In New Jersey, oysters can be harvested for commercial use in Delaware Bay, and the state has a robust aquaculture industry that grows them. The goal is not so much to create new places to harvest and sell oysters for consumption as to improve the environment. In addition to improving water quality, oyster colonies also are being planted along coastlines as a shore stabilization and storm mitigation strategy: the bumpy underwater colonies can act as speed bumps for destructive waves headed for the shoreline, dissipating some of their energy. Oysters are nature’s filters: a single adult oyster can can strain particles and contaminants from 50 gallons of water a day. “The buffet on a slow day will shuck 500 oysters, and on a busy day, 1,200.” “We go through a ton of these shells at our restaurants,” said Grace Chow, Hard Rock's vice president of food and beverages. Several other casinos have expressed interest in joining. The program began in 2019 and currently collects oysters from the Hard Rock casino, the Knife & Fork restaurant and Dock's Oyster House in Atlantic City. That helps the eateries save on waste disposal costs. “You have the benefit not only of ecological restoration, but it has kept 65 tons of shells out of landfills,” said Scott Stueber, a fisheries biologist with the DEP.
The clam, oyster and other shells form the basis of new or expanded oyster colonies when free-floating baby oysters, known as spat, attach to the shells and begin to grow on them. That waterway is home to one of the last self-sustaining oyster populations on the Atlantic coast, according to Shawn LaTourette, the state's environmental commissioner. The shells are then collected by the state Department of Environmental Protection, and workers and volunteers with Rutgers and Stockton universities and the Jetty Rock Foundation load them on barges and dump them into the Mullica River. One of the latest such projects is taking place in Atlantic City, where a casino and two other restaurants are saving the shells left over from their diners. Call it the seafood circle of life: Shells discarded by diners are being collected, cleaned and dumped into waterways around the country and the world, where they form the basis of new oyster colonies. The fishery will be closed for up to 5 years in hopes that the oyster beds will recover.PORT REPUBLIC, N.J. In July 2020, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission unanimously voted to shut down the state's iconic Apalachicola oyster fishery after years of drought and other pressures that had devastated the wild oyster beds. Other prominent oyster industry pioneers included “The Apalachicola Fish and Oyster Company” as seen in this painting.
John Ruge is also credited as an early advocate of planting oysters’ shells near existing oyster “beds” to provide places for spat to settle during spawning. Through the technique of pasteurization, the Ruge’s became Florida’s first successful commercial seafood packers. Ruge opened the Ruge Brothers Canning company in 1885. Sustained commercial seafood success began in the late 1880s when German immigrant Herman Ruge, along with his two sons John G. By 1850, oysters had begun to be packed in barrels and shipped aboard steamers headed north or to other neighboring states. Oysters were sold locally as early as 1836, harvested much the same as they are today with scissor-shaped tongs hoisted aboard shallow-draft skiffs. Oysters were Apalachicola’s first seafood industry. It is the seafood industry that has most significantly shaped the culture and maritime heritage of Apalachicola and it is the seafood industry that anchors a growing nature-based tourism industry throughout the region. The seafood industry in Apalachicola is as important today as it was more than 175 years ago.
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