It is going to take a couple of months before we know how many oysters we have got left.” Re-stocking concerns “Some estuaries have been hit really hard and some south of Sydney are closed at the moment due to the rainfall, but they won’t have the losses that we will have up north. But I can’t just leave the farm and get another job because there is work out there that I have to do to so that in two-and-a-half years I can have another crop coming through,” Mr Graham told The Muster. “There’s a big chance that many people will leave the industry because they won’t be able to recover. He holds grave concerns for the outlook for many in the industry due to the length of time it takes to grow oysters (on average, three-and-a-half years) and the costs associated with building new infrastructure. The murky water at Todd Graham’s oyster farm on the Macleay River near Kempsey is a disaster for his oyster crop
NSW Farmers Oyster Committee Chair, Todd Graham, farms oysters on the Macleay River on the Mid North Coast near Kempsey, says early investigations show he has lost about 50 per cent of his oysters. The recent deluge of over 400mm in one day in some parts was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Oysters need diluted seawater to thrive, but the 4.5 metres that has fallen over parts of the NSW coast since December 2020 has severely tipped the balance in the wrong way. The road to recovery is going to be long and hard for the oyster industry, which has suffered multiple challenges in recent times with the pandemic, bushfires, a flood in December and now this. I reckon I have probably lost a million oysters of different ages.” David Tunstead – an oyster farmer on the Macleay River at Port Macquarie The road to recovery I had 15,000 floating baskets and I reckon now I only have about half of that left and half of the oysters in those baskets have died. “I’m a fifth generation oyster farmer and have never seen anything like this.
Mr Tunstead said the damage from this flood is the worst he has experienced, adding that the 2013 flood was one metre lower than what this one reached. Getting it done: David Tunstead and other oyster farmers in the Port Macquarie area made sure hay was delivered to cut-off farmers in the Telegraph Point area. Causes of oyster spat mortality, conditions of oyster setting beds, and recommendations for oyster bed management Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item.
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