{"id":347584,"date":"2026-06-23T21:39:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T21:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/347584\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T21:39:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T21:39:14","slug":"new-drone-method-could-boost-oyster-restoration-along-texas-coast-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/347584\/","title":{"rendered":"New drone method could boost oyster restoration along Texas Coast \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Agricultural<\/p>\n

Provided by Justin Woody<\/p>\n

Oyster harvesting company Jeri’s Seafood worked with Palacios Marine Agriculture Research to release one million baby oysters into East Galveston Bay using an agricultural drone on June 12, 2026.<\/p>\n

A new drone-centric method could lead to quicker and easier oyster restoration on the Texas Coast amid a growing need<\/a> across the Texas Coast. <\/p>\n

On June 12, oyster harvesting company Jeri’s Seafood worked alongside Palacios Marine Agriculture Research<\/a> to release one million baby oysters into East Galveston Bay on privately leased areas using an agricultural drone. The tiny oysters were spread across five acres in a matter of 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

The hope is that, given four to six months, the oysters will grow big enough to harvest. If it works, Justin Woody, vice president of Jeri’s Seafood, said using the drone to drop oyster seeds could be a game changer for oyster restoration.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re hopeful that it\u2019s successful and that it works and it adds another tool in the toolbox to help oyster restoration efforts in Texas, whether it\u2019s through a harvestable commercial setting or a non-harvestable reef,” Woody said.<\/p>\n

Woody said the entire Texas coast has seen a decline in oyster populations for a multitude of reasons, including Mother Nature, harvesting, or man-made diversions such as damming up a river, which he said can change the habitat and be deadly for oysters.<\/p>\n

“Now there\u2019s a big push to \u2018How do we mitigate that problem, how do we get our populations back up?’ And this isn\u2019t the cure-all, but if it works and it\u2019s effective, it\u2019s another tool in the toolbox to help with [restoration],” Woody said.<\/p>\n

According to Woody, there’s a possibility this was the first time hatchery-grown oyster seeds were deployed by drone at this scale for commercial oyster production. He said deploying hatchery-raised seed on the bay bottom wasn’t allowed for approved leases in Texas until 2025.<\/a><\/p>\n

The approval planted a seed of an idea for Woody.<\/p>\n

“Once we were allowed to do that, I\u2019ve been interested in deploying seed on my private leases to see how it does,” Woody said. “A lot of my buddies were in agriculture, rice farmers or whatever, and so I was like, \u2018Why not use a drone to do it? It should be pretty quick and efficient.'”<\/p>\n

Woody said deploying hatchery-grown oyster seed by drone is more cost-efficient than some existing restoration efforts, and if it works, could also benefit commercial oyster harvesting.<\/p>\n

“If it works on a commercial standpoint, if you can go put seed out and you have a bunch of single oysters grow out, that\u2019s really good for market,” Woody said.<\/p>\n

However, the method has yet to be fully tested at a larger scale. It will be a few months before Woody will see if using the drone to drop seeds can be a long-term tool on the road to restoration.<\/p>\n

“My goal with that is number one just to test to see how well it works. Nobody really knows how many seeds you should put to the acre, what size, what the survival rate\u2019s going to be,” Woody said. “I will start sampling these when they get big enough where I can catch them in tongs or a dredge and see what the density is and then how [they\u2019re] growing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Provided by Justin Woody Oyster harvesting company Jeri’s Seafood worked with Palacios Marine Agriculture Research to release one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[50415,6073,2327,7216,26766,2388,124064,124065,66,223,31849,124066,14042,40225,50179,27,45498,29,28,2603],"class_list":["post-347584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-commercial","tag-drone","tag-environment","tag-galveston","tag-galveston-bay","tag-harvest","tag-hatchery-raised","tag-jeris-seafood","tag-local","tag-news","tag-oysters","tag-palacios-marine-agriculture-research","tag-restoration","tag-seed","tag-test","tag-texas","tag-texas-coast","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-parks-and-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}