ANNAPOLIS, Md. – After years of acrimony between watermen and environmentalists in Maryland over restoring oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, the state is trying a new tack in Eastern Bay. Whether it works remains to be seen.
The broad embayment on Maryland’s Eastern Shore is targeted by a 2022 law to receive $2 million a year over the next 25 years to revive its once-thriving oyster population. The effort is getting under way as the state nears the finish line on a massive push to build and stock oyster reefs in five other of its Bay tributaries.
Those projects, begun a decade ago, have poured nearly $90 million into putting 6.9 billion hatchery-reared bivalves on reconstructed reefs, all in sanctuaries off-limits to public harvest. Though hailed by environmentalists and scientists for restoring long-lost underwater habitat, the projects have drawn repeated complaints from watermen — and even litigation.
This time, instead of focusing solely on rebuilding reefs in sanctuaries, the Department of Natural Resources aims to replenish reefs for the public fishery as well and even give a boost to aquaculture.
“Sometimes the really successful things we do are highly controversial,” said Lynn Fegley, DNR’s fishing and boating services director. “This is more of a kumbaya approach.”
Controversy and delays dogged those earlier projects, which were called for as part of a 2014 strategy to bring back the Bay’s water quality, habitat and fish populations. Maryland and Virginia each pledged to restore large oyster reefs in five Bay tributaries by 2025.
The fifth and largest restoration project, in the Manokin River on the lower Eastern Shore, was stalled for more than a year by a lawsuit filed at the behest of watermen, who were upset about once-productive reefs being placed in sanctuaries.
Inclusive approach
In Eastern Bay, at the direction of state lawmakers, DNR officials are trying to avoid conflicts by offering everyone a piece of the action. The plan is to rebuild the bivalve population in a way that improves water quality and fish habitat but also provides economic benefits for watermen and oyster farmers.
“It’s really inclusive, rather than exclusive,” Fegley said, “and hopefully they all support each other … Oysters beget oysters.”
Eastern Bay differs geographically from the areas DNR previously chose for large-scale reef restoration, making it more suitable for this all-hands approach. Large portions of those tributaries were set aside as sanctuaries. In Eastern Bay, three fourths of the 21,000 acres of historic oyster bars are still available for harvest and one fourth is off limits. Moreover, the seven sanctuaries there are scattered around the bay and its two tributaries, the Miles and Wye rivers. About 41 acres of bottom are leased for aquaculture.
Eastern Bay once yielded a significant share of Maryland’s wild oyster harvest, and the bounty was great enough that it provided young “seed” oysters for transplanting to other parts of the Chesapeake. In 1997, DNR’s annual reef survey found a record “spatfall” there of naturally reproduced baby oysters.
Disaster struck two years later, when a severe four-year drought triggered diseases that devastated oyster populations throughout the Chesapeake. Eastern Bay was particularly hard hit and has struggled to recover. A wild harvest that peaked at 150,000 bushels in 2001 fell precipitously to as little as 150 bushels at one point. Since 2008, it has yielded less than 20,000 bushels annually, according to DNR data.
“I’ve got places I oystered back in the ’90s,” said Queen Anne’s County waterman Troy Wilkins. “You go there today, and you can’t find a shell.”
In 2019, hoping to bridge the differences between environmentalists and watermen, state lawmakers directed DNR’s Oyster Advisory Commission to provide consensus recommendations for reviving the state’s oyster population. After more than a year of debate, restoring Eastern Bay was the only substantive action that 75% of the commission’s members could agree on.
Legislative commitment
Even before that, local watermen had been doing modest plantings and trying to improve public reefs in Eastern Bay, using their share of about $2 million in oyster replenishment funds generated annually from oyster license fees, harvest taxes and dedicated state funds. DNR and nonprofit groups had also done some relatively small plantings on sanctuary reefs.
In 2022, though, the General Assembly passed legislation to carry out the commission’s recommendation, calling for a larger mix of wild reef replenishment, sanctuary restoration and aquaculture enhancements. The legislation also directed $2 million a year be spent solely in Eastern Bay over the next 25 years, divided equally between sanctuaries and public fishery areas. The initiative is to be reassessed every five years.
The effort began in earnest in 2023, when WRF Group, a Cambridge-based oyster hatchery contracted by DNR, spread 210 million juvenile oysters over 52 acres of sanctuary reefs. While other projects relied on the state’s Horn Point oyster hatchery run by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, this one farmed out oyster production to private hatcheries.
“This is the first time a project like this has been available for private industry,” said Ricky Fitzhugh, owner of WRF. He has rebranded the company as Seed to Shuck Ventures, reflecting its expansion into oyster restoration.
No comparable plantings occurred in 2023 on public reefs.
“It took longer to get the industry situation online,” said Chris Judy, DNR’s shellfish program manager. “We were ready to move faster with the sanctuary component.”
