Fairfield commissioners and conservation staff reviewed plans for oyster‑bed development, including spat collectors, upwellers and several options for placing shell in the estuary.

Commissioners described plans to deploy 30–40 spat collectors shortly after the clinic; Joan (a volunteer from Greenwich) and other volunteers plan to help coat and install collectors. The commission also discussed placing a small experimental patch of shell in deeper water to test whether spat will settle there.

A commissioner reported that a local operator, Jim Blum, had offered to place a thousand bushels of shell in a square test patch off Sasko Beach to evaluate settlement in deeper water. The commission discussed logistics for loading shell: shell is stored in large bunker blocks and can be loaded by front‑end loader into trucks and transferred to a vessel conveyor for placement.

Commission staff described a large regional shell stockpile (reported in the discussion at roughly 650,000 bushels) that could be available for larger bed building projects; commissioners discussed timing and approvals for any state or dredge‑material sites where shell might be placed. Commissioners also identified smaller, homeowner‑requested spots (one homeowner asked for 10–20 containers of shell behind a property creek) as low‑volume local placements conservation could support.

On aquaculture hardware, the commission expects upwellers to start in June if hatchery shell or seed are available. Members described how hatchery spat attach in tanks and are later transferred to trays and upwellers to grow big enough for field placement.