Individual batches of mussel spat were split among eight marine farms to assess whether any appear to be better for spat retention and growth.
By splitting single batches of spat we reduced some of variability in spat condition and seeding practices that can make it difficult to determine good farms for growing spat.
We found that one farm was better for spat retention than all the others and one farm produced bigger spat.
Prior to the spat deployment, each of the eight farms had been graded by mussel farmers as being good, average or poor for spat retention. We found that spat on farms that were predicted to be poor for their retention and growth performed similarly to the good sites. This suggests that it might be possible to grow spat successfully at previously overlooked farms. Further deployments of spat will be used to verify these findings.
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