The re­cent­ly-es­tab­lished Char­lot­teville Oys­ter Grow­ing Project in To­ba­go is ready to reap de­li­cious re­wards. on ma­rine con­ser­va­tion in T&T.

Aljoscha Wothke, CEO of the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville (ER­IC), is spear­head­ing the project. ER­IC fo­cus­es on ma­rine con­ser­va­tion in T&T.

Wothke told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that some 15,000 ba­by oys­ters that were sourced from the US found a home in Char­lot­teville wa­ters.

He de­scribed the town on To­ba­go’s north­east coast as a su­pe­ri­or site to cul­ti­vate oys­ters, which have grown for about six months.

Now they are ready to be har­vest­ed and will go for tri­als.

“The first batch of oys­ters will go to peo­ple to see how they taste. Then we will sup­ply to To­ba­go clients and maybe one or two se­lect­ed Trinidad clients whose restau­rants have de­clared an in­ter­est to try them out,” Wothke said.

En­er­gy gi­ant bpTT was laud­ed for its fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion, which made the project pos­si­ble.

The com­pa­ny con­firmed that the in­vest­ment cost $400,000.

Wothke, a Ger­man na­tion­al who is based be­tween Ger­many and To­ba­go, has done ex­ten­sive work in both Trinidad and To­ba­go since 1992

He not­ed that the oys­ter farm was im­ple­ment­ed with the as­sis­tance of To­ba­go’s fish­er­folk and the De­part­ment of Fish­eries and Ma­rine Re­sources of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

In shar­ing fur­ther de­tails, Wothke said the project was de­signed to test the vi­a­bil­i­ty of oys­ter-based sus­tain­able mar­i­cul­ture in the North-East To­ba­go UN­ESCO Man and the Bios­phere Re­serve. The goal of the project is to es­tab­lish a pro­duc­tive and lu­cra­tive en­ter­prise in the com­ing years.

The UN­ESCO’s web­site not­ed that the North-East To­ba­go re­serve is lo­cat­ed in the South-East Caribbean Sea in T&T.

The re­serve en­com­pass­es 83,488 hectares, in­clud­ing a large ma­rine and ter­res­tri­al area.

In­clud­ed in the re­serve is one of the old­est legal­ly pro­tect­ed trop­i­cal forests, the To­ba­go Main Ridge For­est Re­serve.

Wothke said be­fore the oys­ter project got off the ground, ex­per­tise was sourced from pro­fes­sors from the UK and the US to prop­er­ly as­cer­tain its vi­a­bil­i­ty.

“The project is a sus­tain­able blue eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty project which aims at build­ing cli­mate re­silience for fish­er­men,” he said adding that this is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant as the se­vere im­pact of cli­mate change con­tin­ues to af­fect the fish­ing in­dus­try dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

In ad­di­tion to this, Wothke said is the prob­lem of de­clin­ing fish stock–re­sult­ing in in­creased prices over the last few years–and the fact that the fish are al­so get­ting small­er.

There­fore, Wothke said fish­er­men need to find al­ter­na­tive in­come sources that are not on­ly fi­nan­cial­ly re­ward­ing but are al­so en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able and have good mar­ket val­ue.

“We thought about what fish­er­men could do and To­ba­go is quite weak in mar­i­cul­ture and we came up with the idea of oys­ter farm­ing,” Wothke said on the gen­e­sis of the project. Mar­i­cul­ture is the farm­ing of ma­rine or­gan­isms for food and oth­er prod­ucts such as phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, food ad­di­tives, jew­el­ry (eg, cul­tured pearls), nu­traceu­ti­cals, and cos­met­ics.

The oys­ters are al­so of a par­tic­u­lar species.

They are Cras­sostrea vir­gini­ca (aka East­ern Oys­ter) which were grown in the clear Caribbean Sea off Pi­rates Bay, Char­lot­teville.

On why this par­tic­u­lar type of oys­ter was se­lect­ed, Wothke said it is known for its meaty tex­ture and unique salty flavour; have a rel­a­tive­ly deep, elon­gat­ed, rough, spoon-shaped shell with rose-coloured streaks that is grey-white to grey-brown in hue.

