Megan Hall: Welcome to Possibly, where we take on huge problems like the future of our planet and break them down into small questions with unexpected answers. I’m Megan Hall.
Megan Hall: I’ve been eating a lot of raw oysters lately. They taste so fresh and clean, and I can get them from local farms here in Rhode Island. But I’ve been wondering – what’s the environmental impact of growing all these shelled delicacies?
Megan Hall: We had Juliana Merullo and Ashley Junger from our Possibly team look into this question.
Megan Hall: Hi Juliana and Ashley!
Juliana Merullo: Hiya Megan!
Ashley Junger: Hey there!
Megan Hall: So, how much energy goes into farming oysters?
Juliana Merullo: To find out, we called up Graham Watson, owner of West Passage Oyster Company.
Graham: We have a floating aquaculture lease in the West Passage of Narragansett Bay.
Ashley Junger: He says farming oysters is different than farming other fish or animals.
Graham Watson: oysters don’t require any food, we don’t have to feed them anything. They’re grazing off of the phytoplankton that we already have access of, in our oceans, and especially in our bays.
Megan Hall: What’s phytoplankton?
Juliana Merullo: Phytoplankton are just microscopic critters that swim and float in the water!
Megan Hall: So, Oyster farms basically just take advantage of food that’s already in the ocean? It sounds pretty low maintenance.
Ashley Junger: Exactly! When you compare oyster farms to farms on land, they need way less attention.
Graham Watson: We don’t have to fertilize and we also don’t have to use any fresh water!
Ashley Junger: Since they don’t need any food, fertilizer, or irrigation, oyster farms create way less carbon dioxide emissions than other types of farming.
Megan Hall: How much less?
Juliana Merullo: Well, we spoke to Wally Fulweiler, a professor at Boston University who studies the effect of humans on our oceans. She did a study comparing the greenhouse gas emissions from oysters with other protein sources. According to her research:
Wally Fulweiler: The greenhouse gas footprint of things like cows and chicken and pigs is significantly higher compared to oysters, which basically have like a blip, like, close to zero.
Megan Hall: Sounds pretty good. Don’t oysters also filter the water in some sort of way?
Juliana Merullo: Yup! They might be small, but an adult oyster can actually filter up to 50 gallons of water a day!
Megan Hall: That seems like a lot!
Juliana Merullo: It is. Just the oysters on Graham’s farm filter nearly 30 Olympic sized swimming pools of water every day.
Megan Hall: Remind me, why do we care about filtering the water?
Juliana Merullo: Cloudy water is made up of all different little particles: like dirt from the seafloor, microscopic algae, and pollutants.
Ashley Junger: Wally says, clearer water makes it easier for things like sea grass to grow.
Wally Fulweiler: And seagrasses are wonderful for many reasons. Like they provide habitat for shellfish and finfish. And they sequester carbon, and they can help remove nutrients
Megan Hall: Ok, so oysters sound pretty important to a healthy ocean!
Juliana Merullo: Right! Wally says the benefits of these oyster farms is basically undeniable.
Wally Fulweiler: The data that we have in hand right now are pointing to a pretty consistent
message, that oysters provide a whole range of ecosystem benefits. I don’t think they are the answer to all of our nitrogen or greenhouse gas issues. But I do think that they have an important role to play.
Megan Hall: So should I be eating oysters for dinner?
Juliana Merullo: Yes! And as a snack too. What we eat for dinner isn’t going to reverse climate change on its own, but it’s definitely a food you can feel good about putting on your plate.
Megan Hall: That’s great to know! Thanks, Juliana and Ashley!
Megan Hall: That’s it for today. For more information, or to ask a question about the way your choices affect our planet, go to the public’s radio dot org slash possibly. Or subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter- at “ask possibly”
Possibly is a co-production of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown’s Climate Solutions Initiative, and the Public’s Radio.
The post What’s the environmental impact of oyster farms? appeared first on TPR: The Public's Radio.