Połów ostryg - Redux

Mesh bags filled with oysters are seen in an intertidal section of Oyster farmer Matt Loo's Round Island Shellfish oyster farm in Nasketucket Bay in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on Thu., May 20, 2021. Loo has been farming his one-person, three-acre operation since 2012, and estimates he spends five hours at his farm four days a week. He works at a larger oyster operation on Cape Cod on other days. During the coronavirus pandemic starting in 2020, Loo says his sales were off by 30 to 40 percent. "It went from 'Oh wow, this is gonna be a great year to restaurants closed. Nobody's buying anything," he says. The oysters harvested are what Loo calls "less than desirable." Due to the drop in demand during the pandemic, Loo had to crowd cages, which led to misshapen oysters or poor shell development, which makes them unsuitable for commercial sale. Loo ordinarily sells his oysters to commercial wholesalers, but the oysters harvested on this day have instead been purchased for use in the Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration program partnership between The Nature Conservancy, Pew Charitable Trusts, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. These oysters, approximately 12,000 from this farm on this day, and another 37,000 oysters from the same farm late last year, were relocated to the Little Bay in Fairhaven, Mass., as part of a 1 acre pilot program to restore lost oyster reefs and increase filtration of the water.