Forum draws 75 volunteers to discuss future of the species in the Bay. You can help too.

Oyster experts are "cautiously optimistic" about the prospects for oyster recovery on the Bay, thanks in large part to the commitment of more than 1,000 volunteers. "It’s a real long tunnel, but there is some light at the end of it," Bill Goldsborough, Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s senior scientist, told more than 75 volunteer oyster gardeners who attended the Oyster Alliance’s Citizen’s Oyster Forum, held on March 6 in Annapolis. "Hope is starting to replace doubt," he said.

The Oyster Alliance is an informal association between the Oyster Recovery Partnership, Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the University of Maryland, dedicated to oyster restoration in the Chesapeake Bay. Saturday’s forum was the first of its kind held in Maryland, and will likely become an annual event to help volunteers learn more about what they can do to restore oyster populations.

Oysters, a keystone species on the Bay, are vital as water filters, habitat, and a source of income for watermen. Once prolific enough to filter a volume of water equivalent to that of the Bay in a few days, the current population (barely more than 1 percent of historic levels) would take more than a year to do the same. The main culprits for that decline, that bottomed out in 1994, were overharvesting, sediment pollution, and disease. Learn more about oysters.

Recent restoration efforts are showing success, and new tools and increased support will augment that success this year.

The tale of the tape on oysters in 1997 and 1998 showed promising signs of change. Spat sets (the number of juveniles that settle onto reefs to grow into adults) in certain Virginia sanctuary reefs marked as much as 10-fold increases. In Maryland, commercial oyster landings (the number of bushels harvested) rose above 200,000, an improvement from the early 90s when landings dropped below 100,000 bushels. For comparison, landings peaked in Maryland at 15 million bushels in 1884.

Part of this success can be attributed to aggressive restoration efforts led by scientists, conservationists, volunteers, and students bay-wide. These efforts include work to build, stock, and maintain oyster sanctuary reefs in various locations. Seed oysters (spat) used to stock reefs are produced in hatchery facilities. Oyster larvae are attached to shells bundled in mesh bags to produce "spat-on-shell." They can also be produced as "cultchless" seed that are attached to tiny particles of shell. Seed oysters can be spread on prepared habitat or grown in floats by gardeners for a period of time to improve their chances for survival. Later, these oysters are collected and planted on sanctuary reefs. Currently, there are over 20 reefs on the bay and plans are underway to build more.

Volunteers are involved in all stages of the restoration process from raising spat in dockside floats, building and hauling shell bags, building oyster floats, planting oysters, monitoring sanctuary reefs, and organizing workshops. Over 1000 citizens and more than 100 classes of middle and high school students are involved in the effort Baywide.

Recently, the hatcheries at Horn Point and Piney Point in Maryland were upgraded to increase their output of seed oysters to the tens of millions per year. "This is a new tool on the Bay," said Goldsborough. " Hatchery production helps fill in the gaps between successful natural spawning years." While this is a much-needed boost, say the experts, it’s still short of the billions of seed oysters needed eventually to reach restoration goals.

Over the last five years more than 100 barge-loads of shell were dumped in the Bay to create oyster habitat. "That’s a lot of shell, but a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to do," said Goldsborough. That the Chesapeake Bay region has a short supply of shell to act as substrate further hinders the effort to build sanctuary reefs. Alternative materials, such as marine limestone and "geo tubes" (synthetic fabric tubes of densely packed mud) to create bottom substrate upon which reefs can be built, are being explored.

This year, scientists hope to take another step closer to overcoming two of the biggest hurdles to recovery, the oyster-killing diseases MSX and Dermo. Dr. Standish Allen, director of the Aquaculture Genetics and Breeding Technology Center at Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, described groundbreaking work being done to introduce a disease-resistant strain of oyster to the Bay. Through selective breeding, Dr. Allen and his colleagues have developed a strain of oyster that seems to resist Dermo and MSX. With funding raised by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), the strain, which is currently being tested in Virginia waters, will be tested on six to eight sites in Maryland this year.

Dr. Allen’s approach to the problem reveals what may provide the real momentum behind oyster restoration on a scale large enough to reach restoration goals: aquaculture.

"Oysters play a dichotomous role in the bay both as natural resource and therefore part of a restoration effort and being part of an industry which now is in fairly dire straits especially in Virginia," said Dr. Allen, who added that global demand for seafood will soon outstrip the fishing industries ability to supply it. Aquaculture, already a blossoming business in many parts of the world, is expected to fill in the gap. With it will come the same technology that has followed agriculture.

"There is a tremendous growth potential for aquaculture," said Allen. "That’s the basis of all this selective breeding work. We have populations now that are essentially wild that need to be domesticated in the same way that agriculture and animals were domesticated. We all have in our minds what harvesting oysters means for Chesapeake Bay and it’s basically a hunter-gatherer type of phenomenon. But we need to be thinking more in terms of domesticated agricultural products where these things are highly predictable and highly domesticated to suit the needs of the farm. And we need to look along those lines in terms of developing resources for industry use as well."

Allen’s CROSBreed strain of oyster was designed to aid aquaculturists and conservationists alike. But oyster aquaculture is in its infancy on the Bay and the Aquaculture Genetics and Breeding Technology Center is little more than one year old.

Ultimately, restoration will take a large infusion of financial support from the public and private sectors in Maryland and Virginia. CBF has called for both states and the federal government to increase funding from its current level of around $1 million a year to $10 million annually (combined) by 2002.

In addition to the expert speakers, volunteers shared stories of oyster gardening and talked about ways to improve the project.

Phil Conner, owner of Crockett Brothers Boatyard (Oxford, Md.), described the impact that his three floats had on his customers. On the docks with the floats, Conner installed signs about the oysters growing below.

"There was a marked change in difference in how people acted," he said. Boaters cut back on the amount of soap they used, and then washed overboard, when cleaning their boats and were more vigilant about what went in the water. Several customers stopped by his shop to ask about products that would be least harrmful to marinelife.

Doug O’Connell, a science teacher at Baltimore PolyTechnical School, described the enthusiasm his students developed as a result of taking care of the oysters and the floats.

"It’s one thing to talk about the problems of the Bay and another to get kids involved," said O’Connell. "It’s hard." But, he added, the student oyster gardening project increased his students’ enthusiasm. Additionally, O’Connell was thrilled to be able to teach Maryland students about the environment using the Bay and its keystone species as prime examples.

Jim Roberts, an Oyster Recovery Partnership volunteer, saw a program on Maryland Public Television about the plight of the oysters and decided to lend a hand in the effort. Building and hauling shell bags was hard work, he said, but worth the effort.

With volunteers such as these working on various aspects of oyster restoration, momentum is building. However, despite the enthusiasm and current efforts, Goldsborough estimates that the number of volunteers must reach several thousand if we hope to make substantial progress in restoring oysters.

A new web site being developed in conjunction with Maryland Sea Grant will soon provide instant information about oyster restoration and will serve as a collection point for gardeners’ data. A Master Oyster Gardener program to be launched in Maryland this year will complement a program begun in VA last year to provide advanced training and help meet the increasing demand for oyster gardening in the Bay.

With a range of activities, oyster restoration offers opportunities for anyone to lend a hand. For more information in Maryland, contact Stew Harris at 410/268-8816 or sharris@savethebay.cbf.org or in Virginia, Julia Hardee at 757/622-1964 or jhardee@savethebay.cbf.org.