School Science/Oyster cultivation in seawater ponds Saccostrea
gigas, the Japanese oyster, is ideally suited for cultivation in
sea water ponds or in the water from seawater ponds. Major
advantages of this oyster are: - Gigas does well in water with
high concentrations of phytoplankton, the normal situation in
marine ponds which are growing fish or prawns and which
therefore have high nutrient loadings. - Spat (the juveniles) of
gigas are readily available from hatcheries all over the world
and are also not too difficult to reproduce in a modest
mariculture hatchery. - Gigas has a ready market and is a fast
grower. In phytoplankton rich water it becomes very fat (lots of
glycogen stored) and as a result is very tasty. - Gigas can
survive a wide range of temperatures from near freezing up to 30
degrees although it grows fastest and fattest at around 20
degrees. Experimental Cultivation of gigas A simple way to test
if the oysters will thrive is to construct some simple baskets
of stiff plastic mesh (netlon for