Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown
HERB MEETING, Chesapeake Bay Herb Society “Oyster Shucking – With Herbs!”. 6:00pm Christ Church Hall, 111 S. Harrison Street, Easton. Speaker Patty Lake, award-winning shucker, on shucking and the history of oysters. Potluck supper featuring food and herbs from Scandinavia. 301-452-2813.
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The Upper Shore Regional Council (USRC), in partnership with the Kent County and Queen Anne’s County Oyster Committees and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR), is pleased to announce its Oyster Harvest Rotational Pilot Program. Bolstering the economic and ecological sustainability of the region, approximately 14 million oyster spat (oyster larvae) have been planted in a 4.5-acre section of water in the region. The initiative aims to create a self-sustaining oyster program to benefit commercial watermen and the aquatic ecosystem.
Commercial fishing is a $5 million dollar annual industry sector along Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Given its importance to the region, Jason Ruth, co-owner of Harris Seafood Co., who assisted with design and planting, hopes the project will generate revenues for watermen and pride in the waters that sustain them.
“The USRC project will help advance a new process for watermen to take a greater responsibility in maintaining a biomass of oysters while being able to be financially stable at the same time,” Ruth observed.
Funds generated from the first spat will fund the next set of spat plantings, eventually resulting in a self-sustaining oyster population. In recent decades, oyster populations have declined, due to overharvesting, pollution, and disease. As habitats for fish and crabs, oyster reefs provide nourishment and natural protection from predators. By creating new harvests and reefs, the program will restore the vitality of the ecosystem.
Christopher Judy, Director of the Shellfish Division for the Maryland DNR, emphasizes the project’s benefit to local waters. “There is a definite impact for both the Chester River and the local oystermen,” he noted. “The oysters planted on Coopers Hill will grow and enhance the oyster bar community of fish and a variety of invertebrates—worms, mud crabs, and shrimp included.”
This collaboration between state, regional, county, and commercial partners strives to make the oyster industry strong and habitats healthy.
“This partnership brings together expertise and resources for the benefit of our waters—and our watermen,” said Susan O’Neill, Executive Director of USRC. “When we combine efficiencies and ideas, we can solve regional challenges.”
Christopher Judy agreed. “The project is an example for others, showing how groups can work together to develop projects with both ecological and economic benefits. It doesn’t have to be a situation of ‘either/or,’ or ‘my way or the highway.’ It can be a team effort with diverse benefits.”
For updates on the Oyster Harvest Pilot Program, please visit the USRC website.
About the Upper Shore Regional Council
Since 2003, the Upper Shore Regional Council (USRC) has fostered planning and development in Cecil, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties. USRC affords federal, state, county, and local governments a regional forum to identify issues and opportunities. USRC plans and implements programs to improve the quality of life in the Upper Shore Region of Maryland.
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The Nature Conservancy announced today that its Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration program (SOAR) has planted more than 1.25 million oysters in the Chesapeake Bay since it kicked off in the winter of 2020. The program purchased oysters from local growers that were left with excess stock due to declining demand from restaurants during the pandemic, and then replanted them on sanctuary reefs in Eastern Bay, the Nanticoke River, and St. Mary’s River. The Nature Conservancy established the national program in partnership with Pew Charitable Trust. The effort in Maryland would not have been possible without support from Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources, University of Maryland Extension, and the Oyster Recovery Partnership.
“Not only did the SOAR program give us a much needed cash infusion, just as importantly it freed up space and equipment for the next generation of oysters,” said Choptank Oyster Company General Manager Kevin McClarren. “We depend on sales to make room on the lease and Covid put a stop to that. In the near future, continuing the program will help clear up a glut of oysters on the market. We’ll have two years of production to contend with driving prices down.”