This year is supposed to see more balanced plantings. Seed to Shuck Ventures got another $1 million to plant in sanctuaries. Contracts for public reef replenishment were spread among three oyster businesses run by watermen: Farm Creek Oyster Farm and Madison Bay Seafood in Dorchester County, and Wittman Wharf Seafood in Talbot County.
And because the supply of oyster shells in the Chesapeake has been stretched thin, all four businesses expect to use some oyster shells that have been trucked in from the West Coast.
Plantings delayed
Nature threw a curve, though. Hatcheries have struggled to produce oyster larvae because heavy winter and spring rains lowered the salinity of Bay water below what’s needed for effective reproduction. Seed to Shuck, which had hoped to begin planting in late April, didn’t get going until June, when it put the first installment of 15 million spat on shell on a sanctuary reef in the Wye River.
On a warm, sunny afternoon, a high-pressure water hose blasted oyster shells off the deck of the vessel Gregory Leonard as it churned back and forth just inside the mouth of the Wye. Each shell bore hatchery-reared baby oysters no bigger than specks, sent to the bottom to grow and multiply — if they survive that long.
The first public reef planting did not take place until the last full week of June. By early July, 40 million spat on shell had been deposited on public fishery reefs — out of a hoped-for total of 240 million.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit Oyster Recovery Partnership, which DNR has tasked with overseeing the reef plantings, has pulled together a broad-based group of stakeholders to forge a consensus on oyster management and restoration work in Eastern Bay.
Along with brainstorming how and where to spend the $2 million a year from the state, the group also aims to figure out how to enhance oyster aquaculture, which has had to contend at times with pushback from watermen opposing leases on the public bottom.
“There’s not an expectation coming out of this that there would be any assistance to a business or private entity,” said Scott Budden, partner in Orchard Bay Oyster Company, which has leases in Eastern Bay.
The discussion instead has been about making it easier to get leases and whether there might be other areas made available.
“There’s not a committed funding source, but [oyster farmers] have a place at the table,” DNR’s Judy said.
The Eastern Bay Coalition, as it’s called, also has talked about ways to enhance the mid-Shore economy with recreational activities, increase awareness about the value of a robust oyster fishery and support the industries dependent on it.
Unlike the often-contentious meetings of DNR’s Oyster Advisory Commission years ago, the Eastern Bay Coalition’s discussions, according to some participants, have been civil and fruitful.
“This is much more constructive and productive,” said Olivia Caretti, coastal restoration program manager of the Oyster Recovery Partnership, who helps lead the deliberations.
Watermen still unhappy
“Not everybody agrees,” said Ben Ford, the Miles-Wye Riverkeeper. But he called that normal and good. “We have so many different stakeholders that it’s natural there’s a diverse range of opinion about how to use these resources.”
Some watermen aren’t happy, though, with the way the Eastern Bay project has gone so far. Wilkins, the waterman in Queen Anne’s County, said he quit going to coalition meetings because of the slow pace of decision making.
“All they do is talk,” he said. “We want something done. The money being spent to have those meetings could be better utilized by purchasing spat on shell, seed oysters or oyster shells.”
By mid-June last year, he recalled, the relatively small regular annual planting of spat-on-shell was well under way. This year, what should be a much larger planting has been delayed because of the hatcheries’ struggles. He worries time will run out before all the plantings can be done this summer. Under the circumstances, the $1 million a year dedicated to replenishing reefs open to wild harvest isn’t doing much good, he contended.
Unlike some watermen, Wilkins said, he’s not opposed to restoring oyster reefs in sanctuaries. He’s not against using hatcheries, either, to make up for spotty natural reproduction. Despite a boost from bountiful natural reproduction last summer, Eastern Bay is still so barren, he said, that reviving it will take an all-out effort, using every means available.
“Any oyster on the bottom is a good oyster,” he concluded.
But Wilkins said there’s a more efficient way to spend the money: dredging up fossil shell from Man O’War shoal, a moribund reef near the mouth of the Patapsco River; hauling it south to Tangier Sound, where wild oyster reproduction is generally good; and then bringing the spat-laden shell back for planting in Eastern Bay.
The state once maintained the fishery for decades through such a “seed and shell” transport program but ended it 20 years ago after diseases devastated Bay oysters. And despite DNR getting a federal permit in 2018 to dredge 5 million bushels of shell from Man O’War shoal, the state has not done so. Recreational anglers and some watermen have successfully opposed dredging there, arguing it would harm vital reef habitat for striped bass and other fish.
Ford said he hopes Wilkins will reconsider and rejoin the coalition. While the process is taking time and some opportunities for quick progress have been lost, he suggested that, given the 25-year timeline of this project, it’s important to stick with it.
“We’re talking about $2 million a year for a long time,” he said. “it’s not something [where] one season or two is going to be a silver bullet.”
