SavingESTER Pt1: The Pearl of Crowdfunder Projects

Crowdfunder Autumn Stretch Target

For every £4 donated we can purchase a kilo of juvenile native oysters and store them in an area surrounded by the unique Fal Fishery, this will help ethical hand sail and oar oyster gatherers to protect stocks for future generations, whilst earning enough to live on. £3 will go to the gatherer and £1 will go towards the cost of storing them at the Fal Fishery Cooperative CIC Aquaculture Site...

You can read all about our plans and initial hatchery trials in previous updates, but having successfully raised the initial funding needed for the hatchery in the Spring AND successfully secured funds in the Summer to set up the Aquaculture Research Site, we are now looking to raise funds in the Autumn for another element of our plans... 

As ethical sailboat oyster gatherers we have no problem with harvesting and enjoying mature native PDO Fal Oysters, but only when we know they have successfully reproduced many more than are harvested. Our problem is the ‘Regulators’ minimum landing size (67mm longest dimension) is far too small and therefore they probably haven’t left any ‘recruits’ when harvested at that size...

Overfishing, pollution and disease have wiped out 85-95% of the worlds native oysters, so as custodians of a unique wild population we need a plan (in addition to the hatchery)...

However, when we return juvenile oysters to the fishery that we think are too young to have left any recruits and too small for market, we are left with an extremely low yield. In addition we know other boats will simply harvest these either for their own private lays up the creeks or to sell to other fisheries so they then grow them on to be marketable, but they are then rebranded... 

With the Aquaculture Research Site we can now store, grow, study and quantify many research questions, including the number of recruits left behind. Simply by storing at a more beneficial biomass, in an area surrounded by the Fal Fishery, we can exponentially increase the wild stocks before they are overfished... 

Cornwall Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority have suggested that “by storing just 2 tonnes that 6,000,000 recruits could be created in three years”... 

We have capacity for many many tonnes, however we are conscious of stocking densities and disease, so looking to think big but start small!

Oysters are a well known as keystone species and ‘ecosystem engineers’ and alive they are great at ‘carbon sequestration*’ and might help the fight against ‘ocean acidification’ - so it’s a win (for the indigenous native oyster) win (for the Fal Fishery marine habitat) win (for the Cornwall Carbon Neutral campaign) and a win (for the ethical oyster gatherers who are currently out numbered by the not so ethical!)

EVERY PENNY RAISED via this stretch target will go towards the cost of purchasing, storing and studying wild native oysters, so we can protect some of the worlds last 5-15% native oyster population!

*Carbon sequestration describes long-term storage of carbon dioxide or other forms of carbon to either mitigate or defer global warming and avoid dangerous climate change. It has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric and marine accumulation of greenhouse gases, which are released by burning fossil fuels.