BALTIMORE LAB HIGH SCHOOL OYSTER GARDENING

OYSTERS PLAY A VITAL ROLE IN KEEPING THE BAY HEALTHY.

What is an oyster garden?

An oyster garden is a large basket filled with baby oysters (spat) attached to old oyster shells. The cage protects the baby oysters from predators and provides a safe place for them to eat (microscopic phytoplankton) and grow until they

are big enough to survive in deeper water.

Where is the Baltimore Lab School oyster garden?

Our oyster gardens are hanging from the Baltimore Yacht Basin pier, owned by Sagamore Development, in the Middle Branch of the Patapsco River. (You can see the pier from the Hanover Street Bridge!)

Where do our baby oysters come from?

Free swimming larvae “hatched” at University of Maryland’s Horn Point Laboratory in Cambridge, Maryland, are released into tanks with oyster shell at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Oyster Restoration Center in Shady Side, Maryland. There the larvae attach themselves to shell and become spat –baby oysters.

How fast do baby oysters grow?

Oysters can grow an inch a year. How fast they grow depends on the salinity (salt), temperature, amount of food and quality of water in which they are living.

Who takes care of the oyster garden?

High School Baltimore Lab Watershed Stewards, trained by Mrs. Child, tend the garden: shaking, rinsing, rattling and rolling the cages once a month to keep them clean and pest free. The gardener protects the baby oysters form DANGER- freezing air, smothering sediment and killer flatworms.

High School Technology students teach younger students at Baltimore Green School to build oyster cages.

What will happen to our oysters when they “grow up”?

The oysters will be transplanted onto a protected reef (Fort Carroll Sanctuary Reef) right here in the Baltimore Harbor.

These oysters will not end up on your dinner plate! One adult oyster filters 50 gallons of water a day.