P.E.I. hatchery says it's produced 1st MSX-resistant oyster seed in Canada
CBC
A hatchery in western Prince Edward Island says it has produced the first batch of MSX-resistant oyster seed in the country, but at least one expert says it's still too early to determine those results.
The Bideford Shellfish Hatchery is located in the heart of P.E.I.'s wild oyster production region, which has been hit hard by the parasite.
Multinuclear sphere X, or MSX, is harmless to humans but can be deadly to oysters. Since it was first detected in Island waters in July 2024, it has devastated stocks in some areas, including the famed Bedeque Bay.
The Bideford hatchery's new batch of seed — essentially young oyster larvae that are used to start new beds or reefs — have a connection to Bedeque Bay. It's one of the places where oysters were collected for the hatchery's breeding program.
Guy Perry, a geneticist and the hatchery's manager, calls the seed "survivors" — and the theory is that they are the best hope for producing MSX-resistant oysters.
"Our expectation is they should have the most resistance of any [oysters] on the Island, or even in Atlantic Canada," Perry said.
"Essentially, the sites we picked them from have the most infected status of any of the sites currently in Bedeque Bay."
Perry said he's basing resistance on the oysters' projected rate of survival, which he estimates to be in the 70 per cent range for the hatchery's new seed.
The Bideford breeding program is the same type of system used on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States after MSX was discovered there decades ago. Perry said seed in that area have shown 89 per cent resistance.
"Chesapeake Bay, Virginia, Long Island Sound, they all went exactly the same way where they took survivors of outbreaks and bred them into the system to produce a stock line."
The hatchery is located in the Bideford River Marine Centre.
It was originally a federal government research station focused on the oyster industry before it was transferred to the Lennox Island Development Corporation in 2014.
It relaunched it as a hatchery a few years later.
Adrian Desbarats is an aquaculture business development advisor with Ulnooweg, a not-for-profit that supports Indigenous fisheries initiatives. He's been an adviser to the Bideford hatchery since 2015.
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