With restaurants closing due to the COVID pandemic, oyster growers have lost their primary customers and many are left holding the bag on this year’s oyster harvest. If you are interested in becoming a volunteer oyster gardener, contact Shannon Batte at or (832) 536-2265.It’s no secret that we’ve got a lot of oysters on Cape Cod. “How many things can you do today that can get a community to get together and agree on one thing?” Wilde asked. They also started a Facebook group called the Tiki Island Spat Lovers to share updates on their oysters and other marine life found in their gardens. The Wildes often host “Tiki happy hours” while cleaning their gardens in addition to “spat interventions” to assist new program volunteers. Oyster gardening has also brought the residents in the village together. “…Oysters are an ecosystem, and they also stop erosion, and they play a major part in getting back a healthy Bay and healthy Gulf. “Each week it’s always an adventure because you never know what will come up,” she said.Īside from the personal enjoyment volunteers get from their gardens, there is a greater purpose to their work. On one shell alone, Wilde counted 32 baby oysters. Last year was highly productive for the gardeners. And years with a lot of rainfall have yielded fewer oysters because of the increased freshwater flowing into the Bay. The recycled shells in wire cages tend to produce more oysters than those in the mesh bags.

The Wildes, who live bayside, recruit more spat than the Whites do at their canal-side home. “It’s one thing to talk about something, but you can see after four weeks we have this many oysters already,” Wilde said.Īfter oyster gardening for five years, the volunteers on Tiki Island have observed some interesting trends. “This for me, in retirement, has been like, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know you could do this.’” “At any age you can always learn something,” White said. “It’s fun to clean them off and see how big or small the spat is,” Chase said.Īnd it’s not just White’s grandkids who get excited by what they find. White’s grandchildren Chase, 13, and twins Kyle and Jake, 12, who live in Pearland, assist with cleaning the gardens when they visit their grandparents. “You start with a blank slate then several weeks later, you’re growing stuff,” White said. The goal of the program is to attract spat on the recycled shell substrate from nearby spawning oysters and then to transplant them onto Galveston Bay Foundation’s restored reefs around the Bay. The oyster gardens are then left out in the sun for an hour to an hour and a half before being returned to the water to reduce algae growth. Once a week, the volunteers pull their gardens ashore, rinse off any mud and debris, and shake out any “critters,” such as crabs and fish, that may have found their way inside the cages or bags. The Galveston Bay Foundation supplies them with wire cages, mesh bags, and/or stringers filled with cured recycled oyster shells collected from restaurants that are suspended at least a foot deep in the water. Volunteers simply need to have access to the Bay from a pier or dock. The requirements for being a volunteer oyster gardener are about as straightforward as the process for tending to them. Now the program has blossomed to include approximately 45 island families. “We said, ‘If they do it over there, we can definitely do it here,’” she explained.įour families, the Wildes, Whites, Longs and Wrights, started oyster gardening on Tiki Island five years ago. Wilde and her husband Alan heard about the program in Bayou Vista and wanted to bring it to Tiki Island. “We moved down here, and it sounded like fun. “I actually did it just to meet people,” White said. Shortly thereafter she was approached by her neighbor Maureen Wilde about participating in a new program – growing baby oysters from the dock at her home located on one of the island’s canals. White, a retired math and science teacher, and her husband Don permanently relocated to Tiki Island six years ago. “Spat is where it’s at,” exclaimed Patty White, an island resident and a volunteer with Galveston Bay Foundation’s Oyster Gardening Program. There is a popular saying around the village of Tiki Island.

Grant for oyster spat