The RESO project showcases the first remote setting project of the European flat oyster in The Netherlands. Together with eight partners, from the private sector…
Spat on substrate
The installation of hard substrates with oyster spat is a new and innovative method for oyster restoration. Oyster larvae attach themselves to hard substrates, such as rocks, shells, or bricks. When deploying these substrates at a restoration location, millions of oyster larvae are introduced. These larvae kick-start the formation of a thriving oyster reef, growing out into adult oysters that produce larvae of their own.
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Having much experience in deployment of adult oysters, in 2024, we aimed to further expand and upscale our oyster reef restoration solutions by shifting focus to larvae. To outplace vast numbers of oysters in heavily degraded ecosystems, working with adult oysters becomes too labor expensive and costly. When working with larvae, tens of millions of larvae are reared in a hatchery and deployed at restoration locations, after settlement on hard substrate.
To be able to deploy larvae, we developed mobile settlement basins, where ‘remote setting’ takes place. The method of remote setting refers to settlement of oyster larvae in another location than the hatchery in which they are reared. Millions of larvae can easily be transported to a location thousands of kilometers away from the hatchery. There, they are released in one of our settlement basins that contain seawater and the selected substrate to which the larvae will attach themselves. When larvae are permanently attached to a substrate, they are called ‘spat’. These basins can be placed near any restoration location, to which only the larvae need to be transported. From the mobile settlement basins, the spat on substrate can be easily be deployed in near by restoration areas. Remote setting therefore has great potential for improvement of cost efficiency and scale.