Quantifying the status and success on restored native oyster Ostrea edulis beds in the Solent

Globally, the restoration of ostreid bivalves is gaining momentum. In European waters the native oyster Ostrea edulis is the focus of extensive restoration efforts and in the Solent, the Blue Marine Foundation (BMF) have been leading efforts to restore native oysters since 2017. The Solent historically represented the UK's largest oyster fishery, but has been in decline since the 1970s and generally has been closed to fishing since 2013. The Solent system represents a good model to understand how best to restore a habitat that no longer exists; insights that can be scaled to the wider Europe and beyond.
Thus far our work has compared the performance of small scale elevated culture of broodstock oysters in suspended cage culture in marinas with elevated reef culture on the sea bed and has explored the environmental controls of sex determination and gametogenesis in native oysters. Research is also quantifying the services offered by oysters for nutrient regulation and microplastic removal from the environment.
This studentship will develop a large-scale restoration strategy for relayed oysters in the River Hamble (Solent) and in Newtown Harbour on the Isle of Wight, and will then quantify the success of that strategy through monitoring.