SAVANNAH — The best oyster shucking advice is “take your time.” Many a hand has been bloodied and patience exhausted by rushing the exercise.

As for harvesting oysters in Georgia in the hot summer months, the guidance is the opposite: Hurry up.

State regulators have proposed rules that would allow the operators of Georgia’s two existing floating oyster farms to harvest their crop year-round for the first time. Those growers would face strict guidelines during what was previously a closed season — when coastal waters warm to 81 degree and above, usually from early June to late September.

Hot temperatures can speed the spread of vibrio bacteria when oysters are not submerged in water. Vibrio lives on oysters in much the same way salmonella does chicken and can cause illness and death if oysters are consumed raw. The proposed rules would require farmers to refrigerate their oysters within as few as two hours after harvest and before 10 a.m. in the hottest weather.

“The success of these fisheries hinges on public health, above and beyond all other considerations, including economic,” said Dominic Guadagnoli, the program manager for shellfish and water quality at the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Coastal Resources Division. “The growers would like the rules to be different but we have to balance what they want with the price the public could pay if we get it wrong.”

Laura Salomon holds a handful of oysters harvested at the Tybee Oyster farm in the Bull River on Wednesday, October 23, 2024.
(Miguel Martinez / AJC)

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

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Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Both farmers, the Tybee Oyster Co. and the Savannah Oyster Co., say they intend to harvest this summer if the proposed rules are adopted. Their floating cages are in the Bull River within sight of the Atlantic Ocean east of Savannah.

Summer harvesting from farm cages on riverbeds or from wild oyster beds would remain prohibited under the rule change. Georgia’s tidal cycle, which changes eight feet a day, means those oysters are out of the water for several hours daily. Float-farm caged oysters are always submerged in floating plastic baskets clipped to heavy ropes anchored to the riverbed.

A public comment period on the draft regulation is open through March 28, and regulators will review and issue a decision at an April 22 meeting.

The two-hour window in the hottest months is what makes growers sweat the most. Georgia’s three float-farming areas, known as mariculture zones, are all 20-minute boat rides from the nearest marinas or commercial dock facilities. The two-hour clock begins when the first oyster comes out of the water and ends when the last mollusk is placed in a mechanical refrigerator at a processing facility — iced coolers or refrigerated trucks or trailers that could be parked at the docks do not count.

The Georgia Shellfish Growers Association, which includes the existing farmers as well as would-be operators who hold leases to farm in waters near Savannah, Sapelo Island and Brunswick, sent a letter Feb. 12 in support of the rule change. However, the organization also requested the DNR review and consider revising the regulations again in October after the summer harvest season end.

The association points to the less-restrictive rules used in Georgia’s neighboring state of South Carolina. Oyster farming launched there in 2009, with the first harvest coming five years later — nine years before Tybee Oyster Co. brought in Georgia’s first float-farm harvest. South Carolina implemented summer rules in 2017 to allow operators to harvest between dawn and 10 a.m. and do allow for mechanical refrigeration.

Sunrise on the coast comes as early as 6:18 a.m. during the summer months.

Georgia regulators did reference South Carolina’s guidelines in developing the proposed new rules but also conducted their own research using local data. The University of Georgia Marine Extension tested oysters for Vibrio bacteria in a 2022 study.

Those results, which showed the presence of Vibrio in oysters grown near Sapelo Island, contributed to the regulators’ cautious approach to loosening the restrictions now that oysters are being farmed in floating cages.

“As far as what the neighboring state is doing, the conditions are not identical: We are farther south, farther inland, and our estuaries are different,” the DNR’s Guadagnoli said. “To pick up off the shelf what they do and use in our state is not the best or only avenue, not without the science to back it.”

The restrictions are holding back Georgia’s oyster farming industry, said Growers Association President Charlie Phillips. He’s a longtime clam farmer in the waters near Sapelo Island, growing his crop in bags placed on the river bottom. He holds an oyster farming lease and has purchased some floating gear but has yet to install it on the water.

“I’m in no hurry to spend a bunch of money on gear under these rules,” Phillips said. “When the state first legalized farming (in 2019), the DNR phones were ringing off the hook with people wanting a lease. Now, nobody wants to get into this. The rules have been drawn out for so long and are so restrictive, nobody wants to get into it.

“The question is: Do we want an industry or not?”

Farmed Georgia oysters are typically served raw on the half shell and are sold at several Savannah-area restaurants, including Fleeting at the Thompson hotel. (Adriana Iris Boatwright/For the AJC)

Credit: Adriana Iris Boatwright

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Credit: Adriana Iris Boatwright

Until a century ago, oystering was among Georgia’s largest industries. In the early 1900s, when canned oysters were a staple of Americans’ diets, the state’s annual oyster crop topped 8 million pounds a year. Oystermen harvested from wild oyster beds and commercial shucking houses and canneries dotted the state’s shoreline.

But consumer tastes changed, and by the 1960s, oystering was a dormant business. Demand has returned in recent decades, however, and oyster farming became popular in several states along the East Coast and Gulf Coast. Places such as Louisiana, Virginia and Maryland, where tide changes are measured in inches and cages can be placed in sea, bay and river beds and remain submerged, became major growing locales.

Georgia resisted legalizing oyster farming out of concerns for public health until the advent of float farming a decade ago. The Georgia General Assembly passed an oyster farming law in 2019, and regulators have since issued nine float farm leases in three mariculture zones, including one formally established earlier this year in Jointer Creek west of Jekyll Island. Tybee Oyster Co. and Savannah Oyster Co., which harvested its first oysters last fall, are the only lessees currently growing crops.

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