Oyster Shell Recycling in Franklin County: A Brief History
Shell recycling, or "cultch planting", is not a new idea. In fact, humans worldwide have used shell for cultch in oyster cultivation successfully for centuries, and those in Apalachicola for over one hundred years. As early as 1881, Florida statutes allowed lease holders to plant shell to grow oysters in the Bay, and by the late 1880s, John Ruge (of Ruge Brothers Canning Co. in Apalachicola and secretary-treasurer of the newly-formed Florida Fish Commission in 1889) joined in as he considered the practice vital to sustainable oyster harvest.
Local oyster recycling and cultch distribution by private and public entities in Apalachicola persisted for decades, with comprehensive management starting in 1913 with the creation of the Florida Shellfish Commission in the Department of Agriculture, continuing under different names and funded by different entities over the course of the 20th century. So much effort was put into restoration that by 1949, when the Florida State Board of Conservation's Oyster Division started a comprehensive oyster reef restoration program in Apalachicola Bay, little oyster shell could be found locally. As an alternative, people planted metal scrap to try to attract settling larvae. This practice failed abysmally and by 1950, metal was replaced with oyster cultch delivered by barge from Alabama.
Oyster shell recycling waxed and waned in the following decades. There was little activity between 1949 and 1967 due to limited funding, but a tremendous resurgence between 1967 and 1971, due to to increased interest in the economic value of oysters and the development of federal-state partnerships for subtidal reef rehabilitation. Shell deposition at that time varied from two feet thick over hardbottom to ten feet thick on soft bottom, with some success in sustaining harvests.
From the late 1960s through the 1990s, intensive harvesting and damage from storms (e.g., 1980s hurricane Elena & Kate; ) led to declines in oyster habitat, oyster landings, and the number of 
harvesters operating in the Bay. To help reverse this trend, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS) started an oyster resource monitoring and habitat restoration project in Apalachicola Bay in 1999, annually depositing oyster shells and other cultch materials on public commercially viable oyster reefs. Many residents considered then and still do that placing cultch in areas where oysters reproduce is one of the more effective measures for creating three-dimensional reef structure, stimulating spat set, and accelerating recovery, among other things.
The FDACS program ended in 2013, shifting oyster monitoring to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission while shelling ceased completely. This caused considerable dismay among residents who felt that cessation of the FDACS routine shelling program following severe budget cuts may have facilitated the oyster decline starting in the fall of 2012. These sorts of problems suggest that there needs to be an alternative approach to accumulating and distributing shell on a continual, routine basis.