Indigenous oyster fisheries were ‘fundamentally different’: Q&A with researcher Marco Hatch

According to a new study, Indigenous communities in North America and Australia sustainably managed oyster fisheries for more than 5,000 years before Europeans and commercial fisheries arrived.

The knowledge of these traditional practices can guide sustainable fisheries management today, say the authors of the study.

Mongabay interviewed Dr. Marco Hatch, one of the authors of the study, about traditional oyster and clam farming practices, existing threats to oysters, and Indigenous-led restoration efforts.

Dr. Marco Hatch, a marine ecologist and a member of the Samish Indian Nation, is an author of the study and has explored the Indigenous aquaculture practices in the Pacific Northwest coast, from Puget Sound through the Central Coast of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska. His Coastal Communities and Ecology Lab at the Washington Western University probes some of the ‘ecological tools’ that Indigenous communities have used for thousands of years to improve their harvest and increase the biomass of oysters and clams.

His work has also helped revive the populations of Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida), the only native oyster on the US west coast. They are a cultural delicacy and ceremonially important oyster for the Indigenous peoples living along the Pacific Northwest coast. By the 1900s, due to over-harvesting and habitat degradation, these oysters almost went extinct. Hatch’s research helped understand where Olympia oyster larvae travel as they grow and if they could settle in different restored locations to improve their genetic diversity.