The Virginian-Pilot
© June 11, 2008

Oysters and watermen in the Chesapeake Bay haven't had good news in a very long time. The once abundant shellfish population is at historic lows, thanks to disease and habitat degradation. Crabs are disappearing. So are certain sea grasses. Pollution in the Bay - nitrogen and phosphorus - is making parts of it inhospitable for months at a time.

Now, thanks to a new analysis by The Washington Post that echoes earlier reporting in this newspaper, the Bay's boosters know that all these years of effort to restore oysters to the Chesapeake, all the money spent - $58 million, by the paper's reckoning - hasn't bought any improvement.

In fact, things are actually worse for the Bay's oysters.

"We're at 1 percent or less (of the oyster's historic population). That's collapsed. We're still fishing. It's kind of like if we were still whaling on the East Coast," David Schulte, an oyster expert with the Army Corps of Engineers, told The Post. "I mean, the population may never recover. It may not recover now anyway."

The hope, what there is of it, for now lies outside the Bay, in its tributaries. But if scientists like Schulte can get it right, such efforts may hold promise for the rest of the watershed.

The Lynnhaven, for example, has a recovering oyster population, one that has taken to living on riprap and concrete artificial reefs as if born to them. As the population recovers there, it helps seed other oyster colonies in the Lynnhaven watershed.

There has been similar good news in the Great Wicomico, according to Schulte and Rom Lipcius, a professor at Virginia Institute of Marine Science, and an advocate for such artificial reef habitats. Both Schulte and Lipcius, with their eyes on oyster successes, say they're optimistic about Chesapeake oyster's long-term prospects in the Bay.

Their solution isn't particularly complicated: Provide the habitat and the shellfish will come back. That's different from past strategies, which largely focused on raising oysters suitable for commercial harvest.

Building reefs, Lipcius argues, could be as simple as setting concrete blocks underneath existing docks, where they provide new refuge for oysters and fish. Where docks don't exist, we could build artificial reefs that don't impede navigation.

The important part, said Schulte, is to build reefs tall enough to allow oysters to escape the silt and dirt of the Bay bottom.

Yet the state doesn’t allow the waterman to work all of Virginia’s oyster beds. By working these beds the waterman would bring the shells back up to the top and as clean shells. These shells would then have a chance of to have the larvae attach and rebuild the once abundant fishery. ks

The reefs can be built out of concrete, as in the Lynnhaven, or out of oyster shell, as in the Wicomico.

But they must be off-limits to harvest. Such sanctuaries, if properly built and protected, will help build healthy oyster populations elsewhere, including in places that can be harvested.

Expanding such programs, however, costs money, and requires an expertise and understanding of the Bay's immensely complicated ecosystem and hydrodynamics. It also requires spending money to seed even more oysters in places where they can make a difference.

With little to show for the $58 million already spent, money might be hard to come by. It shouldn't be. There is much evidence in the Great Wicomico and in the Lynnhaven of what works in oyster restoration. Those projects can provide a model for the future. After all, isn't it better to spend money on oyster restoration tactics that have worked than on ones that haven't?