“We’re truly grateful to the donors that helped the SOAR program support growers in our region during such a difficult time for the industry, while also helping restore several of the Chesapeake Bay’s critical sanctuary reefs,” said Tim Purinton, Executive Director of The Nature Conservancy in Maryland and D.C. “We hope this program can serve as a model for a new market for growers to continue selling their product while also supporting Bay restoration efforts.”
Nearly 1/3 of the national SOAR program’s funding went to purchases from Maryland growers around the Chesapeake Bay and resulted in the enhancement of 17 acres of oyster reefs at three different sanctuary locations. Nationally, the SOAR program has so far purchased more than 3.5 million oysters from 125 growers in the mid-Atlantic, New England, and Washington State.
This week, The Nature Conservancy also announced the recipients of the recently established Shellfish Growers Resiliency Fund, which was created in partnership with Pew, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), state management agencies, and shellfish growers’ associations. The fund will award $1 million in grants to 37 projects across 16 coastal U.S. states to support initiatives that encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion in the shellfish industry; diversify products and marketing streams; encourage grower participation in marine conservation efforts; and enhance sustainability of farming operations.
The Nature Conservancy is a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. Guided by science, we create innovative, on-the-ground solutions to our world’s toughest challenges so that nature and people can thrive together. We are tackling climate change, conserving lands, waters and oceans at an unprecedented scale, providing food and water sustainably and helping make cities more sustainable. Working in 74 countries, we use a collaborative approach that engages local communities, governments, the private sector, and other partners. Learn more about The Nature Conservancy’s work in Washington DC and Maryland at nature.org/maryland and follow us @Nature_DCMDVA on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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Amid indications that Maryland’s oyster population is on the rebound, state fisheries managers are easing some harvest limits they had imposed two years ago.
The Department of Natural Resources announced July 1 that it would permit commercial oystering Monday through Friday, ending the Wednesday harvesting ban.
The DNR also has proposed reopening most areas north of the Bay Bridge to harvesting in the upcoming season, which runs Oct. 1 through March 31, 2022. Only the Chester River would remain off-limits under the proposal, which is expected to be finalized in July.
Watermen welcomed the decision, though they had pressed for even more easing of the limits. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, though, called the announcement “a missed opportunity” that could undercut the recovery of the Bay’s oyster population.
Oysters are a keystone species in the Bay. They filter the water and provide habitat for other fish and aquatic creatures with the reefs they build of their shells. But overharvesting, habitat loss and disease have devastated the population, reducing it to an estimated 1–2% of historic levels.
They are also a pillar — though much diminished — of the Bay’s seafood industry and traditional fishing culture. The tension between their ecological and economic importance has led to conflict, especially in Maryland, where watermen and environmentalists have feuded over regulating harvests, creating harvest-free sanctuaries and spending large sums of state and federal funds to restore reef habitat.
In Maryland, watermen had pressed for lifting harvest restrictions in the wake of the DNR’s updated assessment of the state’s oyster population, released in June. It found that the number of legally harvestable oysters this year had increased to around 500 million, the third largest number in the last two decades.
The rebound was most pronounced in the Choptank River and Tangier Sound, where abundance hit 20-year highs. In other areas, the number of harvestable oysters remained the lowest in two decades.
But the update also found that a record number of juvenile oysters, or spat, had been produced last year.
Chris Judy, the DNR’s shellfish program manager, said the stock assessment showed the oyster population was “trending in the right direction.”
“Granted, spat need to grow,” he said, “but this, along with market abundance, is a notable positive result.” Spat generally take about three years to reach legally harvestable size.
The update marks a turnaround from the results of the DNR’s 2018 stock assessment, which estimated that the state’s population of market-size oysters had declined by half since 1999. The assessment also determined that oysters were being overharvested in more than half of the areas open to commercial harvest.
In response to the 2018 assessment, the DNR clamped down, banning oystering on Wednesdays and reducing the maximum catch on other days. The agency also closed most areas north of the Bay Bridge to preserve the remaining low numbers of market-size oysters there.
