A BOATLOAD of shells has made a splash in Port Phillip Bay to not only clean the bay but help baby oysters and give shellfish a place to grow.
Volunteers at fish habitat charity OzFish, with the Victorian Fisheries Authority, is aiming to repurpose shell that would have otherwise gone to landfill. The group has teamed up with Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and with funding from Sustainability Victoria, OzFish is closing the loop on shellfish waste.
Once a week, OzFishers drive around to Mornington Peninsula restaurants and seafood wholesalers, collecting discarded oyster, mussel and scallop shells. The shell is then processed and cleaned at OzFish’s shell recycling centre in Flinders, before being return to the ocean six months later.
Last month, the first shell deployment saw 800kg of recycled shell put back in the water in Frankston, by members of the East Port Phillip Bay OzFish Chapter with more expected. On May 17, the team dropped a tonne of shell off a boat in Port Philip Bay.
OzFish Victoria manager Andy Foudoulis said, “We’re deploying sanitised shell into the bay, in a join-the-dots effort to create good conditions for shellfish and fish populations between existing artificial reefs – known as reef balls”. “Historically, a lot of the shellfish reefs were harvested out of the bay – it’s now just a lot of barren, sandy surface,” he said.
“The reef balls provide structure for fish, but they are often far apart and we’re changing that by forming connecting shellfish reef. We want baby oysters to settle into our reefs at spawning time.
“If they have nowhere to settle, they drift out to sea. Without baby oysters, formation of new reefs is basically impossible. No reefs mean nowhere for fish to feed and breed, so no fish, and without oysters the water isn’t as clean.” The reefs support shellfish to grow, in turn providing places for recreationally popular species such as snapper, King George whiting and calamari to hide, feed and breed.
Foudoulis said in the next two years, they would put ten tonnes of shell across six sites in the bay. “Shellfish reefs are essential for sustainable fish populations, the health of our waterways and better fishing. It’s a form of alchemy – transforming waste into more fish,” he said. “We’re encouraging local fishing clubs, divers and community groups to sign up to the Chapter. If you care about fish and fishing in the bay, this is your chance to give back.”
OzFish’s oyster reef restoration work in Queensland was recently granted a $1.5m in a pre-election pledge from the federal government.
First published in the Frankston Times – 27 May 2025