Media contributions
1Media contributions
Title Native Irish oysters return to Belfast Lough after a 100-year absence Degree of recognition National Media name/outlet The Irish Times Media type Print Country/Territory Ireland Date 16/08/24 Description Native oysters are “ecosystem engineers” which are increasingly being viewed as a “nature conservation tool”, says Dr Jose M Fariñas-Franco, lecturer in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment and principal investigator in the Marine and Freshwater Research Centre at the Atlantic Technological University, Galway.
He has worked on the east coast of Scotland – where native oysters had also disappeared – and describes a “shifting mentality” there and in other parts of Europe around the ecological benefits of native oysters. In Ireland, he says, “we need more awareness of oysters being more than food”.
Native oysters and the beds they create are internationally recognised as threatened and declining species and habitats. Fariñas-Franco is involved in a project to document the last Irish native oyster beds off the Connemara coast, to use them as reference habitats in restoration projects elsewhere, potentially including Belfast Lough.
“It’s a baseline for restoration, to know what an oyster reef should look like, because in lots of places in Europe, we don’t know,” he says. “We’re using the oyster beds in the west of Ireland as a benchmark to record what’s in there, and this information is sorely needed in areas where oysters are long gone, to have success in bringing back an established oyster population and with it these lost ecosystems.”Producer/Author Freya McClements Persons Jose Maria Farinas-Franco
Keywords
- oysters
- climate crisis
- biodiversity
- marine conservation
- habitat restoration
- rewilding