Ostrea angasi facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Ostrea angasi |
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Ostrea
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| Species: |
angasi
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The southern mud oyster, also known as the Australian flat oyster or native flat oyster (Ostrea angasi), is a special type of oyster. It lives only in southern Australia. You can find it from Western Australia all the way to southeast New South Wales and around Tasmania. This oyster looks a lot like another oyster called Ostrea edulis, and both are sometimes called "flat oysters". However, they naturally live in different parts of the world.
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Where They Live
These oysters like to live in calm places where rivers meet the sea, called estuaries. They prefer areas with muddy or sandy bottoms. You can find them in water that is between 1 and 30 metres deep.
What They Eat
Flat oysters, like all other oysters, are filter feeders. This means they get their food by filtering water through their gills. They take in anything small enough to be filtered. This includes tiny living things like plankton and microalgae, as well as small bits of non-living material.
Who Eats Them
Oyster farmers in Coffin Bay, South Australia have seen stingrays eating their Ostrea angasi oysters. This shows that stingrays are natural predators of these oysters.
Bringing Back Oysters
In the past, many oyster reefs in southern Australia were destroyed. This happened because too many oysters were collected from the seabed in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Today, people are working to bring these oysters back. In the 21st century, oyster farmers in southern Australia started trying to farm O. angasi. They wanted to grow different types of oysters. This idea became more popular after a disease called Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome (POMS) caused big losses for farmers who grew a different oyster called Crassostrea gigas.
Helping Oysters Grow
Some groups are working to help Ostrea angasi oysters grow again. The Estuary Care Foundation, a not-for-profit group in South Australia, is doing trials to grow these oysters in the Port River. They also help by watching and restoring seagrass in the Port River. Seagrass is important for the health of the water.
Windara Reef
Windara Reef is a special project built in Gulf St Vincent, near Ardrossan. It was created to help Ostrea angasi oysters grow back. The reef also opened for people to go fishing in 2017. By April 2019, it was the biggest project of its kind in the southern hemisphere that aimed to restore shellfish reefs. Many different groups have helped pay for this project. These include The Nature Conservancy, the Australian Government, the South Australian Government, the Yorke Peninsula Council, The University of Adelaide, and the Ian Potter Foundation.
