GRUNTSTUFF • June 7, 2021
When the pandemic struck last year, oyster farmer Chris Burtis quickly realized the eating places that purchased his oysters had principally closed. With out a new market, his Ferda Farms confronted potential financial break. Then, Burtis heard The Nature Conservancy in partnership with The Pew Charitable Trusts was shopping for hundreds of thousands of bivalves across the nation for rebuilding decimated oyster reefs — and he rapidly joined the effort. One recent day, he pulled up cages full of oysters on the New Meadows River in Brunswick, Maine, readying them to be trucked to oyster reefs on a patch of New Hampshire’s Nice Bay. “Yeah. it actually has been sort of a lifesaver to have the opportunity to keep some income coming in,” said Burtis, as he poured the caged oysters into delivery crates.