Shelf fish reefs create fish habitats, food for fish, filter water, this is environment improvement and thus we can bring a whole bunch of stake holders into this besides anglers.
Native Ouster reefs have been degraded all over the world,
there has been a loss of 90-100% over the last 100 years, Oysters go back to
long way in PPB, some work done at looking sediment cores, when the bay was inundated
in its geological history 6000 years ago, and the Oyster was part of the bays
from the very start.
A big impact on these Oyster populations happened when the
first settlers arrived, and started fishing the bay and started dredging for
Oysters particularly in Corio Bay. When you remove the Oyster you also remove
the shell and the shell is the substrate for the next generation of Oysters to
settle on. The mussel beds that where off Carrum bite prior to the Scallop
dredging saw number of around 80-100 per meter square and are now as low as
5-20 per meter square.
Oysters a key stone species a mature Oyster can filter almost
200 litres of water a day, 1 million Oysters can filter almost 200 million litres
of water a day removing silt sediment and nitrogen as well as creating natural
reefs.
This is what they have done in
Chesapeake Bay on the east coast of America a bay that is 6 times the size of
PPB.
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