![]() There is one thing that Wren didn’t have to figure out, a fact he was sure of before he ever got started. “I did quite a bit of research, and having worked on the bay for 18 years, I know it well,” he says. “When on top, we can flip them easier and mitigate that.” And Wren did a lot of homework pick his prized place. “We’re using floating bags and have learned that when they’re completely submerged, they foul really quickly,” Wren says. Brackin’s education background has been great on that project,” Wren says, They’re even learning to build their own gear. Under Wren’s and Brackin’s leadership, the students recently deployed 21,000 oysters in Apalachicola Bay. “They’re growing some oysters on our farm and area doing shoreline and wild oyster habitat restoration. The farm has partnered with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Division of Aquaculture’s education program and the Conservation Corps of the Forgotten Coast to give high school students in a sub-group called Oyster Corps hands-on learning experiences that teach habitat restoration and how a coastal community’s economy can be diversified with oyster aquaculture, while also exposing them to the career opportunities the industry is providing. He also brings a marine science background as well as some teaching skills, which actually come in handy on the farm too, since Rattlesnake Cove is committed to giving back to its community by sharing lessons learned. “I was already coming and helping Jeff on weekends, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever, so when he asked if my wife and I wanted to move down here and really do this, I said yes,” Brackin says. Todd Brackin joined Wren, and today, the duo is running Rattlesnake Cove fulltime. About eight months later, in April 2021, he pulled his first farmed oysters out. Finally, in 2019, he had all the approvals needed, and in 2020, he put his first oyster seed in the water. But he then hit another delay the spot he chose had never been leased before – it was virgin oyster farm territory – and that led to many months of back and forth with regulatory bodies. ![]() Wren was able to get the lease he needed to start his oyster farm in a Rattlesnake Cove, a secluded, protected part of the bay adjacent to St. And now, with the five-year moratorium on harvesting wild oysters from Apalachicola Bay that was enacted in 2020, oyster aquaculture is the only available option, at least for the next several years. In the years between his first foray into farming and his second, the gulf between the area’s traditional oystermen and those aspiring to start oyster aquaculture in the bay had been bridged. So, he waited, and in 2018, he tried again. “And I knew that this had to be a great spot to try it.” “It was still so new, and I just thought it was so interesting,” he says. It was his work with the Department of Ag that first piqued his interested in oyster farming. ![]() Wren kept clocking in at his day job, working as a marine scientist for the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve, and for various Florida state agencies, including the Florida Department of Agriculture, for the next five years. There were some who saw farming as competition for the wild harvest. “I tried in 2013 to get a submerged land lease, but everything was so charged around the issue,” he says. But while oyster farming was springing up and taking off in other Southern coastal waters, from the Atlantic to the Gulf, this famed oyster-centric spot opted to keep its focus on wild harvests. Today, the landscape, both figuratively and literally, has changed, and Rattlesnake Cove Oyster Company is evidence of just how much the tides have turned, as owner and founder Jeff Wren explains.
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