By contrast, these reefs declined by the late 19th century, despite production of oysters increasing due to continued large-scale oyster recruitment and the expansion of oyster cultivation in intertidal areas. During this initial phase, there was still a relative abundance of wild oyster, with subtidal oyster reef structures present in regions where oysters are today absent or scarce. Effectively, Australia's commercial oyster industry arose from Aboriginal-European trade. Aboriginal peoples featured as sole traders to Europeans, supplying oysters and becoming a substantial component of the industry's labour pool. Before the 1870s, there was a relative equilibrium. By integrating data from the archaeological, anthropological and fisheries literature, government and media accounts, we explore these transformations over the last two centuries. In this study, we reconstruct the transformations in the Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) wild commercial industry of central and southeast Queensland, and by extension its reef ecosystems, as well as the changing societal and cultural values related to the presence and use of the rock oyster through time. On the Australian continent, however, the transition from Indigenous (Aboriginal) to Westernized resource use and management occurred relatively recently, allowing us to map social-ecological changes in detail. The early timing of many of these changes makes it difficult to determine restoration targets which consider interdecadal timeframes, community values and shifted baselines. Oyster reef ecosystems used to form significant components of many temperate and subtropical inshore coastal systems but have suffered declines globally, with a concurrent loss of services. Our results highlight the potential importance of incorporating site‐specific, spatial attributes in the design of restored oyster reefs to maximize ecosystem services and functions provided by restoration efforts. The greatest variation in oyster density and size occurred at regional scales, suggesting that processes acting at larger spatial scales (e.g., water quality and/or climate) set the context for smaller scale influences on oyster characteristics. glomerata were related to spatial attributes occurring within‐patch (e.g., elevation), whole‐patch (e.g., shape) and landscape (i.e., connectivity) scales, but these relationships varied among estuaries. We then analyzed how population characteristics were further related to spatial attributes at smaller spatial scales including within‐patches (rugosity, distance to patch‐edge and elevation), whole‐patches (size and shape) and among‐patch (connectivity) within each estuary. We analyzed variation in population characteristics (densities, 95th percentile and median lengths of live oysters) of the Sydney rock oyster, Saccostrea glomerata, on remnant oyster reefs at regional scales (among three estuaries) along a ~250 km of coastline in New South Wales, Australia. Understanding the drivers of population characteristics of foundation species at multiple spatial scales is therefore critical for maximizing ecosystem functions of restored habitats. Population characteristics (e.g., density and body sizes) of foundation species can affect their own persistence and provisioning of ecosystem functions. Further studies are needed to discern whether these oyster gardens would also support larger and mobile fauna, such as species with commercial and recreational importance. Our study showed that oyster gardening can provide habitat for a range of invertebrate and fish species in the highly modified coastal environment of a canal estate. After one year of growth, polyculture cages supported higher abundances and species richness of both invertebrates and fish compared to the monoculture gardens. Oyster gardens consisting of plastic mesh cages were deployed with either three species of bivalves (polyculture), or exclusively Sydney Rock Oysters (monoculture) to investigate whether the habitat value differed between the two garden types. Australia's first oyster gardening programme was undertaken in a canal estate on Bribie Island in Moreton Bay, Queensland between October 2016 and November 2017. Besides the provision of adult oysters for restoration programmes, oyster gardening may also support other ecosystem services such as providing habitat for fishes and invertebrates as well as encouraging community involvement and citizen science. Oyster gardening is a community‐driven activity where oysters are grown in cages hanging off docks or other coastal infrastructure.
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