A new decision-support tool from the University of Maryland reduces the guesswork when it comes to choosing a site to grow aquaculture oysters.
The Excel-based tool was created by Dr. Matt Parker and Don Webster of the University of Maryland Extension, along with Dr. Jeremy Testa of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences and Dr. Suzanne Bricker of the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. The creation of the tool was funded by the Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, and was developed following extensive feedback from oyster growers on what would be most useful to them.
Maryland’s oyster aquaculture industry has expanded in recent years, but finding suitable sites to grow oysters depends on many environmental and physical factors. Using publicly available data, the decision-support tool analyzes and scores each factor, isolating how the conditions vary across sites. Factors influencing oyster growth included in the tool are water depth, bottom conditions, historical disease prevalence, food availability, total suspended solids, survivability, temperature, salinity, pH, and operational and regulatory factors.
The tool provides a final score for each site, which allows a grower to compare conditions across prospective aquaculture locations and evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of each site.
Growers often have enough local knowledge of which sites perform better than others. However, this new decision-support tool helps to reduce the guesswork of choosing sites when not all variables are known. While a high score indicates the site will perform better, researchers note that it does not guarantee lease approval or production success. Also, a low score does not automatically disqualify a site. Instead, the score should prompt users to investigate the site themselves and determine what is driving the poor performance score.
The tool includes a welcome and introduction, and walks users through the process of scoring their sites and interpreting the results. It is free to download and use.