Mr Wilde said the South East Local Land Services oyster industry partnership program’s recent win at the 2014 Green Globe Awards would attract the positive feedback the industry deserves.

The 2014 Public Sector Sustainability Award rewarded the South East LLS for the eight years spent in the industry to adopt an estuary-wide Environmental Management System (EMS) that improved sustainability and profitability within the oyster industry.

Mr Wilde said oyster farmers intimately understood estuaries because their livelihood depended on estuary health and productivity.

As such the industry has become a unique resource for managing estuarine environments.

It was noted at the awards that because of this, the South Coast was becoming widely recognised as one of the most sustainable oyster producing regions in Australia.

Mr Wilde said this was no news to him.

“We have been doing what we do for years,” he said.

“It’s great to receive that recognition for the South Coast industry.

“The oyster industry has really stepped up a gear and it’s looking great for the future.

“Recent rains have made this season’s oysters superb.”

Mr Wilde said he didn’t usually see or taste oysters so good until a week before Christmas.

“They have been plump and creamy since September.”

Local Land Services South East manager for land services Chris Presland said the award recognised the good work done by a range of groups and individuals over the past decade.

“They’ve all been working together to support the sustainability and profitability of the local oyster industry,” he said.

“It lays a solid platform on which to build future partnerships and programs to support the industry.”

Mr Wilde said South Coast oysters had such a strong reputation there was talk of exporting them.

“This is the best place for oysters and people know that,” he said. 

“But we don’t want to send them all overseas; we want people to come here.

“Keeping our product in the Shoalhaven is great for the tourism industry; they come here for the oysters.

“Now we’ve got this award – how good is that?”

At the moment it is the responsibility of oyster producers to test the estuaries for pollution, which has become increasingly expensive.

“We have a lot of things to take into accountability, rain run-off from the local farms – so cow manure and pesticides, boats, swimmers,” he said.

“We send those tests continuously to laboratories so we know we have the very best product, but it’s costly.

“Not many people know this, but once we have made the decision to close the estuaries from harvest because of these reasons, they cannot be re-opened until the labs give us the all clear.”

Mr Wilde hoped one day the industry would be compensated for this testing so it can lower oyster prices.

“In my opinion this extra cost has started to make oyster prices too dear, but we all need to meet our overheads.”

Shoalhaven City Council recently launched an online waterways monitoring system called Shoalhaven Aquadata.

Mr Wilde said if it improved the communication surrounding water quality it would be extremely beneficial to local oyster growers.

Aquadata displays water quality test results within a couple of days of completed laboratory analysis.