The Maryland Oyster Advisory Commission, created in 2007 by the Maryland General Assembly, has recently sent out a report outlining a new sustainable method for returning the native oyster populations to ecologically suitable levels while continuing an efficient harvest for the marketplace. Disease, overfishing and habitat loss has decimated oyster populations in the bay and thousands of watermen that used to make a living off the oyster harvest have stopped due to unsuitable population sizes. Therefore in order to help the oysters for both the environment and the economy the Advisory Commission has recommended first setting aside vast areas of the bay to be deemed oyster sanctuaries where fishing is prohibited and second adding millions of tax dollars to encourage growing oysters via aquaculture to sell commercially. The Commission recommends closing areas of the bay indefinitely to encourage the growth of disease resistant oysters to help bolster the native population. However, the commercial switch to aquaculture would not come cheap to the state of Maryland because the switch would require a change in laws restricting private oyster cultivation and an estimated $40 million dollars a year for at least 10 years to support the sanctuaries and switch to aquaculture.
I believe that this new legislation is a step in the right direction and will greatly help native oyster populations. Moratoriums on Rockfish worked wonders years ago to increase the population sizes and would undoubtedly do the same for oysters. However it is discouraging that portions of the bay would be closed permanently to oystering and would not be reopened even when population sized would returned to reasonable levels. About 95% of the world’s oysters are grown from aquaculture and it would be a shame to lose the unique historical business that wild oystering has to offer.
--Joe Ports
