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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
An oyster farm in Waterford has lost around €9 million a year for the past two years, with over 70% of their oysters dying. And despite extensive research, it's unknown what is causing the deaths. The general manager and co-owner of Waterford Oysters, Cliona Vicola-Huda, has asked people in the area to keep an eye out for anything unusual in the water. And she joins me now.
You're very welcome to the show. Good morning to you.
Good morning, Clare.
Chapter 2: What are the reasons behind the high mortality rate of oysters in Waterford?
Nice to talk to you. Thank you.
The figures, Cliona, are extraordinary here. Nine million a year over the past two years in lost stock.
They are absolutely extraordinary and they're an existential threat to the industry, to be honest. Dungarvan is one of the major oyster growing bays in Ireland. We have... We have three or four big operators and another half a dozen or so smaller operators in the bay. And this affected the whole lot. Everybody in the bay was equally affected. So it really is.
We lost around 70 percent of our fully grown stock. And just to explain, oysters spend about three years coming to maturity. So you're carrying the juveniles, the babies, the half-grown and the adult oysters at any given time. So we lost about 70% of the full-grown oysters and around 60% or so of the half-grown as well.
And how are those losses absorbed or how is the business coping with that? Are you insured for that type of loss?
No, Clare, we can't get insurance. It's, I suppose it's too risky a business. You know, you're growing, you're farming animals really, but farming them in the sea. And to answer your question, how we're coping, I mean, barely really is the answer. Some people are worse affected than others. Some people had a certain amount of reserves, but I mean, that can only continue for so long.
You know, with 30% of the remaining stock is all you have to sell. It's really difficult to keep all the staff employed and continue on with the husbandry that's necessary to raise next year's crop as well. So it has been a really, really difficult two years. You know, we've had situations before where we have you know, fairly major losses from time to time.
But that would happen typically, oh, maybe once every 10 or 15 years if you had, you know, really extraordinary environmental conditions or something like that.
Sorry, I mentioned at the beginning that extensive research has gone on into what is happening here, what's affecting the oyster stock, but you have no answers.
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Chapter 3: How has the oyster farm's financial loss impacted the local industry?
So there's a very comprehensive suite of testing going on at the moment, mostly by BIM and the Marine Institute. We have monitors in the water constantly monitoring temperature, salinity, all these types of things. But so far there just haven't been any answers and we really are stumped.
And I suppose we've gone, I mean, it's never been a secret, but we've gone kind of more public on this one because what we really want now is the assistance and the help of the general public to be the eyes and ears of the industry and If they see anything unusual, smell anything unusual, have any cause for concern, to please contact us or contact Waterford Council.
You know, just let it be known if there's an issue that they think might be of relevance.
So I take it from that that you suspect that this is down to pollution?
Yeah, we suspect it's down to some kind of a pollution event. The mortalities happened over a very brief period of time, basically kind of the first week in August in both years. So we went on holidays around the 25th of July and came back on the 11th of August to find that the mortalities had already started taking place in a big way and they continued dying for another
kind of fortnight or so after that. But it seems to be an event that happened on both years and very exceptionally the same week in both years.
Well, I can imagine how apprehensive you are coming into the summer now as we head towards July and August.
Absolutely. We're kind of collectively holding our breaths for the next eight weeks or so, you know, hopefully everything will be OK. But also, we don't want to be wondering in 2027, 2028, are we going to have a repeat of this? But we'll just concentrate on getting through this year first.
If you were a beef farmer now, Clian, if you were a beef farmer and you had TB on your land, you'd be compensated for the animals that you lost. But you don't get anything, do you?
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