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Home > Current News > 2008

News: 2008

L.D.W.F. Completes Oyster Reef Rehabilitation Project in Hackberry Bay
Posted: 6/18/08

Approximately 50 acres of the Hackberry Bay Public Oyster Seed Reservation in Lafourche and Jefferson Parishes were recently rehabilitated by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) Marine Fisheries Division as part of a federally-funded oyster ground rehabilitation effort.

The process involved placing cultch material (limestone, crushed concrete, oyster shell) on the water bottoms to provide a suitable substrate for larval oyster attachment. This effort is the latest in a long line of oyster reef building/rehabilitation projects (also known as cultch planting) performed by LDWF in various years dating back to the early 1900s. Including this project, LDWF has placed over 1.5 million cubic yards of cultch material on nearly 30,000 acres of water bottoms within Louisiana’s public oyster areas since 1917.

The Hackberry Bay oyster rehabilitation project took place from May 20 to May 25, 2008. A total of 10,000 cubic yards of cultch material were placed with approximately 75 percent consisting of size #57 limestone rock (approximately 1.5 inches across widest diameter), approximately 15 percent consisting of crushed concrete, and approximately 10 percent clean oyster shells.

The contractor utilized high-pressure water spray and a clam bucket to spread a thin layer of cultch material on water bottoms. This project is expected to result in harvestable quantities of marketable size oysters (3 inches) within 24 months post-project. Similar projects in past years have yielded benefit-cost ratios from 2:1 to as much as 20:1.

The project was funded through a congressional appropriation of federal hurricane-related fisheries disaster monies for oyster ground rehabilitation and was part of $53 million in fisheries resource recovery funds passed to LDWF by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through the Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission (GSMFC).

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