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  • 5/18/2025
On Western Australia’s south coast, a big stretch of water is mid-way through a transformation to establish it as one of the country’s premier Oyster growing regions. Millions of dollars have already been spent and a spate of massive die-offs and mystery illnesses devastating growers on the east coast, have WA producers working hard to avoid a similar outcome.

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00:00An estuary in southern WA is living up to its name, Oyster Harbour.
00:07What we're looking for is a nice balance between length and width on the shell and hopefully
00:12some depth as well, which signals when it's in condition and good for eating.
00:15The harbour encompasses 16 square kilometres of nutrient-rich waters.
00:19There's a bit of a Goldilocks zone here in the south-west corner of WA for rock oysters.
00:24It's perfect temperature profile, salinity is good.
00:27In 2020, billionaire Andrew Forrest bought the business and new technology is making it more efficient.
00:34One of the benefits of this type of system is it allows us to run long lines in deep water
00:40where most food is, where the current flow is the strongest.
00:43New developments planned for the Albany region are expected to increase shellfish production to about 1,500 tonnes a year.
00:50A spat supply is essential to starting up a farm and it's the hardest thing, it's the riskiest thing
00:56and it's also quite expensive.
00:58This oyster hatchery supplies spat to WA farms with growing interest from other states.
01:03Because we're a biosecure hatchery and we've got this quarantine capability, we can look further afield.
01:08So we're also doing some pearl oysters for the pearl, blacklit pearl growers up at the Abrolis
01:14and also we're talking to New South Wales now.
01:17The hatchery is a line of defence against disease outbreaks seen in other parts of the country.
01:23In 2022, a QX outbreak hit growers in Port Stephens, New South Wales, wiping out millions of oysters.
01:29In Tasmania, a mystery illness is ravaging growers at Pipe Clay Lagoon.
01:34Scientists are working to understand the illness.
01:37This is a long period of time with a really, you know, almost no production.
01:42From what a lot of the farmers are telling me in the last year or so, it's just got worse.
01:47A cautionary tale for the whole industry.
01:50What we're very concerned about is things that might degrade the natural environment
01:54because we've put an economic value on clean water.
01:57We're the canaries in the coal mine. We really are.
02:00Working to protect a valuable industry against potentially existential threats.
02:07But I think that it depends on a little bit of what we're impacting.
02:19I think it is fascinating as many cops are around.
02:24If I認為 in Tasmania, one of my colleagues does not need to driveaticede up.
02:28And the whole country that Grandpa could actually drive me,

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