Ostrea chilensis

The dredge oyster or Bluff oyster, Ostrea chilensis, known in Chile as ostra chilena, the Chilean oyster, is a species of marine bivalve mollusc in the family Ostreidae. This species is native to Chile and New Zealand. Also, a self-sustaining population in the Menai Strait was deliberately introduced from the Fisheries Laboratory, Conwy, during the 1960s as an experiment to establish if they could form an alternative to the native osyters Ostrea edulis in fisheries, when the species was shown to be unsuitable because of low recruitment and vulnerability to parasites and pathogens the experiment was abandoned. O. chilensis has now spread to other areas of the Menai Strait and is regarded as an invasive species.