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Oyster Restoration Project See Successes and Challenges

Pamela D'Angelo

It's been ten years since Maryland and Virginia were ordered to restore oyster populations to tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay by 2025.

To meet that goal scientists have banked on building oyster sanctuaries. But reviving a species decimated by disease, over-harvesting and pollution hasn't proved easy.

Maryland, Virginia and federal recently scientists met at the Mariner's Museum in Newport News to assess progress.

The realities of oyster restoration began a few years ago when scientists cut the goal of twenty tributaries to ten. Another blow - much of the oyster shell needed to rebuild reefs was being used to build a commercial aquaculture industry so it became scarce and very expensive.

Still, scientists with the Army Corps of engineers in Maryland and Virginia say they are making progress. Using stone and other kinds of shell, each state has completed one of their five tributaries with more on the

Credit Pamela D'Angelo/2017
From left: Sean Corson, Acting Director, NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office; Rep. Bobby Scott, (3rd District); Ryan Jackson, aide to Rep. Scott; Molly Ward, Virginia Sec. of Natural Resources; Rick Coradi, Rotary Club of Norfolk all dump oysters with baby oysters attached onto a newly constructed reef on Lafayette River back in 2017. The tributary is Virginia s first to reach oyster restoration goals.

way. I asked Stephanie Reynolds Westby who heads NOAA's Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts to describe a restored reef.  "Prior to restoration the bottom would be a little bit muddy, maybe you'd see a few oyster shells poking up here and there, not a lot of great places for the fish to hide.  And what we are seeing on the restored reefs by contrast - lots of complex habitat, lots of stone, lots of oyster shell, lots of live oysters sticking up into the water column," Westby explained. "In some cases, oysters growing on top of oysters, which is really what we're looking for to kind of rebuild that whole complex reef structure that we had 100 or 150 years ago but has been decimated."

Harris Creek sanctuary reef in Maryland is the largest restoration project in the U.S., a little bigger than the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It has attracted scientists from other countries including China and Denmark.

But watermen bound by wild catch restrictions want access to sanctuaries. This time of year, upwards of 130 boats crowd onto one public reef opened on a rotational basis. It looks like a regatta. They say

Credit Pamela D'Angelo
A small oyster dredge

sanctuaries are where oysters go to die and use farm analogies to justify harvests.  "If you don't cultivate it, it's like a garden," waterman Ernie George argued. "It's not going to grow. It's not going to produce."

This argument is nothing new for scientists. Andrew Button, who heads Virginia's oyster conservation says he likes to engage watermen on their farming analogy, especially since their heavy dredging equipment tears up a reef.  "My response is usually 'yes, you are exactly right. You do need to work the bottom just like the farm but most cases farmers very carefully work their fields. They're not going out and catching all the crops as quickly as they can, year after year, and putting nothing back and expecting to catch more the next year,'" Button said.

And then there's President Trump, who zeros out bay restoration funding each budget cycle and who continues to roll back pollution laws that directly affect the bay. Conservationists are bracing for another round this year.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation president William Baker called out Trump during his recent state of the bay report.  "The Trump administration must stop trying to eliminate environmental laws and regulations that have enjoyed decades of bipartisan support. Clean water and clean air should be a right, not a luxury we have to fight for," Baker said. "But if it's a fight this administration wants it's a fight the American public will give to them."

Maryland and Virginia are working to complete projects underway and are in the planning stages for several more tributaries. Scientists will monitor the completed reefs, which they say will help clean the waters around them.  One oyster can filter some 50 gallons of water in a day. If all goes as planned wild oysters will one day spread outside the sanctuaries and back onto public grounds of tributaries.

Click here to see an interactive map of the sancuaries by the Chesapeake Bay Program.

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.

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