(UPDATED*) Wash. Post: With the help of the Army Corps of Engineers, researchers get a glimpse of the Chesapeake Bay of yore – piled high with oysters.
Give the native oysters of Chesapeake Bay a tall place to stand, and they come roaring back (at least until viruses or other ailments hit them). So it seems at the five year mark of a project on one of the bay’s feeder rivers and overseen by researchers at William & Mary College’s Va. Inst. of Marine Science. The results are in Science, and are in keeping with its big package on fisheries management (see next post). The Washington Post’s David A. Farenthold calls the result a “vast, thriving reef of American oysters.” One supposed 87 acres is at least half vast. He gets lively quotes from researchers themselves amazed at how well it worked. He doesn’t say so, but the study also knocks a few tines off the mythic place the bay watermen hold in local culture. Their rakings of the original reefs were underwater bulldozer clearcuts of the worst sort, it appears. Silt prevented new reefs from taking root and the weakened oysterbeds fell prey to disease. Farenthold also gets a few gloomy gus types who think the new system is too expensive for wide use, or that diseases will pick these newcomers off soon enough. Dunno about disease, but The Tracker bets some clever new-era waterman will figure out a cheap scaffolding to deploy and to catalyze enough action to assure provender to every raw oyster bar in every trendy town and neighborhood in America.
Other stories:
- Bloomberg – Jeremy van Loon: Chesapeake Bay Oysters May Lick Extinction Risk;
- *UPDATE: New York Times – Henry Fountain (Aug 4): Oysters Are on the Rebound in the Chesapeake Bay ; Well balanced summary of the achievement so far, and lingering worry these reefs too may succumb to disease ;
Grist for the Mill: Wm&Mary/Virginia Inst. of Marine Science Press Release ;
-CP
