P.E.I. hatchery says it's produced 1st MSX-resistant oyster seed in Canada
Bideford operation developed seed from oysters that survived Bedeque Bay outbreak
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 whether that is so.
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 — has 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 oysters from Bedeque "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."
There is a lot more infrastructure, a lot more labour that is required to produce an MSX-resistant seed.— Adrian Desbarats, Ulnooweg
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 adviser with Ulnooweg, a not-for-profit that supports Indigenous fisheries initiatives. He's been advising the Bideford hatchery since 2015.
Desbarats said the hatchery will produce about 25 million oyster seed this year, with plans to increase production to around 90 million over the next few years.
After that, he said, the breeding program will probably need more support from the provincial and federal governments to further ramp up its production.
"There is a lot more infrastructure, a lot more labour that is required to produce an MSX-resistant seed," Desbarats said.
"If we could get some recognition of that and support to help us achieve that MSX-resistant seed, to get it out to the industry, that would be very helpful."
According to the P.E.I. Shellfish Association, 72 million oysters were sold on P.E.I. in 2023.
'Wait-and-see' approach
The Bideford breeding program has been attracting attention, including from scientists in Atlantic Canada who study oysters.
Eric Ignatz, a post-doctoral fellow in the marine affairs program at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said if the Bideford hatchery can prove the seed is MSX-resistant, that would be a first in the country.
But that can be tricky, he said, because there is so little known about the parasite and how it's spread, especially in Canada.
Ignatz will be doing research on MSX this summer in Cape Breton and on Prince Edward Island.
"I would view the field-work components as kind of a critical first step to identify oysters in natural beds or on farms that would have been exposed to MSX over the past year, breeding those oysters that you at least suspect are resistant or tolerant," he said.
"It's hard to tell whether oysters that you're spawning this year are going to be resistant or tolerant to MSX."
Bob MacLeod, president of the P.E.I. Shellfish Association, said they're taking a "wait-and-see" approach to the results from the Bideford seed, and what kind of MSX resistance they have.
The association is also taking some action of its own. It's had an enhancement program that grows oysters to be released back in the wild to replenish the stocks for years now.
Staff are also adding a nursery, and are hoping to buy some of the seed from the Bideford hatchery to study how to grow it.
Perry is hoping the Bideford program will be successful.
"It's a fair degree of pressure, it's a deep sense of responsibility to the community," he said.
"There's a lot of people that are very, very afraid right now. And I hate to see that. I really do. We're doing the absolute best we can, as fast as we can to deal with the problem."
The hatchery has buyers for about half of the 25 million seed it's produced this year, and the rest will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.
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