OYSTER HATCHERY
The Louisiana Sea Grant Program’s Grand Isle bivalve hatchery has both research and commercial-scale larval rearing capabilities. It is the largest oyster hatchery along the Gulf coast of the U.S., based on larval rearing capacity. The hatchery serves as a research, production and demonstration facility for the Gulf of Mexico region. The facility’s capabilities include:
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State-of-the-art seawater filtration system capable of filtering baywater at 50 gallons per minute to 1 micron.
- Commercial-scale larval rearing capacity, capable of producing more than 60 million oyster larvae per week during operation (April-September).
- State-of-the-art algal production system producing more than 1,000 gallons of microalgae per day to support larval, spat/seed and broodstock feeding.
- Twenty-four 5-gallon and forty 55-gallon nursery silos for producing more than 1 million seed oysters per season for oyster research and industry demonstration projects.
- One-half acre of protected, enclosed, baywater for deployment of experiments and grow-out of research broods.
- Field laboratory capabilities with on-campus support.
Types of research conducted at the hatchery include:
Development of disease-resistant oyster strains. - Production of triploid oysters for high summertime meat yield.
- Development of tetraploid broodstock for producing triploid oysters.
- Testing potential oyster cultch material.
- Ground-truthing hydroacoustic evaluations of oyster leases.
- Various graduate student research on cyropreservation of oyster gametes, larval settlement on oil-contaminated substrates, improved oyster breeding and oyster fertilization synchrony.
Destroyed by both Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, hatchery operations were rebuilt at the new Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries’ Marine Fisheries Laboratory.
For more information, contact hatchery director John Supan at jsupan@lsu.edu.
