THE 12th annual Oyster Festival in Weymouth gets under way on Sunday.

It is a unique fun-filled harbourside event sponsored by Abbotsbury Oysters, Brewers Quay and the Excise House pub.

There will be live musical entertainment, competitions, side-shows and stalls plus oysters galore at the seafood bar and seafood cooking demonstrations from staff at Swansons Restaurant to tempt the tastebuds.

There will be live music from Blueriff and Trouble in Mind throughout the day. There will also be fun and laughter with Keeko the Clown and face-painting for the children.

The event is set in and around picturesque Brewers Quay and Hope Square.

The event kicks off at 11am and lasts until 5pm.

The festival is a tribute to that mighty mollusc, the oyster, which has inhabited the Fleet lagoon for thousands of years.

With its pristine, sheltered waters, minerals and nutrients and abundant supply of plankton, the Fleet is an ideal home for these peculiar little shellfish which are accredited with lowering blood pressure and curing liver problems.

They are also renowned as a fabled aphrodisiac due to their high zinc content.

Their presence is the Fleet was recorded in the 11th century by King Canute's trusty servant Orc when he was handed the fishing rights to the area.

'There is little fish in the Flete except eels, flounders and grey mullet, but it is noted for its oyster beds', he wrote.

The first oyster farm was established at the Fleet in the 18th Century when a Captain Lysle put 30 tons of seed oysters in the water at a cost of £50 6s 6d.

He used the European Flat oyster which took five to six years to grow to a marketable size, and he was probably the first man to establish a successful oyster farming business.

The business fell into decline when a fever isolation hospital was built at Ferrybridge in 1880 and the waters were deemed to be unfit for growing and selling shellfish.

It was not until the 1970s when it was suggested that oysters could again be grown on the bed of the Fleet, but it took 20 years for oyster farming to again become a thriving business.

Neville Copperthwaite, who ran a lobster hatchery and tourist complex at Portland Bill until 1987, targeted a map in the market he believed he could fill and spent three years carrying out trials to test the viability of the scheme.

As a result of the trials a new business was born called Abbotsbury Oysters, partly owned by the Ilchester Estates, controlled by the descendants of Sir Giles Strangways who had been given the fishing rights to the Fleet by Henry VIII.

The Ferrybridge-based business made waves in the UK and it was Mr Copperthwaite who masterminded the first oyster festival in Weymouth in 1991 to promote the humble mollusc by giving people who had never tasted oysters the chance to taste them in a variety of guises.

Mr Copperthwaite said: "They don't have to be just eaten raw, but can be cooked in a variety of ways like other shellfish."

He recommended sprinkling them with cheese and popping them under a hot grill for a minute.

Held in conjunction with Brewers Quay the festival was traditionally held on the Sunday of the spring bank holiday, the day before the Trawler Race.

This year it is happening on Sunday as part of the spectacular weekend of events celebrating the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

Mr Copperthwaite has since left Abbotsbury Oysters and the business was sold by the Ilchester Estates in 1994 to River Exe oyster farmer David Jarrad.

The festival continues in much the same vein and the shellfish continue to be sold to customers throughout the UK and Europe.

Despite a bulging order book Abbotsbury Oysters employs just a handful of staff and still relies on traditional methods to rear its oysters on its five-acre site which can hold two million oysters at a time.