Reeling from crisis, P.E.I.’s oyster industry hopes disease-resistant seed from U.S. helps

A grower, processor and distributor in Prince Edward Island is preparing to import oyster seed from the United States that could be resistant to disease.

Atlantic Aqua Farms in Borden-Carleton has started taking orders for 50 million oyster seed developed by Rutgers University in New Jersey. It’s hoped that the seed will be resistant to MSX and dermo, the two diseases that have sent the province’s oyster industry into crisis.

Meredith White, director of hatchery operations with Atlantic Aqua Farms, told CBC News there has already been talks with Island companies and growers, and demand is expected to surpass availability.

“We have the ability to potentially produce somewhat more than 50 million seed, but we cannot necessarily guarantee that that will be available this year,” she said.

“We’re increasing our production capacity to be commercial scale. Up to this point, we’ve only been able to produce seed for our own farm. Starting next year, we should be able to produce seed for sale to other farms, as well.”

Atlantic Aqua Farms will use the seed for its own oyster production, but there has also been interest from other growers.

James Power, general manager of Raspberry Point Oysters in Cavendish, was among those picking out surviving oysters when he spoke with CBC News on Friday. The oysters that survived were far fewer than those that died.

“Since mid-November, we’ve seen millions of oysters that have died,” he said. “We haven’t even realized all of the oysters that we’re going to see mortality on because we haven’t harvested those oysters yet.”

Raspberry Point hopes to buy between five million and 10 million of the imported seed, he said.

Power described the current situation as “heartbreaking” because oysters take several years to grow, and all of that work is now gone. The company’s workers, he said, are also feeling the pressure.

“We’ve assured them that we have a plan to get through this,” Power said. “We’re working on that plan, and we’re trying to make that plan work as fast as possible.”

Power said Raspberry Point is planning to build a hatchery to produce the disease-resistant seed.

Atlantic Aqua Farms is looking into doing the same. It currently has its first generation of seed and each generation takes two to three years before the oysters are large enough to reproduce.

“We are expecting that we would need to select three generations to have MSX and dermo resistance,” White said. “So that’s six to nine years before we are producing seed that could be resistant.”

Still, that gives some hope that there will be a crop available in the future.

“We are oyster farmers in this province. We are looking for solutions that our farm will benefit from and it just happens that the solution of importing seed, it’s more seed than we can plant on our farm,” White said.

“There’s seed available to sell to other farmers.”