News

Global Warming and NC’s Most Important Shellfish

by Allison Aplin on March 31, 2025 | Reprinted from Coastwatch

Rising seas and warming temperatures pose challenges for a critical, eco-friendly industry.

North Carolina is home to the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), which can vary in size, shape, and taste depending on water quality and location.  As the “Napa Valley of Oysters,” North Carolina’s pristine environment supports a variety of oyster “merroirs,” or flavors.

Oyster habitats range from deep water reefs in the sounds to shallow areas adjacent to salt marsh grasses. Although North Carolina’s wild oyster populations have declined to approximately 15-20% of historic harvest levels, various initiatives, including oyster farming and sanctuary systems, aim to restore wild populations.

Oyster reefs also provide habitat for a wide range of species, including fish, barnacles, crabs, anemones, and shrimp, improving biodiversity in estuarine habitats. This habitat additionally offers protection for many juvenile species, which in turn leads to increased dockside commercial seafood sales. Dockside sales and other retailers contribute $80.3 million to North Carolina’s $300 million annual wild-caught commercial fishing industry.

While Eastern oysters face many challenges due to our changing climate, they provide numerous eco-friendly benefits for coastal communities. For example, they filter algae from surrounding water, effectively removing impurities and improving water quality. Under certain conditions, in fact, a single oyster can filter 50 gallons of water per day. During this process, oysters also transfer nutrients from the top of the estuarine habitat to the bottom, creating an important link in the food chain.

Credit: VisitNC

Oyster reefs also help protect shorelines by acting as natural breakwaters that absorb wave energy and dissipate its power. “Living shorelines” — which incorporate native plants, oysters, and rocks instead of concrete seawalls — have become an increasingly popular tool to prevent erosion and damage from storm surges.

Although there are often consumer concerns about farm-raised food, oysters are unique in that they do not require any feed, while providing nutrients that include protein, calcium, iron, and zinc. As climate change continues to impact food supply and as demand for food increases, relatively low-maintenance protein sources like oysters will become increasingly important.

Delayed Harvests, Storm Damage, and Disease

Climate change has caused global shifts in many facets of the environment, including increases in sea temperatures, sea level, and storm intensity. Over the last three decades, sea surface temperatures consistently have reached record highs since reliable data collection began in 1880.

Over the last two decades, relative to coastal North Carolina’s sinking land, the Atlantic rose roughly 4.5 inches at Duck, 6 inches at Beaufort, and 8 inches at Wilmington. Droughts, flooding, and severe hurricanes have ravaged the coastlines of the United States. Warmer sea surface temperatures intensify tropical storm wind speeds, resulting in greater damage upon landfall.

Credit: Baxter Miller

Estuaries — where fresh rivers meet the salty ocean — are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to shifts in water level and temperatures in both upland and coastal areas. North Carolina has 2.2 million acres of estuarine environment along its coastline, and approximately 90% of North Carolina’s commercially significant species live in estuaries at some point in their life cycle, including oysters.

Rising ocean temperatures also adversely affect the physiology of Eastern oysters, leading to reduced rates of growth and reproduction. On the other hand, cooler waters provide more nutrients for oysters to filter feed, as well as higher oxygen levels, both of which support growth.

Oysters also rely on environmental cues from cooler waters, and particular salinity ranges, to initiate their reproductive cycle. Consequently, warming temperatures can result in delayed harvest seasons due to growth later in the season.

Warming ocean temperatures also contribute to intensified storms. Since 1980, there have been over 120 confirmed extreme weather events in North Carolina, including 54 severe storms and 31 tropical cyclones, each resulting in losses of over $1 billion to the state.

Credit: NOAA

Direct impacts from storms include property damage, flooding, water contamination, and destruction of oysters or oyster gear, as well as extreme changes in salinity. Even years of increased rainfall can impact oyster farming, as the change in salinity from fresh waters can affect oyster survival, particularly in early life.

Hurricane Florence alone caused an estimated $10 million in damages to North Carolina’s shellfish aquaculture industry in 2018. Such storms also harm tourism and reduce public interest in traveling to the North Carolina coast, which indirectly affects oyster farming and other aquaculture businesses.

Oyster aquaculture is also facing significant challenges due to mass mortality events. The causes remain unclear, but warming temperatures facilitate the rapid growth and spread of bacteria and viruses. Additionally, environmental factors such as salinity, water quality and runoff — issues that storms and storm surge exacerbate — can further compromise oyster health.

Regardless of the specific causes, these mortality events have had devastating effects on oyster farmers in North Carolina. For example, in May 2022, several mortality incidents occurred along the North Carolina coastline, spanning 115 miles, with Stump Sound particularly hard-hit, resulting in oyster losses up to 90%.

