SEPRATING SINGLE OYSTER SPAT INSTALL
SEPRATING SINGLE OYSTER SPAT FULL

There they would install a seafarm where the baby oysters would grow to market size. They planned to boat out to Rivers’ shellfishing lease on Mud River, a tract of brackish water and marsh mud where only the leaseholder can legally harvest wild oysters. But for the last decade he’s been working on organic farms in California and Vermont. Despite silver hairs beginning to line the mane he ties into a small bun at the base of his skull, he looks as if he might still be matriculating.

Rivers, 31, is as thin as a collegiate Ultimate Frisbee captain.

SEPRATING SINGLE OYSTER SPAT FULL

But hiding inside Manley’s tough outer shell is a total oyster nerd, a mind packed full of research on estuary salinity and the effects of mud on oyster survival rates. Even when he removes his ever-present sunglasses to wipe them clean with his T-shirt, the action is delivered with precision. Manley is at first meeting as rigid as a drill sergeant. The command is delivered in a firm staccato, a masculine bass steadied with a strict Detroit clip. The rest we’ll plant,” Manley instructed Rivers, transferring the oysters to sturdy, plastic bags. “Now these are too small, you’re going to just hang these off your dock today. Manley dug into a bag and emerged with a handful of the pebble-sized oysters that dribbled down the sides of his palm like sand. Under his care, the tiny bivalves grew to their current size, ranging from toddler (a quarter inch) to adolescent (just shy of an inch), by housing them in a river-based holding tank called a floating upweller. The oysters had matured from microscopic mollusks Manley collected from one of Georgia’s many intertidal rivers earlier in the summer. He’d already sorted three sizes of oysters - small, medium, large - into compartments. Manley motioned the farmer to join him at the truck and loosed a rope that bound the sacks. Rivers contributed the trellises Manley brought the seed - oyster seed, baby bivalves not yet large enough to eat. Together, they had the makings for a farm in the water. Nearby, under a canopy of slash pine and live oaks, Rafe Rivers, an organic vegetable farmer, arranged eight-foot lengths of rebar and four-foot sections of PVC pipe into piles near his dock. He unlatched the tailgate and dragged six neon-green mesh sacks to its edge. EULONIA - Justin Manley backed up his University of Georgia work truck to a dock that dipped off Tolomato Island into McIntosh County’s Crum Creek.

Seprating single oyster spat