What Do You Call A Hole in the Water that You Pour Money Into?

The traditional answer is "boat", but according to this article it might also be called "Oyster Recovery"

No easy answers to restore bay’s oyster population

...Maryland alone spent $24.4 million from 1994 to 2007 on oyster recovery efforts, according to a 2007 report from the Maryland Oyster Advisory Commission. The state and federal government combined invested $39.7 million during that time.

From 2002 to 2006, the report said the state and federal government invested an average of $5 million annually on “in-the-water oyster recovery (sanctuary and public fishery) activities.”

To spur an oyster comeback in 1994, DNR teamed with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration to form the nonprofit Oyster Recovery Partnership.

ORP is now the largest oyster restoration nonprofit in the watershed. It touts its nearly two decades worth of work: “Nearly 4 billion oysters have been planted on 1,500 acres of oyster reefs and approximately 1,200 tons of shell have been recycled to provide homes for new oysters.”...

And for that we got?

Maryland’s oyster harvest in 1994-95 was 165,000 bushels. Maryland’s oyster harvest in 2006-07 was 165,000 bushels. Maryland’s oyster harvest in 2011-2012 was 137,317 bushels.

Using another gauge to measure native oyster abundance, oyster biomass, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s website offered this analysis for trends between 1994 and 2008: “There is no statistically discernible trend … oyster abundance remains at a very low level.”

So either we need to increase oyster restoration by orders of magnitude in cost, and physical manipulation of the Bay (damned unlikely), or we need an entirely different approach.  I reiterate my position that harvesting of wild (not grown in aquaculture) oysters needs to be stopped for at least 5 years, probably more like 10, to see if oysters are capable of thriving in the Bay as it exists now.