![]() "Jax gets our oysters before Richmond gets our oysters," says Ryan Croxton, co-owner of Rappahannock Oyster Co. After a 24-to-36-month growth cycle, oysters that have reached the right size for distribution are packed on ice and shipped all over the country, including to Denver. A small crew works from early morning to late afternoon year-round, tending to the ongoing harvest of Crassostrea virginica, the oyster species that is native to the area. Each is filled with oysters of varying sizes - hundreds of thousands per day. On a dock just feet from the restaurant, cage after cage is hauled in off shallow boats on the Rappahannock River. Like terroir with wine, the word "merroir" reflects the fact that the flavor of an oyster changes depending on where it's grown, when it's grown and the conditions that year. Over 1,700 miles away, in Topping, Virginia, near the Chesapeake Bay, a dozen raw oysters are served at an outdoor table overlooking the water at Merroir, one of six eateries owned by the Rappahannock Oyster Co. ![]() While Jax's raw menu includes a rotating selection of oysters from both the East and West coasts, these are a sweet, buttery, low-salinity variety dubbed Emersums, as in "’Em are some good oysters." Slurping one from its shell immediately transports you far from landlocked Colorado to somewhere with salty breezes. Within the course of a single year, the predominant deterrent to oyster recovery had shifted from substrate limitation to recruitment limitation.A dozen raw oysters arrive at a table at the Jax Fish House LoDo location, freshly shucked and glistening. Consequently, early oyster recruitment was effectively eliminated, as evidenced by the lack of spat settlement across the entire oyster metapopulation of western Mississippi Sound. In 2019, oyster spawning stocks were completely decimated throughout the western Mississippi Sound region by unprecedented freshwater discharge from the Bonnet Carré spillway. Spat density, mortality, size, and inferred growth varied on temporal, subregional, and microhabitat scales. ![]() Moreover, variability in spat metrics from settlement samples implied potential post-settlement limitation in 2018. Thus, substrate limitation was inferred to be the primary limitation to early oyster recruitment in 2018. But the supply of larvae from outside the affected reefs was sufficient to provision spat to restored and reference sites within the 2018 study area. Effects of a mortality event which eliminated the oyster spawning stock biomass from two major oyster reefs of western Mississippi Sound in 2016 carried over to the 2018 recruitment period. ![]() Substrate limitation, recruitment limitation and post-settlement limitation each played key roles in limiting the recovery of the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica (Gmelin 1791) within western Mississippi Sound between 20. In addition to suitable substrate, successful oyster recruitment requires an adequate supply of planktonic larvae, followed by the subsequent survival and growth of early post-settlement stages. ![]()
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