The photo above is of an oyster shell from the Lynnhaven with spat all over it. Spat is not a very endearing term for something so little that will grow up to be so delicious. Something in the water often attracts them to oyster beds and the little ones drop down and attach themselves to the older oysters or discarded shell. Soon, many eggs are fertilized and turn into little larvae-baby oyster orphans looking for a home in which to settle down and grow up. Soon there is a “chain reaction of spawning, which sweeps across the oyster beds, turning the water milky white with millions of eggs and with clouds of sperm,” said Alice Jane Lippson and Robert Lippson in “Life in the Chesapeake Bay.”Īll the while, you are sipping a beer and eating a picnic lunch above! Oyster moms and dads on reefs everywhere spawn in early summer and warming water temperatures stimulate males and females to release their sperm and eggs into the water. If you are out on a boat this weekend, picture this scene in the life and times of oysters taking place in the water below you. While we are sitting here enjoying a July 4th holiday weekend, oysters are hard at work in the Lynnhaven River and beyond, making baby oysters to keep the waterways clean.
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