Oyster Phenotypic Data Gathering

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Materials

  • Trays

  • Shucking knife

  • Weighing scale

  • Foil tin boats (1/ oyster)

  • Mini Whirl-Paks (1/ oyster)

  • Brown paper bags (1/ population)

Pre-Dry

  1. Defrost oysters on the counter

  2. Label tins for each oyster to be processed

  3. Place an oyster in each tin

  4. Use calipers to measure the length and width of each oyster

  5. Shuck oysters open, leave shells in the tins, scrape out tissue onto paper towels

  6. Place an empty tin boat on the scale and zero it; then scrape oyster tissue onto the boat and record wet tissue weight. Once recorded, scrape tissue into the tin with the shell if space, into a new labeled tin if more space is needed

    • keep all tins in orderly rows on trays

  7. Once all wet tissue weight is recorded, place trays into a drying oven at 55 C for ~ 20 hours

    • The temperature and length depend on the size of the oyster - these settings worked for oysters with wet tissue weight within the range of 0.05 - 3.00 g

During Dry

  1. Pre-label all mini Whirl-Paks needed to store the dry oyster shells

After Dry

  1. Remove trays from drying oven; tissue should be dehydrated and stiff

  2. Place an empty tin on the scale - zero it - then place the oyster shell in a tin and record the weight

  3. Place weighed shell into labeled Whirl-Pak

  4. Zero the scale with an empty tin on it again, then replace the empty tin with the tin with dry tissue in it, record the dry tissue weight

  5. Dispose of tissue