The Robert Lee At Work

Published: July 12, 2018

This is how 50 million oyster spat-on-shell planting gets done.

The oyster planting ship, The Robert Lee, brings up 11 million baby oysters on day on of Operation Build-A-Reef. The ship’s deck is chock full of oyster spat-on-shell from the Horn Point Hatchery in Cambridge, MD, which is run by the University of Maryland.

Once The Robert Lee’s captain gets a geo-fix on where the slected oyster reefs are located on the river bottom, he takes the ship on a zig-zag course over the reef, opens the side rails and “washes” the oysters to their new home.