scientists, who coordinated a list of local volunteers pooled from the marine courses at Bangor University, and local, North Walian residents.
A long history of oysters
Conwy itself is a medieval town with a rich history and was once home to one of the most important pearl mussel fisheries in the country. The oyster beds provided a significant number of pearls for jewellers in London in the early 1800s. However, fishing for native oysters in Wales had begun much earlier. Native oyster shells have been discovered dating back to the Neolithic and the Bronze Age (about 12,000 years ago)!
There are now only a few small native oyster populations left in Wales. By working together we hope to restore this historically important species and support native ocean life.
4,000 native oysters are being returned to UK waters as part of an ambitious restoration project, which for the first time is spanning coastal regions across England, Scotland and Wales.
Now, Conwy Bay is also a designated Special Area of Conservation with unique underwater habitats.
The Wild Oysters Project, working in colaboration with; ZSL (Zoological Society of London), Blue Marine Foundation (BLUE) and British Marine aims to help restore healthy, resilient coastal waters from the brink of extinction.
The oysters (Ostrea edulis) provide huge benefits to our coastal waters by helping to clean our seas and acting as an important habitat for marine wildlife. Unfortunately, due to human activities, native oyster populations have continued to decrease, meaning that their benefits to the ocean have been lost.
The micro habitats in Conwy Bay act as a maternity ward to the next generation of oysters.
The nurseries are suspended underneath marina pontoons, allowing the Oysters to release millions of baby oysters, known as larvae, into the ocean, with the aim of increasing wild populations around the British coast and promote healthy coastal waters.
Despite their small size oysters are capable of filtering 200 litres of water a day. The oysters will almost immediately begin their important work helping to create cleaner water and increase marine biodiversity in the UK.
The project, which spans the UK, has installed 47 nurseries with 1,300 native oysters underneath marina pontoons in Sunderland Marina and Port of Blyth, North East of England. Partnering with Groundwork North East and Cumbria, along with the Environment Agency North East, local Project Officers will help to care for the oysters."
If you are interested in volunteering to help the Wild Oyster Project, you will need to register your interest with one of the several Oyster Projects near to your area.
