Tool Box
Issue No. 11 - June/July 2003
Shell Game
Mar-Shell Aquaculture
As Coffin Bay oysters make a name for themselves around the country—soon, around the world—it’s hard to imagine that one of the prime growers of this tidewater crop used to be a shearer, then a cereal farmer. But it makes sense.
“The way I look at oyster farming, you need two things,” says Lester Marshall, of Mar-Shell Oysters. “It’s like running a racehorse in the Melbourne Cup: you need a good horse and you need a good trainer.
“You need good quality oysters, and the skills you pick up as a farmer on land are very similar to those you need for growing oysters in water. You know what to look for if they are not growing, as a farmer you can work that out quickly.
“People who are not farmers have no idea what is going on and they have a lot bigger learning curve.”
Lester has been in oysters for 10 years now. Mar-Shell began with a toe in the water—4ha of leased shallows where the first ‘step’ racks were installed and experimentation with varying depth began.
“The risk was still minimal at that stage,” he says. “After two or three years when we found we could grow oysters we decided to invest more money and it has been snowballing since then.”
Five years ago a big investment and full-time commitment became necessary. Lester did his homework, investigating the NSW, Queensland and Tasmanian oyster fisheries and travelling to do it first-hand.
“We got a lot of good information from growers over there and we took their advice,” Lester says. “We could grow oysters, but we had no real idea of what an oyster farm could produce. At the time the investment seemed huge: we needed a boat, more spat, and oyster spat can take from 18 months to two years to grow to marketable size.”
Oysters yield about one dozen to the kilo and Mar-Shell was harvesting about 75 tonnes in 1999. Production doubled in 2000 and again in 2001 to about 300 tonnes. The farm grew from a 4-hectare leased area t...
