A company in Carteret County is recognized as the 2017 Rural Entrepreneur of the Year by the North Carolina Rural Center. Jared Brumbaugh has more.
Sandbar Oyster Company, developers of a biodegradable oyster substrate and living shoreline buffer, were recognized for having a significant impact in their local economy through job creation, sales, and revenue generation. The Morehead City based company received assistance from the Rural Center after Hurricane Matthew severely damaged their Oyster Catcher panels in the Newport River. CEO and co-founder Niels Lindquist says they will soon begin a project with the City of Jacksonville to create new oyster reefs in the White Oak River.
“So what we’re going to be doing with that project is using our material Oyster Catcher to catch oysters on our material that we put on the lower parts of the estuary where we get great recruitment, grow the oysters up, move those materials further up the river and create brood stock reefs.”
Oysters help improve water quality by filtering up to 50 gallons of water a day. Lindquist and co-founder David Cessna developed the patented oyster growing technology out of the University of North Carolina’s Institute of Marine Sciences in 2014.
