Presence of the Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas Thunberg, 1793) in the Black Sea

OpenAlex English

Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) is a highly commercial species with the highest production rate in aquaculture in the world. This species has been raised on the Crimean and Romanian Coasts since 1980s with reports of potentially breeding wild populations in those regions. However, the presence of this species on Turkish Coast of Black Sea are literally unknown. Therefore, here we investigated the occurrence, population density and the size-age structure of the wild colonies of C. gigas on Ordu Coasts. We found that C. gigas has created breeding populations on the Turkish Coasts with becoming the dominant species on some hard substrate including rocky bottoms and large rocks that were used for the fulfillment of the coastal regions to gain more land. Further, the population density was 94.58 ind./m2 with an average shell length of 3.33 + 0.724 cm. Our results here showed that C. gigas has adapted to the Turkish Coasts of Black Sea with creating breeding populations, therefore a management plan should be applied in order to reduce potential influence of this on the natural species.