Flat oysters are in trouble. Once abundant in Europe, overharvesting, disease, and invasive species have threatened populations across the continent.
Some of the few remaining naturally occurring disease-free populations are in Sweden and Norway.
Recently, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries published a proposal to protect flat oysters in Norway. But local researchers believe more needs to be done to curb harvesting and ensure healthy populations remain intact.
The plight of the flat oyster
Flat oysters are native to Europe, and have been common in the region since prehistory.
“We can't even comprehend how abundant it was,” says Philine Zu Ermgassen, an independent consultant and Honorary Researcher at the University of Edinburgh who has spent the past decade working on flat oyster restoration in Europe. She and her team have done historical analyses and found that there were once tens of hectares of dense reefs with oysters “piled upon each other”.
However, around the 17th century, humans began to overharvest them, especially as royalty gained a newfo
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