Oyster Castles Placed in Raritan Bay Off Middletown

Middletown, NJ - The Raritan Bay artificial oyster reefs we told you about earlier this week were installed Wednesday in the water off U.S. Naval Weapons Station Earle, very close to the mouth of Ware Creek near Leonardo/Belford.

The oyster castles were dropped by volunteers with NY/NJ Baykeeper, which placed the blocks in a straight row for nearly 1 acre off the pier at Earle. The intent is to have oysters grow on the concrete blocks, and oysters will then clean and filter the waters of Raritan Bay. Oyster larvae were placed onto the concrete blocks while they were still in tanks in a lab. The larvae then attached to the castles, and, although the oysters are small, there are already 25,000 baby oysters living on the castles. The oysters are about 1-2 mm in size and will start growing faster now that they are in the bay.

Writes NY/NJ Baykeeper: It's official! Our oyster castles are in the water! The oyster castles (concrete blocks in the photos) are the building blocks to our 0.91 acre living shoreline located at Earle. More than 25,000 water-filtering, erosion-controlling oysters are now growing on the castles! This project will help us determine if oysters are able to stabilize the shoreline at the mouth of Ware Creek, create habitat, and more! Thank you to our partners at Naval Weapons Station Earle, Rutgers University, and New Jersey City University for making this project possible and to NJDEP and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Headquarters for issuing the necessary permits to us! Stay tuned!