Modern solutions from an ancient bivalve: How oyster aquaculture is positioned to offer healthy and ethical options for our diet.
- Chris
- Jan 18
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 27
This article draws its information from the
World Wildlife Fund winter 2025 edition of "World Wildlife"
Cherished for their smooth texture and salty taste, oysters are a highlight in contemporary cuisine. However, these briny bivalves offer more than just culinary delights; they deliver substantial environmental advantages and are among the most sustainably produced seafoods available.
We recently covered the health benefits of oysters. Eating oysters also has environmental advantages. According to a study by Sea Grant researchers, if Americans substituted 10% of their beef consumption with oysters, the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would be comparable to removing about 11 million cars from the road.
While many claim that high consumer demand for beef is especially hard on the environment, this claim is not about substituting to offset industrial livestock operations. This claim can be made because oysters, similar to plants, have the ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. As they develop their shells, they take carbon ions from water absorbed by the ocean from the atmosphere and sequester this carbon within their shells. Additionally, they have a significantly lower environmental impact than many other foods because they don't require feed, freshwater, or fertilizer to grow.
As oysters absorb seawater and CO2 to construct their shells, they simultaneously consume and separate what is usable and unusable by filtering the water. Oysters remove algae and other nutrients, thereby enhancing water quality. One oyster is capable of filtering up to 50 gallons of water daily. It is believed that when the Chesapeake Bay was in good health before the industrial revolution, the oysters there could filter the entire bay in just a week!
Beyond improving water quality, oysters form reefs that serve as habitats for creatures such as sea anemones, barnacles, and mussels, which in turn support other marine life. These reefs also offer shelter and breeding grounds for commercially important fish, aiding local fisheries and economies.
Indeed, 85% of the wild world‘s wild oyster reefs have disappeared because of pollution, disease, and over harvesting in the last century. However, we witness wild oyster populations rebounding in the Lynnhaven River. Supporting your local oyster aquaculture farmer is crucial because it reduces the strain on wild harvests, enabling native oyster populations to increase. Through shell recycling initiatives, the shells from aquaculture, after oysters have been consumed, are returned to the water to serve as a substrate for native oysters to settle. As you know, your Lynnhaven Oyster Club returns shells after events to provide adequate substrate for wild oysters to "strike," which refers to the oyster's ability to attach to a surface, and this is critically important to oyster reef formation.
We estimate that for every oyster consumed by a club member, at least two wild oysters gain a foothold and mature within three years. Mature females can produce between 2 to 70 million eggs per spawning event. This "godfather" role that LOC members play in supporting local native oyster populations is an under-appreciated positive outcome of membership. Because of the Club's monthly reporting requirement to the state, combined with our documented seed planting and shell put-back efforts, the Virginia Marine Resource Commission (VMRC) recently renewed LOC's farm lease for another ten years.
Based on data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, in 1952, global oyster aquaculture production exceeded wild harvests for the first time, with reported figures of 306,930 and 302,526 metric tons, respectively. Since then, aquaculture production has consistently surpassed wild oyster harvests, reaching 6,125,606 tons in 2019, compared to 133,984 tons from wild harvests. (AGRMC.ORG)
Even with these trends, we will probably never witness the oyster abundance that once existed in our planet's history. The oldest fossilized oysters on the East Coast are located in the geological formations known as Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, north of the Potomac River. These formations contain fossils from the Miocene epoch (approximately 12-15 million years old), including oyster species like "Gryphaea," which thrived during the dinosaur era; these fossils date back to the late Cretaceous period, between 65 and 85 million years ago. Oysters are believed to have existed globally for 200 million years, and the earliest evidence of oyster consumption is from Mossel Bay, South Africa, dating back 164,000 years.
You can learn more about humanity's connection with oysters in our article: Oyster Middens: human history told by oyster shells.
If you have any follow up questions to the information above or in general, please reach out to us.
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