Tag Archive for: European flat oyster

‘The unsuspected history of the oyster”: Stéphane Pouvreau guest on La Terre au carré

, , ,

Our colleague Stéphane POUVREAU was guest on ‘La Terre au Carré’, the famous radio broadcast on France Inter on 4 February, alongside Catherine Dupont (archaeomalacologist at the CNRS).

Conducted by Mathieu VIDARD, the broadcast, entitled ‘L’histoire insoupçonnée de l’huître(The unsuspected history of the oyster), looked back at the eventful history of this shellfish that is so emblematic of gastronomy.

Present on Earth for over 150 million years, the oyster has left its mark on human history, from prehistory to the present day. Hunter-gatherers were already enjoying this mollusc 8,000 years ago. In Antiquity, it became a luxury food prized by the Romans, who innovated in oyster farming. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, oysters epitomised refinement, appreciated by monarchs such as Louis XIV and Louis XVIII. However, the oyster often came close to extinction, falling victim to over-fishing and disease. The 20th century saw the flat oyster decimated, gradually replaced by imported varieties, mainly the Japanese oyster we eat today.

Today, restoration programmes such as REHPAR, run by Stéphane, are trying to preserve this emblematic species in te bay of Brest. A handful of oyster farmers in Quiberon Bay are still producing the traditional flat oyster, the guardian of a threatened maritime heritage.

listen to the podcast on the France Inter website

The flat oyster: a heritage species to be preserved

Originally present along the entire European coastline, the flat oyster, the only oyster native to Europe, formed very dense populations (called oyster beds) creating mini-underwater reefs, comparable to coral reefs in terms of biodiversity. Highly overexploited in the 19th century, then victim of several diseases and predators in the 20th, the species is endangered in the 21st century and with it all the biodiversity it shelters. For a year now, the FOREVER project (“Flat Oyster REcoVERy”) has been working on the ecological restoration of this species in Brittany. One of the actions of this pioneering project consists in designing and deploying artificial reefs specially designed to facilitate the establishment, development and protection of young flat oysters. In early summer 2019, these very first reefs are being deployed in the Rade de Brest and Baie de Quiberon. To be continued…

Find out more about the FOREVER project and other European projects for the conservation and restoration of flat oysters? https://noraeurope.eu and have a look at this article:

Pogoda, B., Brown, J., Hancock, B., Preston, J., Pouvreau, S., Kamermans, P., Sanderson, W., and von Nordheim, H. 2019. The Native Oyster Restoration Alliance (NORA) and the Berlin Oyster Recommendation: bringing back a key ecosystem engineer by developing and supporting best practice in Europe. Aquat. Living Resour. 32: 13. doi:10.1051/alr/2019012.

In open access via this link.

 

Projet Forever

Tag Archive for: European flat oyster

FOREVER