By: Kate Zaffarese, Follow South Jersey Community Journalist
CAPE MAY, NJ — The Haskin Shellfish Research Lab (HSRL) of Rutgers University is one of the oldest shellfish research laboratories in the world and has done extensive work to help maintain and grow shellfish populations on the east coast. As shellfish become a more prevalent food source, their work is critical to the survival of the species they research.
The group works to improve shellfish resistance to disease, parasites, and climate change. Their goal is to research aquaculture and work with shellfish industries to create sustainable shellfisheries for farmers around the world. They have revolutionized oyster breeding by selectively breeding triploid oysters, oysters with three sets of chromosomes, which grow faster and have a higher quantity and quality of meat for market.
Shellfish research at Rutgers first began in 1888 by Julius Nelson, and Harold Haskin assumed leadership of the oyster laboratory in 1955. He began their work of selectively breeding oysters, which has remained a focus of the group ever since. With his help, the program expanded to house four labs, each focusing on a different aspect of shellfish research. The Cape Shore Laboratory, Bivalve Laboratory, New Jersey Aquaculture Innovation Center, and the Fisheries Cooperative Center all work to improve the livelihood of shellfish and the industry.
The Cape Shore Laboratory focuses on selectively breeding oysters to produce fast-growing and disease resistant triploid oysters for market. They take part in the spawning process from larvae to adulthood, carefully monitoring their growth.
Sam Ratcliff, the Cape Shore operations manager, works at the lab with Dr. Ximing Guo, director of the breeding program, to improve oyster harvest for farmers across the east coast. He was originally a research technician at the lab as a Rutgers student before returning as operations manager. The Cape Shore Lab is the central hub for HSRL’s oyster breeding program.
“The research that’s done at the Cape Shore Laboratory helps the commercial industry and commercial farmers with providing the highest quality oyster seed or shellfish seed so that those oysters can grow and then the farmers can bring them to market to benefit their operations,” Ratcliff said.
Juvenile oysters, known as “seed,” are distributed to shellfish farmers in the area to improve their oyster stock for the season. Triploid oysters are produced by breeding tetraploid oysters with diploid oysters. Triploid seeds grow faster, maturing to full size in one year or less compared to diploid oysters, which can take two years or more to mature. Additionally, triploid oysters are sterile, allowing them to maintain their meat quality during the summer since the soft body mass of the oysters would typically be used to produce spawn. Because of this, these oysters are more resistant to life-threatening diseases and parasites due to their stronger shells.
This has had a tremendous effect on the strength of these oysters, and the shellfish farmers the Cape Shore Lab distributes to have reported a noticeable difference in their stock after introducing triploid seed.
“They’re able to get seed to market in a much quicker time than diploid oysters. These have revolutionized the oyster agriculture industry as a whole…I think the work that we’re doing is really impactful,” Ratcliff said.
Climate change has also affected oyster populations, with higher temperatures increasing risk of parasitic infection and reducing the quality of their meat. Increased temperatures also make oysters more susceptible to bacteria and viruses. Colder temperatures can also have an adverse effect on farmers’ stock by moving their oyster racks.
“The winter that we just had here, the ice could just take entire racks of oysters and just move it entirely. So a lot of people either lose product because of the ice itself,” Ratcliff said. “The same thing happens during the summertime, they get really challenged by these extreme hot days here at Cape Shore, the tide will change about six to eight feet. These oysters and racks are exposed to 100 plus degree days during the summertime, so you have these really increased events of extremes.”
Rising ocean temperatures pose a threat to shellfish by increasing their chance of catching diseases and parasites. Ocean acidification due to climate change has made oyster shells thinner, making it more difficult for larvae to form shells, and making adult oysters’ shells thinner and more brittle.
In the northeast United States, water temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average, making HSRL’s work even more important to sustain oysters in the area. Preserving shellfish populations is vital to the survival of the species and the shellfish industry. HSRL works to improve shellfish farmers’ harvests, as well as the general survivability of shellfish species.
“The research that’s done at the Haskin Laboratory helps the commercial industry and commercial farmers with providing the highest quality seed so that those oysters can grow and then the farmers can bring them to market to benefit their operations…The research that we do here is trying to move everything forward from an academia point of view, but also the industry as well,” Ratcliff said.
One deadly parasite, MSX, has been a focus of the lab since its inception. Haplosporidium nelsoni, better known as MSX, can spread rapidly and causes mortality in 90% of the oysters that catch it. Since 1960, nearly half of all oyster deaths have been caused by MSX, a devastating loss to the population. Higher water temperatures cause MSX to spread more easily to oysters that are not resistant to the disease.
“[MSX] caused a tremendous amount of mortality with the oysters here and the farmers that were growing oysters. What Dr. Haskin saw was that when they were exposed to this parasite, as well as different temperature fluctuations, there were still adults that survived. So he thought that since these adults survived, they have some type of resistance or resilience to this type of parasite. He used the adult oysters from this to breed the next generation and build up that resistance through several generations,” Ratcliff said.
Haskin’s work was the first step in commercializing triploid oysters, which now make up 30-60% of the oysters farmed in most major countries. Their work is crucial to the survival of shellfish facing threats of parasites and climate change, as well as buoying the shellfish industry on the east coast.
By 2050, shellfish are expected to play a larger role in people’s diets as other kinds of food become scarcer. Shellfish populations, on the other hand, have grown over the past decade, which may result in people beginning to rely more heavily on shellfish in their diet.
The farmers the group works with will benefit from having stronger oysters at their disposal which sustain their population despite the growing threat of climate change and ocean acidification. HSRL’s work has been instrumental in the shellfish industry, and will benefit the industry as they continue to innovate shellfish breeding.
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