PORT Macquarie's oyster farmers have potentially lost thousands of dollars because of the weekend's wild weather.
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Floodwater and howling winds have put the profits of one of the town's mainstay industries at risk, and the damage could affect production for years to come.
The farmers were taking stock of the situation on Monday, assessing infrastructure and searching for bags of missing oysters which were in the early stages of the three-year cycle.
They gathered on punts in the Hastings River, throwing all the bags they could find into a giant pile on one of the leases.
David Tunstead estimated about 3000 bags to still be missing. There are about $80 worth of oysters in each bag.
The wind and run-out tide means many of the bags could be on the wrong side of the bar.
The real cost would come in at the end of the cycle in about three years, with millions of oysters at risk.
"The catch now could be in jeopardy," Mr Tunstead said.
Blackman's Point farmer Charlie Dick agreed the costs could be devastating.
"The stock loss could be massive," he said.
It's heartbreaking for Robert Van Breenen, who lost about half a million dollars damage in the last flood in 2013.
"It's part of farming, you're changing systems all the time," he said. "We're getting better, but we still can't win."
Damage to the leases themselves would have more serious complications for the producers.
"If the slats are smashed, it's going to be serious," farmer Paul Wilson said.
The worst case scenario, Mr Wilson said, would be 50 million oysters lost over three years.
That's bad news for the Sydney industry.
"We're the major stock supplier for the Sydney rock oysters," Mr Wilson said.
Mr Wilson said he and the other farmers would know more in the next week, but already, he guessed he'd lost about $30,000 to $40,000 in stock.