Oyster farmers in Spring Creek say mitigation efforts including metal cages and specialized floating bag systems helped them avoid major damage when the first hurricane of the Atlantic hurricane season, Isaias, passed through the region, even though it did not make a direct hit on the Big Bend.
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Local oyster farmers in Spring Creek say metal cages and specialized bag techniques helped them survive Hurricane Isaias with little to no damage.
The oyster aquaculture industry has developed new equipment and techniques to help farms be more resilient to storms. Cainnon Greg with Pelican Oyster Co. said his operation originally used plastic oyster mesh, which couldn’t withstand storm surge well. He has since switched to metal cages that hold the oyster bags and help make his farm more resilient to storm surge.
“So when we’re on the dirty side of a storm, we’re always worried about surge,” Cainnon Greg said.
Greg said he and other farmers prepare by getting their equipment on and off the water before a storm hits.
“So we got all the boats out of here. We got all the gear off, so that we got the gear off land and kind of just batten down the straps on the oyster farms. Now that a lot of us have been doing this for a little while, we’re getting a lot better at being prepared for storms, and so there was very minimal damage out here in the bay,” Greg said.
Greg said the goal is to build the farm as stormproof as possible through proper construction, anchoring, and day-to-day maintenance.
“We kind of just try to build the farms to be stormproof or as stormproof as they can be, so just building the farm correctly and anchoring it correctly, and then just kind of the regular day-to-day maintenance. We just assume that eventually a storm is going to come through, and so we kind of just try to farm every day like a hurricane could come because in the past all the ones that have done the most damage have kind of snuck up on us,” Greg said.
Chad Minter with S&M Oyster Co. uses a more traditional oyster bag approach but has developed a technique to keep his bags from floating away during a storm.
“We’ll cut off one of their floats, the float that’s closest to the line, and we’ll also take a bungee and bungee one of the clips to the line. So that way, if it unclips, there’s a bungee cord that tightens down on it and won’t let it float away, and then having the one float on it also flips them from being flat in the water to being vertical in the water. So ideally, they’ll be able to cut through, and there won’t be so much surface tension across the bag,” Minter said.
Greg said he is grateful for the minimal damage from Isaias. Both Greg and Minter said they will continue working hard to have minimal to no damage in future storms.
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