Location and Context

Aquaculture is certainly not all bad.  Neither is it all good.  Like most things, it depends on a myriad of facts. One of the most important facts is location.   TPCI recently posted a link to an article on the Nature Conservancy website about oyster aquaculture in a New England.

Antigonish Harbour, especially the shallow sites TPCI has selected to place 23,000 oyster floats, are not good locations for the environment, those who use and enjoy the harbour….and they may not even be very good for growing oysters.

The Nature Conservancy article is about buying surplus (unmarketable) oysters to build oyster reefs in failing estuaries. We do not see the parallel between this admirable project and TPCI’s proposal to appropriate a community resource to add 9 million oysters to our harbour, which is healthy and already has abundant and diverse aquatic species. Like location, context is important.

We agree with the Nature Conservancy, location is important when it comes to aquaculture and the environment. We also agree that oysters are not bad and are happy that we already have countless natural/wild oysters in our harbour, oysters which have been sustainably harvested by licensed oyster gatherers for decades and by First Nations long before then.