Why Oyster Prices Are Likely To Skyrocket This Holiday Season

No one was happy to hear that La Niña would be back this year for the third time in a row. The heavy rainfall has already had devastating impacts across Australia, like the floods across Victoria and Tasmania, 

And as we get closer to the holiday season and the rain doesn’t look like it’s easing up any time soon, our classic Christmas oyster spread might be in danger.

But how exactly does rainfall affect our oysters?

Oysters Act Like A Filter

Oysters are filter feeders, which means they eat by filtering particles from the water around them. In fact, they’re so good at it that some researchers have called them ‘ecosystem engineers’ for their ability to act as a filter for their environment.

But one can only imagine what happens to these living filters if the water around them is full of pollutants that come with floodwaters.

They’re Affected By Fire And Floods

Additional water can also reduce a river’s salt concentration, which oysters need to survive and thrive. On top of that, NSW oyster farms are still recovering from the devastating Black Summer bushfires in 2019 and 2020.

According to Professor Stuart Khan at UNSW, bushfire ash can result in low levels of oxygen in the water.

Bushfire ash is largely composed of organic carbon, which will be biodegraded by bacteria, naturally present in waterways. As bacteria consume carbon, they also consume dissolved oxygen from water, leading to low oxygen concentrations or “deoxygenation”. 4/20 pic.twitter.com/izSRvGlnop

— Stuart Khan (@stukhan) January 3, 2020

Ash in the air ends up in the water where bacteria breaks it down. But in order to break it down, the bacteria uses up oxygen. So if there’s a lot of ash in the water, more and more oxygen gets used up by the bacteria instead of going to oysters

The back to back gut punches of bushfire ash and excess freshwater in oyster habitats are proving difficult to come back from.

We’re seeing it play out directly with people in the industry, with only six oyster farmers left from around thirty up in the Hawkesbury.

And, of course, it’s reflected in market prices. We’re likely to see surging prices of oysters through the holiday season, on top of the general uptick in the cost of living.

So Will There Be Enough Oysters For Christmas?

According to Oysters Australia, ninety-nine percent of Australia’s oyster production comes from New South Wales, South Australian, and Tasmania. New South Wales alone accounts for 55% of the oyster industry GVP, or gross value of production. In 2018-2019, that was around 76 million oysters from about 280 oyster farms across the state.

Basically, New South Wales contributes a lot of oysters. So year after year unprecedented climate events that affect our waterways are going to have a huge impact.

For example, one oyster farm in Batemans Bay is 4 million oysters behind their usual harvest amount because the rivers they farm in have been closed so often due to poor water quality. And another farm in the Hawkesbury usually harvests around a million a year, but only managed 300,000 this time around.

Oysters also take between two to four years to grow to market size. And since it’s been about three years since the Black Summer bushfires and our third year of La Niña, it’s going to take a while before the oyster industry recovers completely.