Oyster populations in Virginia’s portion of the Bay also are trending up in most places, according to Andrew Button, head of conservation and replenishment for the state’s Marine Resources Commission. Surveys there show oysters of all sizes at or near 20-year-plus highs, he said.
The Virginia Marine Resources Commission is expected to announce its rules for the 2021–22 oyster season in August.
The harvest rules the Maryland DNR announced July 1 are unchanged from what it had proposed in early June.
Over the last two seasons, watermen had chafed over the Wednesday harvest ban. Being limited to four days had prompted some to go out in foul weather, they said, risking their boats and personal safety.
Most watermen say the DNR should also increase daily harvest limits, arguing that there’s no reason to keep the brakes on under such improved conditions.
State fisheries managers left those limits unchanged. Watermen who dive for oysters or pluck them from the bottom with hand tongs or patent tongs would be allowed to bring back 12 bushels per person per day, compared with 15 bushels before. Those who use power dredges would be limited to 10 bushels per person or 20 per boat with a helper, down 20% from what they had been.
Despite the restrictions, watermen landed 330,000 bushels of oysters in the most recent season, a 20% increase over the previous season and more than twice the number landed in 2018‑19, before harvest limits were imposed.
Watermen contend that the growth in the oyster population, even as landings increased, shows that the limits are no longer needed.
“We’re seeing an increase over time,” Jeff Harrison, president of the Talbot Watermen Association, said at a June 8 meeting of the DNR’s Oyster Advisory Commission. “We have a great spat set, so we know in the future we’re going to have oysters.”
But the Bay Foundation, which had opposed easing harvest restrictions, warned that the DNR decision could backfire.
“The stock assessment continues to show overharvesting happening in several areas of the Bay, which these regulations fail to address,” the foundation said in a statement. “In fact, this action opens the door for more harvest, which puts any chance of this year’s record spat set contributing to the long-term recovery of oysters at significant risk.”
While the assessment found fewer areas of the Bay being overfished, it found continued overharvesting in the Choptank and in Tangier Sound, the two areas with the most plentiful oysters.
The Bay Foundation urged the DNR to rethink the way it manages the oyster fishery, arguing that the increased harvest of the past two years shows that the methods for limiting harvest pressure aren’t working.
The foundation said that fishery managers should require watermen to report their harvest online, as Virginia will begin doing this fall. It also said the DNR should switch to setting a total allowable catch for each area. That way, managers could monitor the harvest more closely and close it promptly in areas where the cap has been reached.
The DNR’s Judy said the state plans to begin a trial of online harvest reporting this fall.
Allison Colden, the foundation’s Maryland fisheries scientist, said the DNR needs to look for better ways to regulate the size of the fishery, which has grown dramatically. The number of watermen who paid the required fee to harvest oysters commercially increased from 822 in 2018 to 1,239 last fall, the most in two decades.
It’s a “sensitive issue” and one that needs to be discussed, Colden said, because oystering is an integral part of the traditional fishing culture in the Bay’s rural communities.
“But it’s obviously something that I don’t think the current regulations have a handle on,” she said. “I think we at least need to have leadership from the department in having that conversation.”
By Timothy B. Wheeler
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The Hogan administration is moving to block Maryland oyster farmers from leasing spots in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries where there’s still a smattering of wild oysters — a step that aquaculture advocates warn will stifle the state’s small but growing industry.
The Department of Natural Resources has announced that it plans to propose a regulation that would enable it to deny a lease application wherever it finds even a very low density of wild oysters on the bottom or when “physical, biological and economic conditions” warrant reserving the area for the public fishery.
The move comes in response to complaints from watermen, who contend that their livelihoods are threatened by having any more potentially productive oystering areas leased to private shellfish cultivation.
“We’ve given up enough bottom already,” Queen Anne’s County waterman Troy Wilkins said at a recent virtual meeting of the DNR Oyster Advisory Commission.
