Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Louisiana
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Louisiana (and Gulf coast) estuarine conditions are changing rapidly due to climate change, river management and coastal management. These changing conditions impact the survival and growth of commercially and ecologically valuable benthic organisms, including the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, which is sessile for most of its life. These changing conditions complicate management and conservation of this ecosystem engineer, and would be helped by selection of tolerant oyster stocks. Loss of oyster reefs due to changing estuarine conditions results in the loss of ecosystem services provided by oysters and the reefs they create, such as water filtration, habitat provision and shoreline protection; oyster mortality from changing conditions negatively impacts production of this commercially valuable species. This work is being completed in close collaboration with state partners including Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority who manage oyster production, restoration (LDWF) and overall coastal restoration and protection (CPRA). This project tests performance of previously untested populations of oysters from Louisiana waters under different water quality conditions. The goal is to identify potential stocks for a breeding program, and identify characteristics of oysters to match to environmental settings. Results from this work are being used to inform models of oyster growth, mortality, and reef connectivity, and being used to build genomic selections to identify broodstock for use in production of seed oysters for the oyster industry, and for restoration projects.