State wildlife officials voiced support Wednesday for ongoing oyster restoration efforts in Apalachicola Bay, which will require a sizable reduction in oyster harvesting next season.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Chairman Rodney Barreto told staff to continue the efforts after receiving an update on work to restore oyster populations in the Apalachicola Bay area, which is at the southern end of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint river system that starts in northern Georgia.
“You’re looking for a little bit of guidance, but I think business as you are doing it is appropriate,” Barreto said during the commission meeting in Panama City Beach. “It sounds like it is going well.”
Commissioner Joshua Kellam called the work on the Bay over the past year “a huge success.”
“We’ve opened up something that has been closed for six years, to now have it in a restorative fashion where people are now able to get back out on the water,” Kellam said.
The bay has long been known for its oyster fishery, once supplying more than 90 percent of Florida’s oysters and 10 percent of the oysters sold nationally. But multiple threats have affected the oyster industry for decades, including the removal of reef material to build roads, damaging hurricanes, disease and poor water quality. The oyster reef size dropped from 2,000 acres to less than 100 acres.
In 2013, the fishery collapsed. The bay was closed to harvesting in 2020.
In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit in which Florida argued Georgia has used too much water in a river system shared by the states.
Last year, the FWC agreed to a two-month oyster season in four reefs in the bay that started Jan. 1, with the next season to run from Oct. 1 through Feb. 28, 2027.
One of the four areas opened to oyster harvesting this past winter, known as the East Hole, failed to produce the anticipated harvest threshold during the past season and will be closed for the upcoming season, said Morgan Eason, the commission’s Division of Marine Fisheries Management biological administrator.
“Because East Hole will not be open to harvest, there will be fewer open reefs and lower annual harvest levels in the upcoming season,” Eason said.
The plans for the upcoming season will be to distribute 2,560 bags for oyster collection to commercial and recreational harvesters, down from 4,726 bags used in the past January-February timeframe. Recreational harvesters accounted for 52 bags in the past season.
TJ Saunders, a charter fishing captain who acknowledges he’s not an oysterman, said the work has been “promising” and he hopes the state expands the efforts.
“I've seen wonderful, wonderful things happen within the bay. I would hope that staff plans to expand restoration to areas west of the Saint George Island Bridge,” Saunders said. “To this point, all of the restoration efforts have been placed east of that bridge, and we have a vast fishery and habitat space that is in need of oyster restoration to the west side of the Saint George Island Bridge.”
The state budget for the 2026-2027 fiscal year, which started July 1, included $15 million to restore the state’s oyster reefs, of which $11 million is for Apalachicola Bay.
The prior fiscal year budget directed $12.5 million for oyster reef restoration and $5 million for the Department of Environmental Protection to seal financial-assistance agreements with local governments on sewage facilities and stormwater projects to help protect the bay.