Watermen have long chafed over the state’s move a decade ago to greatly expand its oyster sanctuaries, which put some reefs off-limits to wild harvest. They also have repeatedly protested aquaculture lease applications, citing potential conflicts with crabbing or wild oyster harvests.
DNR officials say they want to establish a process for creating or expanding Public Shellfish Fishery Areas, which are reserved exclusively for wild harvest.
“There are occasions — and they’re rare — when a lease application comes forward, and there are populations of oysters [there that] the fishery has been working on or could be working on,” said Chris Judy, director of the DNR shellfish program.
But oyster farmers contend that the DNR has already been withholding approval or forcing changes to some lease applications when watermen or others object. The rule will only make it easier, they say, for watermen to block them from leasing good spots for cultivating shellfish.
“This is basically a big land grab to the detriment of aquaculture,” said Tal Petty, owner of Hollywood Oyster Co. in St. Mary’s County, where he raises bivalves in cages in a creek off the Patuxent River.
There are already 180,000 acres of the Bay and its tributaries that since 2009 have been officially designated as Public Shellfish Fishery Areas. There are another 110,000 acres that are unclassified but still open to wild harvest.
In comparison, about 325 leases encompassing about 6,500 acres have been issued over the past decade, according to the DNR. A few are used for raising clams or scallops, but the vast majority is for farming oysters. There are about 100 applications pending with the DNR seeking to lease another 2,000 acres. Protests have been filed against awarding about 15 of those pending leases.
Petty, a board member of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, said the rule would severely limit the state’s aquaculture industry, which has grown since 2010 and produced about 60,000 bushels of oysters in 2019, according to DNR figures. The wild harvest during the 2018-2019 season was 145,000 bushels, though it nearly doubled in the most recent season ending in March.
“The tragedy is that Maryland is about to significantly reduce the leasable area for aquaculture, using nonscientific methods and measures,” Petty said.
Oyster density debate
DNR officials say they’re not expecting to create vast new areas off-limits to aquaculture but want to correct a regulatory imbalance. Under current rules, oyster farmers may petition to declassify a Public Shellfish Fishery Area so that it can be leased, but there is no comparable procedure for creating new or expanding one.
Judy said the DNR was considering denying a lease application if a survey it conducts finds as few as 5 wild oysters per square meter on the bottom. But watermen have insisted that the threshold for denying a lease be set even lower, to block a lease for a site if there is even one oyster per square meter on the bottom.
Some watermen who use power dredges or patent tongs to harvest oysters contend they can get their limit of 10 to 24 bushels per day, depending on the number of license holders on a boat, even if there are fewer than 5 oysters per square meter on the bottom.
“If you give me 2 or 3 oysters a meter, I’ll put a deck-load on my skipjack,” said Russell Dize, a skipjack captain from Tilghman. Skipjacks, which use sail or motor power to haul dredges, are allowed to harvest up to 100 bushels a day.
Watermen also complain that letting oyster farmers lease areas that already have some wild oysters effectively gives them a windfall, allowing them to make some quick money harvesting and selling those bivalves. But oyster farmers point out that they’re required by state regulations to plant and cultivate far more oysters in the leased area, which requires substantial investment up front in gear and supplies. It takes at least two to three years before they realize any income from raising those planted oysters large enough to harvest.
Two DNR advisory panels dominated by watermen and their supporters have voted to endorse the watermen’s position that leases should be denied if there is even one wild oyster per square meter on the bottom. An aquaculture advisory commission urged the department to set the lease denial threshold much higher, at 25 oysters per square meter.
“It appears to be a one-sided proposal to increase the oyster harvest at the expense of restoration and aquaculture efforts that are helping to bring Maryland’s oysters back,” said Allison Colden, a fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
Though outvoted, several members of the DNR Oyster Advisory Commission argued that the DNR should hold off on the rule and include it as part of a broader effort by the commission to forge a consensus among watermen, oyster farmers and environmentalists over how the state’s oysters ought to be managed.
