Huge Milestone as Stansbury’s Oyster Industry Reopens
After 241 long days of closure, Stansbury’s oyster industry is officially back in action. For local oyster farmer Steve Bowley, it’s a very welcome start to 2026.
“It’s certainly welcome, and well overdue,” Steve said. “Holy shit, we needed it.”
Steve and his wife Gerri own Pacific Estate Oysters, which spans 20 hectares of lease – home to two million Pacific Oysters, along with several thousand native Angasi oysters.
But 2025 very nearly marked the end of the road.
On May 4, the Bowley’s were preparing to sign over their business to new owners.
The next day, South Australia’s unprecedented algal bloom shut down oyster harvesting in the bay. The sale fell over, and just like that, Pacific Estate Oysters, along with the wider Stansbury oyster industry, was forced into limbo.
For more than eight months, there’s been no harvesting, no selling and no certainty.
On New Year’s Eve, came the news Stansbury oyster farmers had been hanging out for – no brevetoxin detected, and Oyster Bay was cleared to reopen.
“For us, it was the best possible way to finish a tough year,” Steve said.
While the bloom still lingers in pockets of SA, and current oyster closures remaining at Port Vincent and Kangaroo Island, Stansbury’s reopening marks a huge milestone.
In Steve’s 20 years farming oysters at Stansbury, closures have been rare and usually short.
“That’s what attracted me,” he said. “Stansbury just doesn’t close.”
For now, Pacific Estate Oysters will hold off a week or so before selling juvenile oysters commercially, but farm gate sales are officially back, operating from their oyster processing shed on Beachcroft Road, Stansbury.
And if all goes to plan, their popular ‘Deckie for a Day’ Oyster Bay tours won’t be far behind.
Overseas Testing Costing Local Producers
With the current algal bloom never before seen in Australian waters, samples are being sent to New Zealand, with a nine-day turnaround proving costly for Oyster famers, who are only now able to count the real cost of the eight month shut down.
Samples sent to New Zealand, which returned the zero percent brevetoxin, were taken on December 22.
“We were reopened at 3pm on New Years Eve,” Steve said. “Normally, over the Christmas/New Year period, we would’ve done probably fifty or sixty grand worth of sales. So that hurt”.
But amid the hard slog, one silver lining for then Bowleys has been the support from the Yorke Peninsula community.
“We’ve been humbled,” Steve said.
“From meals to money, you name it – people have really shown up. It’s been incredibly heartwarming.”
So if you’re looking for a simple way to back regional SA in 2026, here it is –
Oyster Bay is open. Stansbury oysters are back. Shuck in!
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