In 1997 I was asked to participate in the creation of a 'Swansea Night' to celebrate our city's history. There were a number of powerful folk songs from which to draw but I felt the need for something more. What was required was a song free of history's hazy romance that showed Swansea in the clear light of the post industrial present. If possible it should offer hope for the future.

Swansea, and particularly Mumbles village to the west of the city, has a long association with oysters. The area saw commercial oyster fishing dating from roman times until the early twentieth century. Even as late as the 1950s I remember the skeleton keels of the old oyster boats quietly disintegrating where they had been abandoned just below the high tide mark. They still had their uses then of course: as jumping off points for children when the tide was right.

It seemed to me that what had once been could be again. 'Why' I reasoned, as Swansea tried its best to recover from post war industrial decline , 'shouldn't the oyster industry be revived? Maybe that could be part of a new future for the city?'

So I wrote Oyster Blues. (If you want to hear it click here ). And played it at various gigs in the UK and Europe. It nearly always went down well. Even in Lincolnshire - where oysters are few and far between. But h ow to achieve the return of the oysters I didn't have a clue. I had written the song. That was as far as I could go.

You can imagine my excitement then when my good friend Noemi Thomas showed me a piece in the South Wales Evening Post about marine biologist and shell fisheries expert Dr Andy Woolmer's Native Oyster Restoration Project at Mumbles.

The Mumbles Oyster Company Ltd. is aiming to reintroduce native oysters ( Ostrea edulis ) back on to derelict oyster beds off Mumbles in Swansea Bay. The company, set up by Andy and working closely with Cambridge University scientists, is planning on relaying over 10,000 juvenile oysters on to the seabed in a ranching operation that aims to restore the fishery and wider population.

Dr Woolmer openly admits that this project, the first of its kind in Europe where a commercial aquaculture operation is working with scientists to restore a threatened species on a commercial basis, has no guarantee of success. But then, I guess thats science for you.

As far as I am concerned I only wish him well as he realises a dream I had 15 years ago.