Tommy Ward answers his cell with a “Yello?” and I explain why I’m calling. I want his take on oysters in Apalachicola, and he’s as good as any to ask. Owner of 13 Mile Seafood, he’s worked the fertile waters of Apalachicola Bay for most of his life. His voice is heavy with frustration-laced sadness as it comes over the line.

“I feel the wild-culled Apalachicola oysters are a thing of the past,” he says.

The water war that’s raged between Alabama and Florida on one side and Georgia on the other for decades has taken a toll on Apalachicola and its oystermen. As an ever-growing Atlanta uses more and more fresh water, less makes it down to Apalachicola Bay, increasing its salinity. More salt means more predators picking off oysters before tongers can get to them, and many oystermen have given up.

“It’s depressing,” Ward says. But he’s still determined, and he’s giving farming a go, currently testing several methods to see which works. “I’m doing floating baskets off-bottom and also putting some on the bottom and looking at mortality rates and growth. I have to know what’s best for here before I make any more investment.”

Where Walton preaches the benefits of oyster aquaculture to anyone who’ll listen (including Ward), Ward has gone about his experiments quietly, knowing that many of the attitudes in his area are not with him.

“A lot of the old-timers here are already done, and most of the younger ones, they don’t want anything to do with oyster farming,” he says. “The county officials are against it too, but I’ve got my leases and my aquaculture license so they can’t stop me from trying.”

“It’s a shame to see the mentality that it has to be one way or the other,” Walton says. “It doesn’t.” I tell him Ward sees farming as Apalachicola’s future. “It could be part of it; biologically it should work, but if it’s not a cultural fit, it won’t,” Walton says.

And that’s true anywhere. “You have to have individuals willing to do it and a community that’s behind them,” Walton says. “I’d love to see all our fishing communities on the Gulf get onboard because it provides another way for young people to make a living off the water.”

In Alabama, you can’t make a living tonging oysters, and it’s becoming near impossible in Apalachicola too. “We’re going to lose the tradition entirely if we don’t provide some options for the next generation,” Walton says. “I want to see boats working our bays, and I’m not too particular about exactly how they are doing it.”

But some tongers don’t want to — or can’t—make the transition into being farmers. It’s a different mindset, a different lifestyle. There could be an answer for them too.

Sitting somewhere in the middle, the “spat on shell” concept combines farming with fishing. Hatchery spawn are set on old oyster shells in the lab (but not individually) and then added back to the bays, where they sink to the bottom and nature takes over. “So people who already have leases to harvest off the bottom have another way to get oysters.” It opens the door to people who don’t want to put out the time and money that off-bottom farming requires. It’s already being used for oyster reef restoration on the Atlantic coast and is being done in the Gulf off Louisiana as well as in Alabama, so the Shellfish Lab is researching ways to improve the process.