Oyster problems in UK

Forest and Bird, Issue 267, 1 February 1993, Page 6

Oyster problems in UK

A NEW threat to Britain’s native oysters has shown how hard sometimes it is to win in dealing with the separate environmental problems of pollution and the introduction of pest species. The alien Pacific oyster was introduced some years ago to British oyster farms. It was given the okay by Britain’s fisheries administrators on the grounds that the exotic organism was no threat to other marine life because it "couldn’t breed in UK waters". Unfortunately it now seems that the only reason it couldn’t breed was because TBT — widely used to keep barnacles off the bottoms of boats and a major marine pollutant — suppressed its reproductive processes. TBT was banned in Britain in the late 1980s and the country’s coastal waters are considerably better for it. However, in the last two years Pacific oysters have escaped from farms and are now breeding in unprecedented numbers in the TBT-free waters of the southwest coast.

The Pacific oysters are a boon to oyster farmers who can restock their beds for free, but conservation agencies are concerned at the impact they will have on native species. Source: New Scientist