2024-2025 Oyster Gardening Season Recap
The Baltimore Oyster Partnership works to restore oyster populations through oyster gardening. With the help of our volunteers, we install oyster habitats around the Baltimore Harbor where they grow to maturity and then we plant them at a protected oyster reef in the Patapsco. At the beginning of August, we just wrapped up our final boat trips planting the last of our oysters from this season. So let’s take a look at what we did!
16 Oyster Habitats Across the Baltimore Harbor
In Fall 2024, our volunteers helped us install 16 different oyster habitats all around the Baltimore Harbor. These include our corporate oyster gardens, which are “adopted” by their own team of volunteers who work with us from installation to planting to maintain these oysters’ habitats; as well as our public oyster gardens, where volunteers can sign up to join us for installation, cleaning, and planting days.
Across these 16 sites, our volunteers installed a total of 530 Oyster Cages containing 59,625 total oysters. Once they are installed, the spat (baby oysters) on these shells grow to maturity in the Baltimore Harbor- while filtering the water around them and improving water quality!
232,324 Spat Planted in their Forever Homes
Baby oysters are called spat, and each planting boat ride we do a spat count. Each oyster shell can contain multiple spat- we counted up to 28 spat on a shell this season! With the help of our awesome volunteers, we planted 232,324 total spat this season.
On a boat planting day, our volunteers join us at one of the oyster gardens around the harbor. There, they pull up the cages from the Harbor, transfer the oysters from their cage to the boat, and transport them to Fort Carroll, a protected reef where the oysters will live out the rest of their days.
714 Volunteers
We couldn’t have done those numbers alone! We had the help of 714 total volunteers this season, and they helped us with every step of the process- installation, cleaning, and planting.
Where did our volunteers come from? All over Baltimore! We had volunteers from local corporations, schools, and neighborhoods.
We work with Baltimore business to adopt and maintain their own oyster gardens, and volunteers from those businesses care for those oysters.
A BIG thank you to our partners this past season:
Brown Advisory
BGE
T Rowe Price
Morgan Stanley
RK&K
WRA
DHH
Beatty
Patagonia
So now that these oysters have been planted, what’s next? The 2025-2026 Oyster Gardening season kicks off in September! Are you ready to get involved?