Tom Miller, director of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, questioned the scientific basis for the rule. Miller, a fisheries scientist, said it’s the DNR’s purview to decide where to allow commercial harvest, but he said research shows that oyster populations need to be much denser than even 5 oysters per square meter to be likely to reproduce successfully and sustain themselves.
Ann Swanson, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, pointed out that experts working to restore the Bay’s severely diminished oyster habitat only consider a reef capable of sustaining itself when it has at least 50 oysters per square meter of varying ages and sizes covering at least 30% of its surface.
Long history of friction
The friction between watermen and oyster farmers in Maryland has a long history.
“Watermen have wanted all of the Bay bottom from the time the first lease law was passed in 1830,” said Don Webster, a Maryland Sea Grant aquaculture specialist and advocate for the industry.
Watermen, who once wielded considerable political clout, succeeded in getting laws passed that from the early 1900s until the early 2000s severely restricted leasing. All a waterman had to do to block a lease then was to swear that he had harvested oysters there sometime in the previous five years.
That changed in 2010, with the passage of a new law that made large areas available for leasing. The Bay’s oyster population had been decimated by then by diseases, overharvesting and habitat loss. A study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers estimated that there were only 36,000 acres of productive oyster habitat left in Maryland’s portion of the Bay.
State lawmakers decided it was time to encourage aquaculture to take harvest pressure off the struggling oyster population, and they also expanded Maryland’s network of oyster sanctuaries, which now cover about 250,000 acres. Watermen have since complained that the expansion took away many productive harvest areas. Though some may have once brimmed with oysters, a review of DNR data show that only about 10% of the state’s overall wild harvest came from those new sanctuaries in the year before they were set aside.
At the same time it moved to boost aquaculture and enlarge sanctuaries, the DNR also established Public Shellfish Fishery Areas that would be reserved for wild harvest. Those areas encompassed three-quarters of the remaining productive oyster habitat, according to a DNR report.
While harvests have rebounded some in the past decade, they remain well below their historic level, and watermen have pressed to get at least some of the sanctuaries reopened. The DNR in the Hogan administration attempted to do that but was blocked by the legislature amid an outcry from environmentalists.
Oyster farmers say the DNR has been conferring for a year or two with watermen and advocates for waterfront property owners to address their complaints about aquaculture. Meanwhile, they say they have had a harder time getting leases when watermen or property owners object.
JD Blackwell sorts through baby oysters at his aquaculture operation on the Potomac River is St. Mary’s County. Photo by Dave Harp
“DNR has decided to kill oyster aquaculture,” contended JD Blackwell, an oyster farmer who leases sites in St. Mary’s County. “The excitement that existed in 2011 and 2012 to give birth to a new industry is gone. Oyster aquaculture will wither and die from this point forward. Opportunity missed.”
Critics of the rule also say it’s self-defeating for watermen, because a growing number of them are getting into aquaculture to supplement or replace wild harvests.
One of those is Rachel Dean, a Calvert County waterwoman. She applied more than three years ago to lease 26 acres in the Patuxent River to raise oysters on the bottom. At least one waterman and a homeowner objected, she recalled. And when the DNR sampled the bottom there, it found “at least some” oysters on half of the proposed lease site, with an overall density of about 2 bivalves per square meter, according to a 2019 DNR memo.
The memo, signed by the DNR’s Chris Judy, proposed roughly halving the size of the lease to exclude what it called a “functional oyster bar.” Dean said the reduction would diminish the viability of the site for raising oysters, so they resisted it. The application remains on hold, and Dean said the department has not responded when she has asked whether it was formally denying the application.
Neither Judy nor Karl Roscher, head of the DNR’s aquaculture division, responded to requests for interviews or information.
“We’ve got to find a balance,” Dean said, between oyster farming and the wild fishery. “If this regulation goes through,” she added, “there will be no more bottom leases.”
By Timothy B. Wheeler
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