Apalachicola Bay

Apalachicola Bay is a shallow estuary sheltered behind St. George, St. Vincent and Dog islands, where the Apalachicola River, the largest river in Florida by flow, meets the Gulf. The mix of river water and seawater made it one of the most productive oyster grounds in the country, and for generations the bay supplied the great majority of Florida's oysters. Oystermen worked it from small boats with long wooden tongs, a method that changed little in more than a century. The oysters depend on fresh water arriving from Georgia. The Apalachicola is formed by the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, and upstream reservoirs and the water supply of metropolitan Atlanta sit in its watershed. When drought and low river flow let the bay turn saltier in 2012, oyster predators and disease moved in and the fishery collapsed. In December 2020 the state closed the bay to wild oyster harvesting for five years to let the reefs recover, after years of partial closures. Florida had also sued Georgia over the river's flow, and in 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Florida. In January 2026 the state reopened a limited winter harvest, confined to reefs healthy enough to bear it, under a new endorsement for Apalachicola Bay oystermen. The bay is still one of the most important nurseries on the Gulf coast for shrimp, blue crab and finfish, and the river's floodplain above it is among the most biologically diverse places in the eastern United States.