Environmentalist Proposes My Oyster Policy

Gerald Winegrad: Neglect fuels Chesapeake oyster collapse. It’s time to close the wild fishery.

If there was one measurement of the success or failure of Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts, it would be the oyster. The bitter, sad truth is we have allowed oyster populations to collapse. The bay states recognized the importance of this keystone species when they committed in 2000 to increase oyster biomass by 10-fold by 2010. This goal was abandoned as stocks declined.

Why has the collapse occurred?

First, overharvest has been occurring for many decades. The 2018 stock assessment found that 50% of oyster bars are overharvested. There is also rampant poaching from sanctuaries. Maryland has failed to act to stop these problems. Virginia has shifted to more significant aquaculture operations (248,347 bushels last season).

Second, is the failure to reduce sediment pollution primarily from farm operations but also from polluted stormwater from developed areas. Scientists document that more than 70% of Maryland oyster bars have been smothered with excess sediment.

In an August 2011 study published by five Maryland scientists, they noted a massive decline of 92% in Maryland oyster biomass since 1980. A moratorium on all wild harvesting was proposed. The researchers attributed the decline primarily to overfishing and concluded that if harvest had stopped in 1986, adult abundance would be 15.8 times greater than in 2011. Instead, watermen continued to harvest 25% of the remaining oysters each year.

This collapse in bay oysters follows a global pattern necessitating a shift to aquaculture operations. More than 95 percent of global oyster harvest is from aquaculture.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation called for a moratorium in 1990 and in 2010, CBF recommended a transition from wild harvest to aquaculture. On Feb. 18, 2019, the Baltimore Sun editorialized: Chesapeake Bay Oysters: Time to Talk Moratorium.

The recent weak harvest restrictions Maryland DNR proposed will do almost nothing to restore oyster populations. What we don’t need is another study or fishery management plan the legislature is considering by overriding the Governor’s veto of SB 830. We need action — and now. I propose legislation to:

• Phase-out wild oyster harvest over a five-year period beginning with a faster phase out of damaging power dredging—the entire Chesapeake should be an oyster sanctuary—while compensating harvesters to shift to aquaculture operations;
• Adopt a compensation fund to pay watermen an amount based on an average of their last three years of oyster landings with the funds to be used to assist them in converting to oyster aquaculture including an aquaculture insurance program to augment USDA aquaculture disaster insurance allowing watermen to insure their aquaculture oyster crops; and
• Ban any sanctuary harvest or change in boundaries of sanctuaries except to enlarge them.

To Save The Bay, we must save the oyster.

Gerald Winegrad served as a state senator and chaired the Environment and Chesapeake Bay Subcommittee. He lives on Oyster Creek in Annapolis where he grows oysters around his pier to help cleanse the creek’s waters.

I would institute an oyster license buyout immediately; the people who fish for wild oysters are not , by and large, the same people who will be carrying oyster aquaculture. You might as well tell them to learn to code.

I would institute rigorous sampling to monitor the populations; if at the end of 5-10 years no improvement in the populations has taken place, we might as well give up on native oysters for now, and allow people to transplant foreign oysters like C. ariakensis that might survive in the modern bay.

The Wombat is back in action with a double stuffed Rule 5 Sunday: New Year Double Scoop Delight!.