Credit: Baxter Miller

NC State University’s Tal Ben-Horin is spearheading a new Sea Grant-funded study of mass mortality events, accounting for a wide range of factors in order to determine how growers can lessen or eliminate these events.

Supporting a Species and an Industry

Supporting oysters in North Carolina benefits coastal ecosystems and communities:

• Follow the North Carolina Oyster Trail to discover oyster farmers, restaurants, seafood markets, and educational experiences that promote and celebrate local oysters.
• Consider adopting an oyster through the North Carolina Coastal Federation, which also collaborates with The Nature Conservancy and the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) to build oyster sanctuaries.
• Recycle oyster shells or encourage local oyster-selling businesses to do so, because recycled shells are vital for creating new oyster habitats.

Allison Aplin is a masters candidate in environmental management in coastal and marine systems at the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment. She also serves as an outreach intern for North Carolina Sea Grant. 

lead photo: Daniel Pullen.

Lovers of bivalves, rejoice! The NC Oyster Trail is packed with aquatic farms and restaurants where you can eat your fill throughout the year.

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by Jason Frye on December 17, 2024 | Reprinted from Visit NC

Ghost Fleet Oyster Company

Take a deep dive into marine farming, even if you only wade in as far as your knees or stay dry on the boat. Learn how water salinity and temperature affect oyster production before learning the finest preparation techniques.

Tour

More than a dozen North Carolina oyster farms let you in on their secrets to mariculture (marine farming). Learn what conditions create the tastiest oyster, then shuck and sample a few while you’re on the water. Ghost Fleet Oyster Company offers tours of their floating farms in Sneads Ferry and Hampstead, filling you in on all things oyster: life cycle, the importance of shell recycling and more. Farther down the coast, Epic Excursions provides three-hour tours of Middle Sound Mariculture farm near Wilmington, where the water is perfectly salty for raising a delicious oyster. Their tours include a boat ride to a barrier island for oyster snacking with wine pairings. Best of all, farmed oysters are safe to eat year-round.

Tour with Ghost Fleet Oyster Company

Taste

When you tour an oyster farm, you’ll sample as many as you can shuck. For shuck-free savoring, make your way to a restaurant or seasonal event that puts these mollusks on the pedestal they deserve. Jackson’s Last Saturday Oyster Roast takes place in January, when guests can dine on platters heaped high with roasted oysters. Rusty Hooks Dockside Grill in Southport serves oysters on the half-shell, steamed and fried. (Pro tip: Enjoy your feast at a table with a sunset view.) Ocracoke Oyster Company serves select oysters from a trio of farms on the Outer Banks; enjoy yours on the half-shell with a zippy side of wasabi and ginger, doused in spicy mustard vinegar sauce or prepared Rockefeller-style.

Learn More

Oysters are more than tasty treats – they’re essential to the coastal ecosystem. At the North Carolina Estuarium in Washington and Hatteras Island Ocean Center on the Outer Banks, exhibits spotlight the role oysters play in the environment and the conditions that help oysters, clams, crabs and other sea creatures thrive.

North Carolina Estuarium

Wade into The Official 2025 North Carolina Travel Guide for more coastal foodie adventures.

Hit the road and chow down along the best food and drink trails in America

by Lauren Dana on April 23, 2024 | Reprinted from Time Out

5. North Carolina Oyster Trail | North Carolina

Photograph: Courtesy Visit North Carolina/Kate Warren

North Carolina’s Crystal Coast is renowned for its beaches, but did you know it’s also considered the “Napa Valley of Oysters” since it offers a wide variety of flavors?  The destination’s Oyster Trail encompasses 80 sites, including Oyster Carolina (where visitors can take a tour, get knee-deep in the water, pull oysters straight from the sea and learn how to shuck ‘em) and Hoop Pool Creek Oyster Company (where adventure-seeking travelers can embark on a kayak tour of the farm). Expand your culinary horizons even further by digging into an order of loaded baked oysters with chorizo, scallion, cheese, bread crumbs, and sour cream at Coquina Fishbar, or keep it simple with an order of steamed or raw oysters at Parley’s Sip & Steam.

Once common and wide spread along the N.C. coast, the oyster is making a comeback thanks to sanctuaries and shellfish farmers. But many challenges remain for the small, but popular mollusk

by Gareth McGrath on October 22, 2024 | Reprinted from Star News Online

Image by Ken Blevins

As oyster lovers slurp their way through October, honoring their favorite bivalve during N.C. Oyster Month, the health of the state’s mollusk fishery appears to be on an upward trajectory.

After two decades of concerted efforts by the state, research institutions and environmental groups to help oysters − and the industry they support − bounce back in North Carolina’s coastal waters, the small shellfish is back playing an outsized role in the state’s coastal environment and economy.

