She Sells Sea Shells on the Sea Shore – The Great SCAMP Oyster Hunt!
The native oyster, Ostrea edulis, was once incredibly common around our shores. It was fished for extensively and was very much a food for the masses, super abundant, incredibly cheap, easy to transport fresh and, of course, nutritious and tasty! Now it’s very rare, Scotland’s only sustainable fishery is in Loch Ryan. The rest have been lost, mainly due to overfishing and habitat destruction. We believe however that there may still be some small colonies on the West Rhins and across the Solway. With the SCAMP Oyster hunt we would like the public to help us locate them.
Oyster shells will wash up along our beaches, being pushed onto the shore by tides and storms and we would like to know where they are being found. We would like to know the condition of the shells, are they largely intact, or are they heavily eroded, we would also like to know how many, roughly, you are finding. This simple form will allow you to submit data to us, it would be great, if over the summer months, people could send us their findings.
From this information SCAMP can map some search areas and see if we can find some of our last oyster colonies, assess their health and even work out some strategies and help the population to recover.
Also, we do have a few colonies of the Pacific Oyster, Magallana gigas, that have escaped from farms. These have the potential to be invasive, any further information about their locations would be great!
If you find any Oysters around the Rhins and Solway, please fill in the form by clicking here
