Shellfish Upwellers - Propagation
Putting The Upweller In Place One of the upwellers is put in place by DNR personnel.
Upweller In Place ...and ready to go. Water trough & pump are in the middle, bays where silos will go are to the left & right.
Putting The Silos: In DNR employee attaches silos to the trough.
Hundreds Of Oyster Seed: ...easily fit in the palm of your hand.
14 Quahaug Seed: ...easily fit on the tip of your finger. In reality, you could put dozens there.
250,000 Quahaug Seed: This is about a quarter of a million quahaug seed, ready to be placed in trays in the silos.
Placing Seed In Silos: Which is done gently, so as not to crush the shells.
Quahaug Seed At 3 Weeks: There has been visible growth in the 3 weeks since the seed was placed in the upweller.
Oyster Seed At 6 Weeks: Oyster seed grows MUCH faster and is more apparent in its' growth than any other shellfish species.
By The Middle of Summer: What started out as "grains of sand" at the bottom of the silos has now been put into trays that go to the top of the silos.
Oysters At 9 Weeks: By this time, many of the oysters measure in the 1-1.5 inch range.
Oysters Being Planted At 12 Weeks: Because of their quick growth & taking up excessive space in the upwellers, oysters are planted 1-2 months before quahaugs.
Quahaug Seed At 4 Months: This is the seed at approximately 16 weeks and shortly before planting.
Quahaug Seed Size: This gives you a better idea of how big the seed is when we finally put it out on the shellfish beds at the end of the growing season.
Quahaug Seed Loaded On Boat: Here the seed is loaded onto our work skiff in the silo trays and ready to throw out onto the shellfish beds.
What's With The Orange Paint?: We paint some of the seed fluorescent orange, so we can try to keep track of the seed, how well it survived, and the growth rates over the coming years. We use a different color from year to year.
Quahaug Seed A Year Later: Here we're measuring the seed and comparing growth rates in different areas.
Definite Growth: And you can see where that orange paint comes in real handy.
Another Area Being Checked: And you can see that it resulted in VERY good growth over a year's time.
Different Colors.... For different batches of seed and different areas. So now when you see those "colored quahaugs" out there, you'll know why.
Oyster Seed The Following Year: Oysters we don't have to paint. The definite growth since being placed in the water can easily be seen - Light vs. dark shell & a definite "ridge" in the shell growth. The one on the right is almost legal size (3 inches).