The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) developed the Louisiana Oyster Management and Rehabilitation Strategic Plan at the request of the state legislature and the Governor’s Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration (CPRA). The fourth initiative (of 12) within the plan is Expansion of Alternative Oyster Aquaculture (AOC). In Louisiana with its historical and highly productive traditional wild-harvest oyster fishery, hatchery-spawned cage-cultured oyster farming is known as AOC. AOC is not a replacement for the traditional fishery, but a supplement for those fishers who have an interest in developing this “new” state fishery.
CPRA and LDWF awarded Louisiana Sea Grant (LSG) a $3M, three-year grant, to help enhance existing AOC farmers within the state and to expand the fishery. Specifically, LSG addressed the program’s implementation through $1.8M of competitive grant awards to Louisiana fishers and companies to enhance and develop: (1) aquaculture parks with multiple farms located within each ($100K each), (2) seed nursery farms ($15K each), (3) grow-out farms for market oysters ($45K each), and (4) private in-state hatcheries ($225K each); see Figure 1. To facilitate this effort, LSG has developed workshops, instructional materials, and other forms of outreach to support the grant awardees and other individuals interested in AOC.
We are at the end of our second (2nd) year of the three-year program. We discuss how grant awardees were selected through an competitive process that combines environmental metric scoring with interviews; discuss how the AOC grant program was accepted by the traditional Louisiana oyster industry; discuss state-focused AOC legal and regulatory hurdles; discuss the challenges to lessen bureaucratic grant awards implementation by contracting with the Iberia Development Foundation (IDF); and, the challenges to adequately educate new farmers about best management practices, preparing for hurricanes, and challenges associated with the ever-present need for an adequate and timely supply of seed oysters. There is the possibility of additional funding beyond the three years, and we also discuss options for the next phase moving forward if those funds do become available.