Oysters have been enjoying a run of good news lately, suggesting that the Chesapeake Bay’s keystone species is on the rebound after decades of decline and stagnation. There are a couple of clouds on the horizon, though, that could derail that upward trajectory.
In January, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced that its annual fall survey of oyster reefs found a bonanza of juvenile bivalves on the bottom of the Bay and its tributaries. The density of fingernail-size “spat” found in the dredged samples was the fifth highest in the last 39 years, DNR reported.
Not only that, but the survey crew found recently spawned oysters in places where they’ve been scarce for a long time, including the Potomac River and two of its tributaries: the Wicomico River and Breton Bay. The Patuxent and Tred Avon rivers also received what DNR called once-in-a-generation crops of juvenile oysters. The DNR crew found spat on 50 of 53 “key” reefs that are sampled every year around Maryland’s portion of the Bay — a breadth of distribution not achieved since 1985.
With 2023 marking the fourth consecutive year of above-median spat production, DNR called it a promising sign that the costly, long-running effort to restore the Bay’s historically depleted oyster population is finally bearing fruit.
But most of the credit for the spat proliferation goes to the weather. The lack of rainfall in 2023 reduced the flow of freshwater from rivers into the Bay. That raised the Chesapeake’s salinity above average, providing an ideal condition for oyster reproduction.
The state’s watermen have likewise enjoyed four straight years of increasing harvests. They landed more than 700,000 bushels in the 2022–23 season, the most in 36 years, with a dockside value of more than $30 million.
As a point of reference, Maryland’s wild harvest bottomed out in 2004 at 26,000 bushels. That was largely the result of two oyster diseases that flared up in the 1980s and devastated the bivalve population until about a decade ago.
Those diseases, Dermo and MSX, have quieted down but linger in the Bay. They tend to revive when water salinity is elevated, as it was last year.
For the first time in six years, DNR’s reef survey last fall detected above-average prevalence and intensity of Dermo. More than 60% of the oysters tested for the disease in a laboratory had it. The heaviest infections tended to be from the Choptank River south, tracking with increasing salinity down the Bay.
DNR said in January that it was still checking oysters for MSX, but results from just eight sampled reefs showed an “alarmingly high prevalence” of it.
Neither disease can be passed to people, but both can kill an oyster before it grows to harvestable size, or even before it can spawn for the first time. DNR’s survey found more than half the oysters dead on one reef in the mouth of the Choptank, with mortality ranging from 21% to 50% down the Bay from there, although it was less severe in several of the tributaries.
Watermen say they’re seeing more “boxes” or dead oysters in their dredges and tongs, making it harder to harvest their limit. They’re also getting paid less this season than last, by at least $5 per bushel. And on top of that, there have been days when seafood dealers or oyster-shucking houses have declined to buy watermen’s catch at any price.
“In spite of modest numbers of oysters, we have next to no market and the prices [are] down from previous years,” said Ed Farley, captain of the oyster-dredging skipjack H.M. Krentz in a mid-February text. Calling it a crisis, he added that he and his crew “only worked one day a week for the previous two weeks.” That was also the case in the first week of January and for a period after Thanksgiving.
Skipjacks are permitted to harvest up to 100 bushels per day but can only do so under power two days a week. The other three days, they can only harvest under sail, a method hampered by rough weather that is less efficient even in the best conditions.
“Last year I sail dredged a lot,” Farley recalled, “and did really well with it. But this year I haven’t even got all the push days in.”
J.?C. Hudgins, president of the Virginia Waterman’s Association, said that there’s been some “dead loss” from diseased oysters in his end of the Bay, and “the market’s been slow the whole year.” Even so, his members still hope to do at least as well this season as last, when they too landed a 35-year record harvest from public oyster grounds of 300,000 bushels. Another 400,000 bushels came from oysters grown on bottom or in waters leased by the state.
Robert T. Brown Sr., president of the Maryland Watermen’s Association, said the supply of oysters is simply exceeding the demand, especially with food prices higher as a result of inflation.
“Seafood is a luxury, not a necessity,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who just don’t have the money for it.”
Some think the problem runs deeper, reflecting long-term changes in public attitudes about cooking or eating oysters. Others blame competition from oysters harvested in the Gulf of Mexico for glutting the market and driving prices down.
Actually, said Matt Parker, an aquaculture business specialist with the University of Maryland, “Nobody really has a good understanding of the oyster market and what’s going on nationwide.”
Even so, Bill Sieling, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, said he and a few others concerned about the issue met recently to brainstorm ways to sell more oysters, either by marketing them in new places or in new ways.
“There’s a lot of reasons this product should be enjoying a renaissance in demand,” Sieling said, “but it isn’t happening.”
Despite the positive survey news, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation cautions that the oyster’s apparent rebound is at a critical juncture, facing long-term challenges from climate change as well as near-term threats from disease and overharvesting. More needs to be done to ensure their recovery continues, it said.
The foundation released a report in mid-February calling for Maryland and Virginia to target 20 more Bay tributaries for large-scale oyster reef restoration, on top of the 11 projects now nearing completion.
It also called for expanding aquaculture in Maryland and improving oversight and management of the wild fishery in both states.
“We’ve been blessed the last couple years with really good spat sets and harvest,” said Chris Moore, the foundation’s Virginia executive director. “We know we’re not going to have those all the time.”