Oyster restoration project aims to rebuild UK’s once-thriving reefs

Overfishing and seabed trawling have decimated the native or common oyster in British waters

The native or common oyster, Ostrea edulis, has been almost wiped out in UK waters by overfishing and by trawling the seabed.

Its survival was not helped in the 1960s, by the already depleted species being replaced in restaurants and in oyster farms by the less tasty but larger and faster-growing rock oyster from Japan.