Nantucket Oyster Upweller

Oyster Upweller Project and Background

The Nantucket Land & Water Council has teamed up with local Nantucket High School student, Carley Ray to earn her Girl Scout Gold Award, which is the highest award you can earn in scouting. She decided to do her project on oysters because she loves being on the water and working with the aquatic environment. With the help of her father, Carley constructed an oyster upweller that grows oysters and cleans Nantucket Harbor water.

How the Upweller Works

An oyster upweller works by taking in water from a nearby body of water, usually the ocean, and runs through an intake pipe that inserts unfiltered water into a tank. Most upwellers consist of silos which are buckets that hold oysters and allow them to grow. Once the water enters the tank and fills to a certain level, pipes that are connected to the silos take in water and circulate the algae from the ocean to feed the baby oysters. As the oysters and spat (baby oysters) feed, the water is emptied into a trough that dumps filtered, clean water through the outflow pipe back into the ocean.

Become a Shellfish Hero and Volunteer! Help Us Operate Our Oyster Upweller! 

Since oysters are filter feeders actively drawing water from Nantucket Harbor, they can get a little mucky. Algae can also grow in the upweller itself, creating less than ideal conditions for the oysters. So each morning throughout the upweller season (June-August) we have a volunteer (or two, or three!) come down to open the upweller, pull the oyster silos out, and hose them down with clean fresh water. We also take this time to scrub the inside of the tank and get rid of any algae. Once cleaned up, we put the oysters back, begin running the water through again, and close/lock the lid. All in all, this takes about 20 minutes and we'll show you how! Volunteer for a day or the whole summer; either way, you're helping improve our Harbor for everyone!