Coastal Conversations Radio Program: Rebuilding Native Oyster Reefs
Coastal Conversations show: August 28, 2026
WERU 89.9 in Blue Hill and 99.9 in Bangor
Hosts
Keegan Claunch, assistant producer and student at College of the Atlantic
This Episode
Imagine a construction crew that can’t move, takes no lunch break, and still somehow gets the job done. Meet the oyster. Oysters are native to Maine, and throughout history ranging from 30,000 years ago to present day, they’ve had unique experiences on our coast. We used to have huge, complex living ecosystems known as oyster reefs that inhabited our coast, providing water quality benefits, habitat for a wide variety of marine organisms, and coastal erosion mitigation. For the last thousand years, those benefits from wild populations of oysters have been absent, but with the help of the Basin Oyster Project, the coastal ecology of Maine is slowly being brought back to what it once was thousands of years ago.
This is Keegan Claunch, assistant producer for Coastal Conversations and student at College of the Atlantic. Coastal Conversations is supported by Maine Sea Grant in partnership with the Schoodic Institute and The First Coast. Tune in on August 28th at 4pm to tune in to this month’s episode of Coastal Conversations, only on WERU community radio, 89.9fm in Blue Hill and online at WERU.org
Guests
Sarah Risley – PhD Graduate from UMaine
Sarah Zuidema – Bar Harbor Oyster Company Facilities Manager, Marine Biologist
Dot Kelly – Basin Oyster Project participant, Phippsburg Conservation Commission member