PORT TOWNSEND — A regional partnership will put Olympia oysters at the center of science, restoration, hands-on learning and ocean stewardship.
Starting early next year, Northwest Maritime (NWM) will host a small oyster rearing operation on its Port Townsend campus at 431 Water St.
The operation, in its pilot year, will be a collaboration between NWM, the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe (JST) and Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF).
The Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe purchased two tanks for the project, and PSRF will provide the oyster larvae, the installation and ongoing knowledge and support.
The tanks, custom built by Port Townsend-based Haven Boatworks, are planned to be installed today, said Ryan Crim, PSRF’s hatchery director. Larvae are planned to arrive sometime in January or February.
PSRF has been involved in Olympia oyster restoration since the 1990s, building its own conservation hatchery in Port Orchard in 2014, Crim said.
The hatchery produces conservation-grade oysters for restoration projects across Puget Sound, he added.
“We collect a minimum of 1,200 adult oysters whenever we do a spawn to make sure we’re maintaining the genetic integrity of the wild population,” Crim said. “That gives us a lot of larvae — more than we can actually settle in our own tanks — which is what makes partnerships like this possible.”
Once installed, the two tanks will have capacity for about 50 bags of recycled oyster shells each. Each bag will contain about 250 shells, and each shell will be expected to host about 10 spat. Ultimately, Crim said he expects the pilot year will allow for the production of about 250,000 oysters.
When delivered, the larvae are microscopic. Gathered together, they appear almost like a black clump of sand, Crim said.
Significant early stage mortality is expected during settlement and metamorphosis, Crim said.
“We’ll put in several million larvae to end up with around 250,000 oysters,” he said. “It’s a hard developmental process, but that’s why these systems are so valuable.”
Days after releasing in the tanks, the free-floating larvae will settle onto the shells, Crim said.
As the operation establishes on campus, Northwest Maritime staff and students will operate the system day to day.
Still in the early phases of program development, Simona Clausnitzer, NWM’s school program manager, said the system handoff and transfer of standard operating procedures will begin today.
Students likely will take part in feeding the oysters, monitoring water quality and tracking larval survival. Facilities staff will help maintain pumps, filters and recirculating systems.
Still in the early stages of program development, Clausnitzer said she envisions most of the students coming through NWM will have some touch-point engagement with the oysters.
Situating education in real-world settings is key to creating transformational learning experiences, Clausnitzer said.
“When something only lives in a classroom as a concept, it can be hard to connect to,” she said. “But when students see how what they’re learning directly impacts their community and ecosystem, it becomes meaningful.”
Clausnitzer said the project fits squarely within NWM’s Blue Schools initiative, which emphasizes career-connected learning through real-world maritime experiences grounded in community and the sea.
“A critical part of that is involving our local community, like Puget Sound Restoration Fund and Jamestown S’Klallam,” Clausnitzer said. “That other bubble, of the sea, is really about connecting with place-based learning and hands-on education in a way that meaningfully impacts our local ecosystem via a restoration project.”
Middle and high school students participating in Team Longboat, workplace experience programs and Maritime Discovery programs will engage with the tanks at varying depths — from short educational rotations to recurring involvement over months, allowing students to watch oysters grow from larvae to juveniles destined for restoration sites.
By late spring, the juvenile oysters are expected to be transported north to support ongoing Olympia oyster restoration work led by the Whatcom County Marine Resources Committee in Chuckanut Bay, south of Bellingham.
The site was chosen as the Whatcom group wanted to do the work but lacked the funding, and because of the two broodstocks harvested this year, one was compatible with the region, Crim said.
For the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, the project reflects both longstanding restoration work and a deeper cultural connection to Olympia oysters as a traditional food source, JST Environmental Biologist Neil Harrington said.
The tribe has been actively involved in Olympia oyster restoration for roughly a decade, particularly in Discovery Bay and Sequim Bay.
“Olympia oysters are a traditional food for the S’Klallam people,” Harrington said. “Right here at the tribal center, there was an archaeological dig with Olympia oyster shells dating back about 1,100 years.”
While the oysters produced at Northwest Maritime will not be immediately planted in tribal-managed projects, looking ahead, Harrington said there is hope that future iterations of the program could support restoration efforts closer to home, including Discovery Bay, Sequim Bay and hopefully Kilisut Harbor.
“We’ve been super supportive of the general statewide and region-wide efforts to restore the species to their former glory or its former place as one of the keystone species of the Salish Sea,” Harrington said. “And it’s also about training the next generation of restoration professionals and making sure that these students have these skills.”
The oyster tanks will be visible to the public. NWM plans to install interpretive signs.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