But a slew of obstacles still stalk the fishery, from disease to declining water quality to broad opposition from waterfront property owners to the expansion of shellfish farms.

And while the state’s oyster reefs will never match what North Carolina used to have in its extensive sounds and coastal waters, with some estimates that as much as 90% of the state’s historical reefs have been lost over the past century, there is hope the situation, if not at least stabilized, is improving for the state’s most popular shellfish.

NC Oyster Season:Getting to know Ana Shellem, a local fisherman and oyster harvester

Declining water quality, habitats

Once so plentiful that they formed an important trading commodity and food source for the state’s early residents, oysters have always played an important role in North Carolina’s coastal culture, cuisine and economy.

But the tide began turning against the oyster in the late 19th century, a trend that only accelerated into the 20th century. Unsustainable harvesting depleted oyster beds and onshore development, including timbering and agricultural uses, degraded habitat, allowing sediment and nutrients to flood into coastal waters.

More recently, the massive influx of people drawn to the ocean has heaped more pressure on the mollusks.

As oyster populations have declined, so has the quality of the state’s coastal waters.

Oyster reefs serve as vital habitat for a host of fish and other marine critters and also as natural wave breaks − think living shorelines − to help naturally absorb and disperse tidal energy that can erode and destroy shorelines and damage waterfront structures and infrastructure.

But it is as filter feeders that oysters might have their most important and profound impact on North Carolina’s coastal environment. Each oyster can pump up to 50 gallons of water through its body everyday, removing nutrients and algae from the water. That, in turn, creates clearer and cleaner water for marine life to grow and thrive.

Image Courtesy of NOAA

‘An insurance policy for our wild population’

The status of the state’s wild oyster population is a bit of an unknown, with no stock assessment done in recent times.

But by one measure, the harvesting of wild oysters, the population appears to at least be stable at about 50,000 bushels, each of which weighs 55 pounds, a year.

That doesn’t mean, however, that groups like the N.C. Coastal Federation aren’t offering the little shellfish a helping hand.

In Pamlico Sound, the coastal environmental group has worked with the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries and other partners to build several large manmade reefs, including 40 acres this year and another 40 acres next year, that double as oyster sanctuaries and are off limits to commercial harvesting.

Erin Fleckenstein, the federation’s oyster program director, said the protected reefs account for only 6% of the oyster reefs in the sound, but represent 20% of the waterway’s oyster population and produce 25% of the sound’s spat, or oyster babies.

“These oyster sanctuaries serve as an insurance policy for our wild population,” she said.

But pressures on the state’s oysters aren’t decreasing. Key among them is the massive growth many of the state’s coastal areas, including around the Wilmington area, have seen in recent decades. Fleckenstein said that has researchers starting to look at taking a watershed approach to protecting water quality, including looking at steps that can be taken upstream or well away from the water’s edge.

Image by Paul Stephen

‘Something North Carolina can and should be proud of’

As the state’s wild oyster population continues to face challenges, shellfish farmers like Chris Matteo, owner of Chadwick Creek Oysters and Seed Nursery in Bayboro near New Bern, are stepping up.

When Matteo, who also heads the N.C. Shellfish Growers Association, got into the water-dependent farming industry a little over a decade ago, he could count the state’s number of commercial shellfish farmers on one hand.

“Now there are roughly 130 farmers generating jobs and income all along the coast, and we’re filtering a half-billion gallons of estuarine water a day for free, and that’s not an insignificant impact,” he said.

But like their wild brethren, farm-raised oysters face obstacles. Disease has always been a threat, and a recent spate of mass-mortality events has shellfish farmers and researchers scrambling to find the source. Then there’s the NIMBY worries of some coastal residents to having oyster cages visible from their waterfront homes, and the weather − including too much or too little fresh water − is always a concern, Matteo said.

OYSTER FARMING:Why the pearl in NC’s agriculture industry is running into choppy waters

Image Provided by Chris Matteo

Still, the industry is thriving and now represents roughly 70% of the oysters harvested in North Carolina, generating nearly $18 million for shellfish farmers, Matteo said.

And for tourists (and even some locals) there’s always the allure of trying something homegrown when visiting the coast. Matteo said that’s especially true when it comes to a raw product like oysters, where people realize if it’s sourced locally that means less time out of the water and a fresher product.

“We’re making progress on nearly all fronts, and that’s critical in a relatively new industry like ours,” Matteo said. “It’s something North Carolina can and should be proud of.” 

Reporter Gareth McGrath can be reached at GMcGrath@Gannett.com or @GarethMcGrathSN on X/Twitter. This story was produced with financial support from the Green South Foundation and the Prentice Foundation. The USA TODAY Network maintains full editorial control of the work. 

