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FSU receives grant to restore Apalachicola Bay's struggling oyster industry
Florida State University has received $8 million to study how to revive the Apalachicola Bay.
The 10-year project, dubbed the Apalachicola Bay Systems Initiative, will be housed at FSU’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory and will work to rehabilitate the community’s oyster industry.
Sandra Brooke, the lab’s scientific director, said that research will be an important first step to bringing life back to the crippled industry.
“When the oysters go away, the ecosystem changes,” said Brooke. “So, we first need to understand what is going on in the bay, and then we can move forward with developing a restoration plan.”
Funding for the project will come from a grant from Triumph Gulf Coast.
Triumph is a nonprofit corporation created by the Florida Legislature to oversee the disbursement of $2 billion received by the state from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement.
FSU is kicking in an additional $1.5 million of its own money for the research.
Backers of the proposal included the National Wildlife Federation and the Apalachicola Bay Oyster Management group, among others.
The funding was not without opposition. In a December letter, the Florida Shellfish Aquaculture Association spelled out concerns over whether FSU’s plan would put the university in competition with private businesses.
“The FSU proposal indicates that the funding would be used to produce oyster spat or seed for aquaculture and restoration,” wrote Heath Davis, the association’s chair. “Private Florida businesses are currently producing oyster spat for those same purposes, and FSU would be directly competing with these private businesses by the terms of its proposal.”
Davis also questioned whether Triumph’s money, which is intended for economic and job growth, should go to a college or university.
FSU apparently quelled the apprehensions and assured opponents the hatchery would be exclusively for research.
The Apalachicola Bay and the surrounding Franklin County have endured tremendous economic hardships in recent years.
For years, the bay produced nearly the entire supply of Florida’s oysters. As a result, the community faced a booming economy and oyster farming became a family business passed down through generations.
At its peak in 2012, Franklin County area businesses collected and sold over 3 million pounds of oysters, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission records. However, a series of man-made and natural disasters have shaken the region. In 2013, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association declared the region in a fishery disaster.
About 4 million barrels of oil from the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the worst oceanic oil spill in history, gushed into the Gulf of Mexico and seeped into the Apalachicola Bay.
The oil killed sea life along its path of destruction, including much of the bay’s oysters.
Additionally, overuse of water from the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system has damaged the region's seafood industry.
A legal battle has been ongoing since 1990 between Florida and Georgia, ultimately reaching the U.S. Supreme Court last year. The case is now being heard by a New Mexico federal appellate judge, after the Supreme Court narrowly overturned a previous ruling that said Florida failed to show proof of damage.
Georgia argues Florida officials allowed overfishing in the bay, and the suit could cost harm to that state’s economy.
Florida contends that southwest Georgia farmers are using an excessive amount of the river’s water upstream, leaving little for the Apalachicola Bay region. The low water level increases the salinity of the bay, making it inhabitable for oysters and other marine life.
“Ultimately, this is not a matter of simply dollar and cents, but of protecting and preserving irreplaceable natural resources,” read Florida’s brief. “In their candid moments, Georgia’s own officials have recognized all this. They understand the problem’s source (agricultural withdrawals), its magnitude, and that it is solvable with exactly the type of common-sense steps Florida has suggested – with limited impact on Georgia’s economy and farmers. Yet Georgia has failed to act because … it lacks the political incentive (or will) to do so.”
The already struggling and economically drained region was further hampered when Category 4 Hurricane Michael battered the coastal community.
Now, the rural area, once a thriving tourist destination, is struggling to survive.
Smokey Parrish, a Franklin County commissioner, told the Triumph Board the FSU initiative is one of the region’s last hopes.
“All the eight counties here all want oysters from Apalachicola Bay,” said Parrish. “They don’t want Louisiana oysters or Texas oysters. Right now, we’re in a bad way because of the low river flows and creating the right salinity balance in the Apalachicola Bay to produce these oysters for the people."
FSU President John Thrasher said he hopes the research will give the region a way forward.
“This is a big project for a county that’s struggling economically,” Thrasher told Triumph board members. “And if it’s something we can pull off, it will advantage folks in that area for a long time.”
