It's been a rough winter out on the Chesapeake Bay for Virginia's Tangier Island. Last month, Virginia Army National Guard flew in supplies after residents were trapped by thick ice from days of freezing temperatures and snow.
Now, island watermen and a group of Richmond investors including former State Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli have been dealt another blow by mother nature.
Last year a group of 38 investors including Cuccinelli joined forces with local watermen to farm oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. The Tangier Island Oyster Company is one in a wave of similar ventures in and around the bay. Tommy Leggett with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is a commercial oyster farmer in Gloucester County who has worked with the group.
“They had about 175 floating oyster cages that were secured to screw anchors that were screwed into the bottom, the cages were all secured to a line attached to those anchors and they were floating just offshore of Tangier Island.”
Last month a storm, with 50 to 80 mile per hour winds, followed by snow and ice as thick as one foot, carried off cages sending them adrift in the Chesapeake Bay.
“A lot of them have been found down near Ocean View, Lynn Haven Inlet, Cape Henry and I received a call this morning from someone down near Sandbridge who actually found one out on the beach on the Atlantic Ocean.”
About 77 of the three by three foot black cages have been found. Craig Suro, who co-founded the company with Cuccinelli has been driving the cages to Cape Charles where Tangier watermen will pick them up. Amazingly Suro and his team actually saw cages as they crossed the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.
We looked over and we see a string of ten wrapped around a piling just sitting there and we look over to the right and there's five more floating out into the ocean and there's a feeling of you can't do anything. There's cages with oysters in them right there and there's nothing you can do.
The company had planned to harvest about one million oysters this summer. Now they have about one quarter of that. Suro said they plan to sink the cages next time.
