...“We are watching about 27 million juvenile oysters being planted into Harris Creek,” Westby said, as a hose blasted the oysters off the deck into the waterway, which is a tributary to the Choptank River and Chesapeake Bay.
The $31 million Harris Creek project is one of the largest and best-protected oyster restoration efforts ever attempted on the East Coast. NOAA is working with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the U.S Army Corps of Engineers, and the Oyster Recovery Partnership, to plant about 400 million oysters inside a protected sanctuary.
In this no-harvesting zone, sonar helps the scientists aim the baby oysters on top of reefs re-built with granite and recycled shells.
The 4,500 acre Harris Creek oyster sanctuary was created in 2009 by Governor Martin O’Malley’s administration. His Department of Natural Resources that year more than doubled the amount of no-harvesting zones in the state’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay, which now protect 24 percent of the Bay’s remaining reefs.
The new approach, being tested here in Harris Creek, is to focus on the oysters, not the oystermen. However, watermen will likely benefit more in the long run. Studies have suggested that protected reefs generate multitudes of oyster larvae, fish and crabs that spread out to populate a much wider area.
I still maintain that the best oyster restoration would a 5 or more year moratorium on oyster harvesting in the Bay, to find out whether oysters still have to potential to grow and spread without hindrance in the absence of fishing pressure.
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