Watermen Resent New Fangled Regulations

By which, of course, they mean any regulation at all:

Regulations Impact Maryland’s Watermen Tradition

...Watermen say increased regulations and oyster sanctuaries have strained them financially. Talbot County watermen were forced to stop harvesting in Harris Creek, when the area was closed in 2010 and turned into an oyster sanctuary.

“By protecting some areas, we hope to rebuild the population. Sanctuaries are necessary to protect the broodstock of the oyster population,” Weissberger said.

But Harris Creek was a productive area for oyster harvesting.

Yes, if you're going to make an oyster sanctuary, it should in an area good for oyster growth.  That's the point, to have a productive population to seed nearby area, not to plant a population doomed to dwindle and die out.

“Harris Creek was one of our main [oyster] tonging areas. So now we’re just corralled into a small area in Broad Creek,” said Lisa Gowe, treasurer and event coordinator for the Talbot County Watermen’s Association. Gowe’s husband, John, is a fifth-generation waterman who has been harvesting seafood since the age of 15.

According to Phillips, the oyster sanctuaries are necessary to improve the water, but she disagrees with the amount of sanctuaries across the state.

I disagree with the amount of oyster sanctuary too.  I think the whole Chesapeake Bay should be  a sanctuary for wild oysters for the next 5-10 years.

“The biggest problem I have with it, is that the state is not allowing the watermen to even cultivate it. …As far as Harris Creek goes, we’ve just closed it and we’re not allowing anything to happen to it,” she said.

Phillips explained that a layer of sediment covers the oysters reefs when left untouched. The oysters eventually die when covered by the sediment, she said.

Power dredging the bottom, cultivates the oysters and removes the layer of sediment that forms over the oysters. It’s kind of like cultivating a field, said Mick Blackistone, executive director of the Maryland Watermen’s Association.

“There are too many people that think it doesn’t help, and it does. We’re proven that it does,” Blackistone said...

 That's the biggest bullshit argument that watermen have ever come up with, although the one about wanting to catch more stripers to protect the crabs comes close.  If there were a time when so called cultivation of the bottom would help, it would be spring, before the spat for the year have been spawned and need cleanish shell to set on, and after the heavy sedimentation from winter has stopped.  But oyster harvesting is a fall and winter fishery, so they claim that their dredging serves to "cultivate" the bottom.  No explanation, of course, of how the Bay grew massive oyster bars down through history until the power dredge was invented.

Oh, and the article has a nice video, too:




I did a lot of power dredging of oysters for research back a few years ago. It's hard work.