CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The nonprofit organization Palacios Marine Agriculture Research is gearing up to distribute 15 billion oysters to the Texas coast by 2025.
The organization, established by the Ed Rachal Foundation, is dedicated to restoring oysters on the Texas coast.
An investment that may total more than $15 million is aimed at repairing and restoring oyster beds up and down the Texas Gulf coast.
Research shows Texas has lost 90 percent of its oyster beds to "over farming," pollution and other factors.
According to Chappie Chapman, the project manager for the Oyster Resource and Recovery Center at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies it's a program that should have been started decades ago.
"People are going to say we should have been doing this the whole time. And that's when you're going to see this industry just explode," Chapman said.
He said the Palacios Marine Agriculture program's mission is to grow and distribute 15 billion oyster larvae to bays and shorelines up and down the Texas coast.
"And the best part about it is, as this industry takes off, you're going to see our public reefs come back," Chapman said.
This does not just refer to oyster beds which have been reduced over the last hundred years by 90 percent, but the health of fish, and all marine life, quality of the water and even healthier beaches up and down the coast.
Dr. Larry McKinney, the director of PMAR said an oyster hatchery is being built in Palacios, Texas—halfway to Galveston—to try to restore the reefs faster
"That's what our 15 billion will do," McKinney said. "Oysters, if you give them a chance, will recover naturally in many places. But we need to move that along more quickly. We don't want them to be able to restore over 5 to 10 years. We would like to see the reefs restored in a couple of years."
A major research lab will be built here in Corpus Christi to study the best way to use expanded oyster beds to clean and improve bays and estuaries.
"A typical oyster can filter 50 gallons of water every day and remove any kind of, e-coli and other materials out of it. So it acts as a natural water treatment plant," McKinney said.
This program could make the Texas coast one of the leading suppliers of oysters in the entire nation.
"I think that there's just nothing but positive growth for everybody," said Chapman "I think it's a win for Texas, I think it's a win for the consumer and it's a win for local economies."
The Harte Research Institute plans training and a summer internship program to teach people how to create oyster farms to be part of a potential $80 billion industry.
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