{"id":1352,"date":"2012-09-01T10:34:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-01T14:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/?page_id=1352"},"modified":"2024-09-18T13:48:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T17:48:32","slug":"the-multitalented-oyster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/coastwatch\/the-multitalented-oyster\/","title":{"rendered":"The Multitalented Oyster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n
“Imagine what it’d do if it had a brain.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jack Spruill ponders oyster spat’s propensity to settle on the unlit side of surfaces. When the mature shellfish detects a shadow passing, it rapidly closes up. But the oyster does not have a true brain \u2014 just one or two aggregates of nerve cells located near the hinge region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spruill, vice president of PenderWatch and Conservancy, experiments with growing oysters on all kinds of surfaces \u2014 not for eating, but for the environmental services they provide, such as water filtration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He revels in describing “spat by the millions, just looking for a place to settle.” He makes necklace-like strings of old oyster shells and suspends them in the water below his dock. Before long, a sphere of oysters has formed around the recycled shells. Each ball supports dozens of living oysters and other wildlife, such as tiny crabs and grass shrimp that find homes in the crevices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He and other volunteers with PenderWatch also are active in creating living reefs along shorelines using recycled oyster shells. The living reefs are placed just offshore of marshes where they provide spawning and nursery area for blue crab, shrimp and clams. Finfish use oyster reefs as refuge and nursery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While fish flourishing around an oyster reef is an obvious benefit to ecosystems, a more subtle way that oyster reefs improve habitat is through nitrogen recycling, or converting nitrogen waste products into atmospheric nitrogen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a North Carolina Sea Grant study, Michael Piehler and graduate student Ashley Smyth at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that unseen organisms also flourish around oyster reefs. These microbes \u2014 that live in and on the sediment associated with the shellfish \u2014 are active in recycling nitrogen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n