Carolina Gold Oyster Company serves customers locally and around the U.S. through subscription services, set orders and wholesale. 

by Julie J. Novara on August 22, 2024 | Reprinted from N.C. Field & Family

Carolina Gold Oyster Company officially started in 2018, but it was born in the heart of owner Tyler Chadwick long before. Chadwick grew up in the small community of Mill Creek, just outside of Beaufort. His grandfather’s family was made up of farmers, and his grandmother’s family fished commercially. 

Photo credit: Michael Cline Spencer

“Growing up, I had this urge to be on the water,” Chadwick says. “Some of my fondest memories are during the summertime when I was out of school. Out on Newport River in the mornings, I’d watch the sun come up as I worked on the back of the shrimp trawler. I’d work on shrimp boats, dig clams on the sand flats in the river, flounder dig – anything to stay on the water.” 

Diving Into Commercial Fishing

When choosing a career, he didn’t drift far from family tradition and opted for commercial fishing.

“Chadwick Seafood started in 2015 when only my family and I harvested our own goods,” Chadwick says. “We’d harvest crabs and fish, and we had other fishermen we’d buy fish from. We’d take fish to the market locally and to Raleigh and Durham.”

Then a shifting tide of regulation brought changes. 

“We started running into problems with overregulation in the industry,” he explains. “I remember vividly in the winter of 2016 being out where we fished commercially for oysters and thinking, ‘We’ve got to do something different. What can we do that will keep us on the water and provide income for our families?’”

Casting a New Net in Mariculture

That’s when Chadwick stumbled onto mariculture, that is, marine aquaculture, farming marine life in seawater. He did some digging to learn more and became fascinated.

Tyler Chadwick founded Carolina Gold Oyster Company in Beaufort in 2018. Photo credit: Michael Cline Spencer

“I found a local farm in Carteret County at the beginning of 2017,” he says. “I called and introduced myself, ‘I’m looking into oyster farming, and I might want to try it, but I don’t know anything about it. I’d like to come and work for you for free.’ Anytime you tell a farmer you’ll work for free, they’ll welcome you with open arms. So, he invited me to come, and I worked on his farm.”

From the very first day, Chadwick knew he’d found what he was looking for. He spent the rest of 2017 researching oyster farming and working with other oyster farmers. 

In 2018, he started Carolina Gold Oyster Company in his grandparents’ garage. Two years later, he dissolved Chadwick Seafood and extended the oyster farm. It’s since grown to 17 acres, and they’ve moved out of his grandparents’ garage to a larger facility in Beaufort, with farms in North River, Newport River and Adams Creek.

Strengthening the Seascape

One thing Chadwick loves is that oyster farming is so environmentally friendly. This is due in part to the lack of need for inputs. Oysters also improve water quality.

“The oysters don’t require anything but for me to protect them in the environment,” he says. “One adult oyster filters 50 gallons of water a day. Our farm alone, with our number of oysters, filters 100 million gallons of water every 24 hours.”

Photo credit: Michael Cline Spencer

The oysters filter the water through the simple act of eating the algae and plankton in the water. At the same time, they’re removing carbon. 

“As oysters grow, they grow their own shells, and carbon is one thing they use to grow the shell,” Chadwick says. “When they remove the carbon, they input it into their shells. Then, when you take an oyster from the waterway, you’re removing a certain amount of carbon with the shell.”

Shells as Shelters 

What happens to the shells once the oysters are sold to raw bars and retail outlets? 

“Most raw bars have a shell recycling program,” Chadwick says. “They collect the shells, and the state brings them back and plants them on wild oyster reefs to rebuild the population. Baby oysters need oyster shells to attach themselves to.”

He notes that once an oyster is harvested, the shell is put back into the waterway and becomes a surface for juvenile oysters to protect themselves and helps increase the wild population.

It’s easy to see that oysters provide a much larger environmental impact than just on water quality. They also create a safe environment for juvenile fish and crustaceans. Young crabs, shrimp and fish are so small that they’re easy prey and need protection. So, they’ll hide in the oysters where they’re safe.

Photo credit: Michael Cline Spencer

“Oysters create an environment for the future of our fish population here in the State of North Carolina,” Chadwick adds. “I always tell people the oyster is the firm foundation for our environment from everything in the water to everything on land.”

Leading on Land and Sea

Today, Carolina Gold Oyster Company serves customers locally and around the U.S. through monthly subscription services, set quantity orders and wholesale distribution. 

As the company has grown, Chadwick’s role has changed from being on the water five days a week to being in the office and in county, state and federal leadership contributing to discussions on industry policy. 
As a member of the Carteret County Farm Bureau board of directors, he says, “I’m honored to fight with Farm Bureau to better the future for all our farmers, on land and sea.” 

Carolina Gold Oyster Company

Location: Beaufort

Phone: (252) 723-8736

Website: carolinagoldoysters.com