The Pacific oyster can also be found on the shells of other animals. They prefer to attach to hard or rocky surfaces in shallow or sheltered waters up to 40 m deep, but have been known to attach to muddy or sandy areas when the preferred habitat is scarce. gigas is an estuarine species, but can also be found in intertidal and subtidal zones. Mature specimens can vary from 80 to 400 mm long. Shell colour is variable, usually pale white or off-white. The two valves of the shell are slightly different in size and shape, the right valve being moderately concave. Its large, rounded, radial folds are often extremely rough and sharp. gigas varies widely with the environment where it is attached. It was previously placed in the genus Crassostrea from the Latin crass meaning "thick", ostrea meaning "oyster", and Crassostrea gigas is considered by part of the scientific community to be the proper denomination as an accepted alternative in WoRMS, Description The genus Magallana is named for the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and its specific epithet gígās is from the Greek for "giant". It has become an introduced species in North America, Australia, Europe, and New Zealand. The Pacific oyster, Japanese oyster, or Miyagi oyster ( Magallana gigas ), is an oyster native to the Pacific coast of Asia. We are always adding new restaurants to our list.Video of an adult exemplar as it responds to stimulation by light Looking for our oysters? Some can be found here. So, after all the love and care and tending to we gave our seed, we now simply shovel them over the side of our work barge where they will spend another 2 years on the seafloor growing into delicious Basket Island Oysters. When they reach about 2” (generally about 15 months after we receive them as 1-mm seed) it’s time to spread them out on the mud flats of our lease area. Over the course of the summer we haul and clean the oysters as they continue to grow. Around November, we say good-night to the oyster seed as we leave them, untouched, over winter where their metabolism slows way down as the water temperatures around them plummets.Īfter the oysters get their spring-cleaning, we set them back down to grow as the water gets warmer. After the bags are placed into cages and deployed on the farm we haul the cages throughout fall to ensure they remain clean and water is capable of flowing freely over the oysters. Each tray holds approximately 500 market-sized oysters so that each cage can be used to grow approximately 1,000 oysters. These cages are constructed of rubber coated 12-guage wire, similar to that used to construct lobster traps. The bagged oysters are now ready to be moved out to the farm! At this point the oyster bags are placed into our oyster ‘grow out’ cages. Oysters retained on the screen go into the appropriate sized bags and those that pass through the mesh are returned to the upweller. So, oysters must be sieved every couple days through the appropriate sized mesh screen. Because oysters grow at different rates, some of the oysters will be ready to come out of the upweller much sooner than other slower growing individuals. At this time, oysters are removed from the upweller and placed into plastic mesh bags. Assuming average summer temperatures, oysters should reach 0.5″ in about 6-8 weeks in the upweller. The oyster seed in the upweller have plenty of food, owing to the increased water flow, so that at this point growth is a function of temperature. The upweller is an essential piece of oyster farming equipment that pumps seawater over the oysters at a rate that ensures an abundant amount of phytoplankton (i.e., food) is available. In order to facilitate growth, we must place our newly arrived seed in an upweller. The seed arrive at roughly 1 millimeter so that the 1 million we buy each spring is not much more than a handful. The seed generally arrive in late spring, once the water temperature is warm enough to sustain growth. Each spring we purchase ‘seed’ oysters from our friend Bill Mook at Mook Sea Farms, a shellfish hatchery in Walpole, Maine.
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