- Heavy rain can impact oyster harvesting in Wakulla County.
- Oyster farming is on hold temporarily due to water quality.
- Watch the video above to see how this impacts area business owners.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
All this rain we've been getting in lately has caused a lot of freshwater runoff in Wakulla County. Now, it's forcing oyster farmers to put their work on hold.
I'm Kenzie Krueger in Spring Creek. I'm tracking how all that extra water impacts the quality of our local oysters.
"Most people don't understand that high rainfall means that there's a higher probability of there being bacteria contaminating the water." Dewey Houck owns Cypress Point Oyster Company and also processes oysters.
When this area gets high rainfall, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services close the bays. "They subsequently test to see if there's bacteria and then they open it back up quickly as they possibly can."
Other Oyster farmers like Veeral Padalia owns Forgotten Bay Oysters with his brother and he's hopeful the bay will open soon.
"We just keep doing what we're doing you know, processing and sorting out oysters and we put them out in the water and they just get bigger."
So far the bays have been closed for about a week. This page from the Florida Department of Agriculture shows bay closures.
Despite the temporary closures, Padalia says he's thankful they haven't been hit with any major weather so far this season. "You know, I feel fortunate, one weather event and everything's over for us." The bay closures come down to safety.
"The thing we need to focus on is that there is a public health issue and there's a reputation of issue with our industry, we're a young industry and we don't want anybody to get sick from our oysters and we want the regulators do their jobs."
All Wakulla county oysters bays are closed right now, but Franklin County is open.
