Aquaculture 2025

March 6 - 10, 2025

New Orleans, Louisiana USA

A FARM COLLECTIVE FIELD STUDY OF 4 LINEAGES OF PACIFIC OYSTERS: MIDORI, MIYAGI, TRIPLOID, HYBRID, ACROSS CALIFORNIA COASTAL ESTUARINE ENVIRONMENTS

Gillian Douglas*, Lexi Hollister, Justin Mojonnier, Austin Maguire, Max Rintoul, Gary Fleener, and Kevin Johnson

 

Center for Coastal Marine Sciences

California Polytechnic State University

San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

gmdougla@calpoly.edu

 



As with all sectors of food production, changing environmental conditions pose a significant threat to Pacific oyster cultivation. The combined impacts of ocean warming (OW), acidification and hypoxia (OAH), and Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs), present emerging challenges for Pacific oyster aquaculture Globally. These changing environmental conditions along with persistent disease pressures continue to have large impacts on survivorship and are driving selective breeding programs to minimize impacts to both survivorship and growth rates. These efforts require both on-farm and lab-based evaluations of seed performance across environments and abiotic conditions to both evaluate the quality of seed being produced and reliably select for traits of interest (growth, survivorship, and meat yield). To better understand the biotic and abiotic factors affecting lineage specific survivorship, growth rates, condition index, and shell shape of oysters in estuarine environments we have conducted a multi-estuary farm study comparing commercially produced cohorts of the Midori, Miyagi, hybrid Midori and Miyagi, and triploid Pacific oyster lineages in 3 oyster producing estuaries in California (Humboldt Bay, Tomales Bay, and Morro Bay). We have addressed these goals through a combination of field monitoring and lab-based measurements of condition index, clearance rate, and total antioxidant activity. These findings are providing information to our farmer partners that will contribute to the maximization of sustainable food production by identifying growth and survivorship traits of each lineage.