Miami friends launch oyster farm mission to restore Florida’s Gulf reefs

Added: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]Recent hurricanes, oil spills, and overh harvesting have decimated Florida's Gulf oyster populations, cutting off a key supply to South Florida businesses.

[00:00:08]>> But two Miami friends have a plan to bring it back in half the time and in a very unconventional place. Here's tonight's Don't Trash Our Treasure.

[00:00:26]An idea hatched in the South Beach nightclub scene.

[00:00:30]>> It's the most exciting thing I've ever worked on in my life. I've never done anything with so much momentum. Almost like a like a tree ring.

[00:00:37]>> An unlikely collaboration and a lofty goal.

[00:00:40]>> We are on a mission to save the Gulf oyster and localize oysters in the South Florida and Central Florida markets.

[00:00:51]High-end clubs, hotels, restaurants in demand of quality oysters. A club promoter and a former professional baseball player offering a solution.

[00:01:03]>> Everglades Oysters is the southernmost tropical farm in the United States. We are the biggest offbottom aquaculture farm in the Gulf. Fabio Galars teaming up with his spear fishing buddy Josh Wilkkey to launch Everglades oysters.

[00:01:19]>> We are the tropic oyster. The warm water oyster story is ours to tell.

[00:01:24]>> The duo pouncing on a 74 acre tract in the 10,000 island where the Everglades meets the Gulf.

[00:01:30]>> Here we are growing oysters on the top water column in water that is brackish coming off of the Everglades.

[00:01:37]>> Josh Wilkkey is a former major league pitcher. He grew up around oysters in South Carolina and came to South Florida as part of the local tech scene. But an unexpected opportunity brought him back to his roots.

[00:01:51]>> We have the water quality here is exceptional. It is of the temperature that the oysters thrive.

[00:01:58]>> Because of these conditions, the oysters here grow six times faster than some of the more famous northern farms. And they can grow year round in a unique way.

[00:02:10]It's called flip farm equipment. It's very cutting edge. Essentially allows us to bring all the tumbling and all the processing of an oyster and handling out here and using the wave energy and natural energy of the ocean.

[00:02:24]>> The quality, quantity, and local sourcing winning over chefs all over the region.

[00:02:29]>> We're well on our way to over a 100 restaurants that we work with in South Florida. Our goal is to have hundreds by the end of this year.

[00:02:38]Everglaze Oysters not only supplies Michelin star restaurants like here at Stubborn Seed on South Beach, but they also collect the empty shells to use for a much bigger purpose. We give the chefs buckets with lids, right? And they collect the shells as they're consuming them in the restaurant. When our driver comes the following week to pick up to do a delivery, they'll pick up the consumed shells.

[00:02:59]>> The collected shells are brought here to an avocado farm in Homestead where they're quarantined and dried in the sun for 6 months. Fundamentally, the biggest benefit is keeping the shells out of the trash because they don't they don't incinerate. They weigh a lot. They're a big burden on the trash system.

[00:03:18]>> The empty shells can be repurposed in many ways, but for Everglades oysters, the mission is far more urgent.

[00:03:25]>> The big overarching goal is to save the Gulf oyster. Over 90% of the of the oyster reefs in the wild are functionally extinct. The endgame to repopulate Florida's coastal oyster beds. Oyster larvae instinctively smell empty shells and a thriving oyster population means cleaner waters.

[00:03:44]>> That oyster is filtering and sequestering nitrogen carbon. 50 gallons of water is being filtered by each oyster day.

[00:03:50]>> The early success is fueling plans for a massive scale up and a belief that can help reshape Florida's coastal ecology for generations to come. This year we plan on planting more than 2 million oysters. So by 2027 there's going to be an abundance of oysters from the Everglades in South Florida.

[00:04:10]It's a perfect mix of everything I love.

[00:04:12]I know oysters just from how I grew up and I, you know, we have this really cool mission to not only just sell a great product, but also, you know, do something environmentally impactful and meaningful and um, you know, giving me a lot of purpose with with what I'm doing. Cheers.

[00:04:33]>> Pretty cool. The success of Everglades oyster farms should not come as a surprise. 2,000 years ago, the Kousa tribe of natives built their culture and their islands around oysters and their shells. They credit the nutrients that flow from the Everglades to the Gulf as the perfect ingredient for the oyster's health and rapid growth.