A light-coloured fringe (the gill) and creamy to light-brown flesh can be found in­side.

“These oys­ters are ster­ile and there­fore, they can­not do any harm to the en­vi­ron­ment or run away. We fly in the ba­by oys­ters and let them grow for about six to sev­en months and then we can har­vest them.

“We are al­so try­ing to es­tab­lish a young co­hort of fish­er­men who have an­oth­er source of in­come,” Wothke ex­plained.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he said oys­ter farm­ing is a high­ly sus­tain­able form of mar­i­cul­ture that needs to be de­vel­oped in To­ba­go.

Wothke not­ed that these oys­ters are ide­al as they al­so have no neg­a­tive im­pact on the frag­ile reef ecosys­tems, re­move ni­tro­gen and car­bon, can be in­tro­duced with­out con­sum­ing much fu­el and the shells can be used to cre­ate new ar­ti­fi­cial reefs to in­crease bio­di­ver­si­ty in bays.

The oys­ters will be ready in June and Wothke is hop­ing this will be the first of many batch­es.

How­ev­er, there is al­ready a high de­mand for them even be­fore they are har­vest­ed.

“We told peo­ple to place their re­quest on a reg­is­ter so when the oys­ters are ready we can con­tact them. We got about 40 peo­ple from restau­rants, ho­tels and pri­vate per­sons who want the oys­ters from both T&T but what we have is not enough.

“The de­mand is very high more­so in Trinidad than in To­ba­go but def­i­nite­ly we can­not even sup­ply the de­mand at the mo­ment,” Wothke said.

To meet the re­quest, he said the next step will be to in­crease pro­duc­tion about ten times, which he hopes will be­gin around Ju­ly/Au­gust this year.

“Now we want to go to 100,000 oys­ters. We were will­ing to take the risk. We tried and now we are very hap­py,” Wothke added.

In this re­gard, he hopes fund­ing will be ex­tend­ed for the sec­ond part of the project.

“The first tar­get will ob­vi­ous­ly be the To­ba­go mar­ket. We are very aware that restau­rants and ho­tels need con­sis­ten­cy, qual­i­ty and sup­ply so we tried to re­duce the ship­ping cost and time.

One oys­ter, he said can sell for around $10.

Once fund­ing is se­cured and pro­duc­tion is ramped up for phase two, more fish­er­men will be en­gaged.

“At the mo­ment there are five fish­er­men who are en­gaged in the project and they are trained and we are look­ing to es­tab­lish oys­ter farms for them,” Wothke added.

De­pend­ing on the suc­cess of this ven­ture, he said there is a strong pos­si­bil­i­ty of sup­ply­ing not on­ly more busi­ness­es across the coun­try but al­so Grena­da and Bar­ba­dos with more fish­er­men com­ing on­board.

Not­ing that oys­ters are a del­i­ca­cy, Wothke said this al­so can cre­ate a unique culi­nary in­dus­try for T&T.

“Once we get the new grant we will work with the To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty In­sti­tute and get some chefs to train ven­dors in Char­lot­teville to pre­pare the oys­ters.

“Ide­al­ly we hope what Mara­cas is to shark and bake that Char­lot­teville will be­come the oys­ter cap­i­tal,” Wothke added.

In­no­v­a­tive ap­proach for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment-bpTT

The Busi­ness Guardian al­so reached out to bpTT’S vice pres­i­dent cor­po­rate op­er­a­tions Giselle Thomp­son who said, “We are proud to sup­port this pi­lot project by ER­IC be­cause it is an in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach to pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in the Char­lot­teville com­mu­ni­ty.

“It has al­so been great to see the project progress from an idea to re­sults with the first har­vest. This is one of two projects bpTT is sup­port­ing in To­ba­go which is fo­cused on the con­nec­tion be­tween the pro­tec­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources and sus­tain­able liveli­hood. ER­IC has demon­strat­ed that oys­ter farm­ing can be a vi­able way to pro­vide busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties while pro­tect­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.”