Hosted by Robin Sussingham | April 16, 2020
In the last couple of years, the harvest of wild caught oysters has gone down by half. But the amount of farmed oysters has doubled in that time. And there’s definitely a market demand for the shellfish, so aqua farmers are trying out more areas of Florida to grow oysters – outside of Apalachicola, which is where you usually think of oysters growing.
Brian Rosseger is one of these pioneering oyster farmers. Last year, He and his wife started their small business, Lost Coast Oysters, in Terra Ceia Aquatic Preserve at the mouth of Tampa Bay. It’s a very labor-intensive process. Reporter Jessica Meszaros recently took a ride with Brian deep into the mangroves as he worked on his floating farm.
Farming oysters is catching on, Brian says. “There are now well over 100 farms in the state of Florida alone in an industry where there might have been five several years ago,” he says. “There is an agricultural revolution that’s happening right now. And it’s happening in the oceans.”
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CREDITS
Host: Robin Sussingham
Contributor: Jessica Meszaros
Producer: Dalia Colón
Photo Credit: Jessica Meszaros