2023 Start-Up Rainmaker Do zinc anodes protect against cadmium accumulation in juvenile oysters?

This pilot study will determine if attaching a sacrificial zinc anode near the baskets containing juvenile oysters will allow Zn uptake to exclude Cd. If so, a larger project would use the magnitude of differences in Zn/Cd between treated and untreated to design a statistically robust experiment. We would also finetune this process, such as integrating zinc into the baskets or on the longline stakes in a way that is unobtrusive, and learn more about the ages of oysters that this will work with. How we release this information would also be a key aspect of a larger project. Already zinc anodes are used in cray pots so it’s not unknown – plus there’s no limit to Zn levels for human consumption. We’d have to be sure they were similar to other levels in oysters world-wide, plus we have seen marketing where the Zn in oysters is touted as a supplement and reinforce how good oysters are to protect against colds etc. The real world impact will be to remove the block to sell north Australian TROs as is currently the situation.