Aquaculture NT: Record results in Territory oyster trial

Trials of oysters in Territory waters has reportedly been a huge success, and farmers are excited about the future for local seafood.

THE Darwin Aquaculture Centre (DAC) team at Channel Island has been busy perfecting research on how to purvey the highest quality tropical Black Lip Rock Oyster all year round.

Within three rectangle troughs around five to eight meters in length, carry approximately half a million baby oysters.

These baby oysters begin their life in what is known as “the hatchery” where they start out as spawn and transition over 25 days into a tiny but visible baby oyster scientifically known as ‘spat’.

After a few months, the spat is then transferred to oyster farms where they will reach a market size as an adult oyster between an 18 month to two year period.

Head of the Aquaculture unit and leader of the oyster research project, Matt Osborne, is well acquainted with this process.

Matt Osborne, Project Leader of Aquaculture and regional development. Picture: Glenn Campbell

With recent advances in environment control, he said the centre had been working on research which would allow the centre to produce all year round.

“We can bring the mature oysters into spawn condition when they’re not naturally warmer conditions (like dry season) by manipulating temperate feed salinity in the hatchery environment,” Mr Osborne said.

He said allowing the oysters to get to a larger size quicker meant farmers could turn over stock at a higher rate.

“A two year time frame is really good because that gives them enough time in their farm to turn over stock and still have some produce flowing through,” Mr Osborne said.

Over the next trial cycles, Mr Osborne said the research team was aiming to refine this process so they can select the most efficient oysters that grew the fastest, speeding up the rate of productivity.

“Within one trial cycle, the previous best was 100,000 oysters, now we’re producing over half a million to that stage,” he said.

“What we would like to see is having a couple of million coming out of each of those breeding cycles being available to farms.”

The Territory Government has been working with the Cooperative Research Centre for Developing Northern Australia, Yagbani Aboriginal Corporation and Anindilyakwa Land Council to produce the Oysters at the Darwin Aquaculture Centre.

The grow out trials of the Oysters at South Goulburn Island has also been a huge success, with thousands of oysters at a mature stage – almost reaching market size.

Agribusiness and Aquaculture Minister Nicole Manison said the Black Lip Oyster project was exciting.

“We’re seeing fantastic results thanks to the hard work which is happening here at the DAC and also the hard work of the traditional owners,” Ms Manison said.

Originally published as Aquaculture NT: Record results in Territory oyster trial