How this week’s wild storms might affect your Christmas Day lunch

Oyster farmers along the New South Wales south coast fear the worst for their Christmas sales as heavy rainfall and flooding has closed leases just weeks out from the busy festive harvest.

Pambula oyster farmer Roy Glessing cannot harvest his oysters until enough saltwater returns to his lease to equalise salinity levels, after 250 millimetres of rain fell over two days.

“It’s hard to say if we’ll be open at Christmas,” he said.

Mr Glessing’s lease is one of more than 80 oyster farms along the south coast between the Shoalhaven and the Victorian border currently closed to harvesting. Every estuary south of Sydney is currently closed to harvest.

The closed estuaries account for almost 60 per cent of NSW’s total oyster production.

Oysters filter the water they live in, and bacteria or salt in the water can effect their health. As a result, waterways are closed for harvest when levels are considered unsafe.

‘Flip of a coin’

Mr Glessing said the key determining factor for whether he would be able to harvest for Christmas was the amount of rainfall in the coming weeks.

“It’s flip a coin, I’d say,” he said.

Mr Glessing ships oysters to Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. He said the damage caused by the recent storms could influence supply in capital cities over summer.

While that would be disappointing for consumers, he said it would be a major financial blow for oyster farmers.

“A lot of the local farmers rely on that cash flow around Christmas. It’s a peak time to be selling oysters.

“It’s going to hit the farmers in the pocket.”

For Mr Glessing, it’s an all too familiar situation.

“We were still recovering from the floods in March 2021,” he said.

“We were looking to be back on track. Now we’re back to square one.”

Mr Glessing spent Thursday morning towing big logs from his lease — much of the debris is cut wood and burn piles left by communities upstream making bushfire preparations. 

“There’s at least two weeks of work ahead of us just to clean up the immediate damage before we even start looking at calculating our losses,” he said.

‘Huge loss for the industry’

Industry support officer for Sapphire Coast Wilderness Oysters Anna Simmonds said that while in the short term, oyster farmers may miss out on Christmas business, the damage toll could stretch well into the new year.

“It’s all in a big jumble and a big mess. It’s a big clean up job,” Ms Simmonds said.

“There are thousands of oyster bags missing.

“There is still more flow coming down, and there is still more rain forecast.”

The Bureau of Meteorology has predicted showers on the south coast this weekend before a dry start to the week.

“We are farmers, and we are at the mercy of mother nature,” Ms Simmonds said.

Tight regulations assure quality

Further north, oyster leases on the Bhudaroo Clyde River at Batemans Bay received 200mm of rain over 10 hours, turning the usually glittering turquoise waters murky brown.

Rainfall of 40mm was considered enough to push salinity outside safe levels and to close the river.

Oyster farmer and coordinator of the Clyde River quality insurance program Jim Yiannaros said the Department of Primary Industries’ tight regulations on water quality for harvesting guaranteed oyster quality.

Mr Yiannaros said big tides over summer flushed out the river system and could restore a healthy river sooner than anticipated. However, whether oyster farmers could sell produce for Christmas was on a knife’s edge.

“Now it’s a waiting game,” he said.

“If all the moons line up for us — and the big tides — and we don’t get any rain, the earliest we will open is in three weeks. [That’s] probably about four days before Christmas. That is if everything lines up.”