Oystering is my favorite harvest. I find the activity rich in subject matter for my paintings and drawings and have been at this for what will be my 20th season this year. While I do not own a boat (I am too smart for that), nor do I operate any tongs, hand or patent, or power dredges, or dive, I do cull. It is at the cull table where I have been learning from the men about harvesting oysters. Watermen face a plethora of obstacles in their pursuits of making a living by providing sea food for the public. I have been reading research papers, histories, talking with scientists, and advocating for the watermen in the media, the legislature and using my art to tell the stories to share what I have learned. There is something oddly mystical to handling oysters. Even the folks who participate in the Maryland Grows Oysters program through the DNR get downright proprietary about their oysters.
Up to 9 years ago a waterman could leave the creek in Rock Hall and go out “front” and oyster in his home waters. Today a waterman has about two weeks of getting his daily limit of good round and fat market oysters out in front before he has to go down bay for the rest of the season (Oct.1 to March 31) to make a living at oystering. Those two weeks are good for many reasons but the best is that he is in his home waters and not far from his support structure of hardware, tools, expertise and home. That is no longer the reality of oystering in the Bay above the Bridge.
There is a saying that when farmers thrive, watermen starve; when farmers starve, watermen thrive. In the late 1990’s there was a four year drought that came very close to destroying the oyster industry, Bay wide. Droughts raise the salinity levels in the Bay waters all the way up above the Bay Bridge. The double whammy of diseases like MSX and Dermo thrive in high salinity and warm waters. Virginia’s oysters are always subject to disease pressures. Maryland has no such baseline with which to gauge disease in the bay. The disease is either killing off millions of oysters in some places or not in other areas. Yet Mother Nature can throw it all under the wheels of the bus by bringing too much fresh water or too little. The then DNR Fishery Director over reacted and misinterpreted or purposefully misquoted the comment about the state of oysters in Maryland, when he stated, “The Status Quo is no longer acceptable”. The comment was made on the heels of a four year drought that decimated the oysters in the Bay in the 90’s. The original meaning was that the state of oysters in Maryland being decimated by disease was no longer acceptable. It did not mean that all of the programs being utilized by the industries, the state, the universities, colleges, laboratories and recovery programs were not working. But the Griffin/O’Malley DNR chose to appropriate the comment and use it to put a stop to the politically inconvenient public oyster fishery. The spat on shell planting programs were stopped, shell dredging permit renewals were allowed to lapse into political comas. The oyster industry in the upper bay coasted on the slow growth of maturing oysters until there were no longer any real numbers of oysters in the bay from which to make a living. The age of the Oyster Advisory Commission was ushered in.’ that was O’Malley’s blue ribbon committee which pushed for the mega sanctuary protocol as the solution to all of the oyster woes. I sat in on 9 years of meetings. Learned a lot, and was increasingly dismayed at the disregard for the human cost of their proposals.
You may be wondering what this has to do with the Swan Point project. Lately, background history is something many editors seem to have no room for. Swan Point is an oyster bar in the upper Bay outside of Rock Hall. From a variety of reasons it was chosen because, for the most part it is a hard surface with small rocks, good shell on surface, and the fierce tides that scour the area and buried shell that is in dire need of power dredge cleaning. It was at one time a very productive oyster bar. The upper bay is a different body of water than Eastern Bay and even more so than the lower bay. Its waters are fresher and unfortunately, it is the direct recipient of overflow from Conowingo and is also the reluctant recipient of Baltimore sewage water overflows, and the accompanying runoff from Maryland’s most populated counties. There are more tributaries contributing fresh water to the upper Bay than anywhere else. There was a good solid oyster industry in the upper bay until natural events forced an ill-conceived knee jerk reaction from the O’Malley administration. The public fishery in the upper bay was and will always be dependent upon planting of oyster spat on shell. Fresh waters inhibit natural recruitment of larvae. Upper bay natural spat sets are historically low. That is not say, as some in the past DNR shellfish department used to say, that there was virtually no such event. It does happen about every ten years. Think about the Bay as a slowly dripping faucet. You watch it as it seems to take forever between each drip. So then, you put a bucket under it to catch the drips and go away for the day. When you return you find the bucket almost full of water. There are thousands of acres of oyster bottom in the upper bay. Even with a slow natural spat set each year you will eventually have several weeks of work oystering. But depending on such a process is not what kept the public fishery alive in the upper bay.
My family and I are what the Irish euphemistically call “blow ins”. We moved to Chestertown in 1995. It was one of the best moves my wife Phyllis and I did for our family. I remember the docks in Rock Hall full of oyster boats from all over the Bay. There were skipjacks from Rock Hall, Deal and Tilghman Islands, patent tong and hand tong boats from the Patuxent, Smith Island, Shady Side, Kent Island, and Annapolis. They came to the upper bay to harvest oysters that were planted through a co-operative program involving the DNR and the watermen.
This planting program has been derogatively called a, Put-and-Take fishery”. That is exactly what it is and there is nothing negative about it. It was never a restoration technique it was and is solely an industry tool. The restoration effort has its mega sanctuaries that are to “guarantee” a brood stock of oysters. This seed and shell programs brought diseased oysters from down bay in the millions to the fresher waters of the upper bay to flush the diseases from them so they could grow out. Without that program the numbers of oysters would be even lower that the widely used number of 1%. (Oddly enough no one knows what that number is.)
Some blame such a technique for the spread of diseases. In hindsight that is partially correct, but you must remember it is what saved millions of larvae producing oysters from the ravages of disease. While moving infected shell may have accelerated the spread of diseases it is not the sole reason for the infection to have spread bay wide. The diseases were already in the water column and being carried along in the tides of the Chesapeake Bay. Its Bay wide presence was only a matter of time. MSX (which came to the Bay in the late 40’s) can live in the water for two weeks without needing a host organism, and does not necessarily need an oyster as a host. Dermo has always been a factor in the Bay. When the oysters started to die off in the lower bay the watermen came north with their boats loaded to the washboards with spat on shell and planted them where the DNR told them. When they grew to market size the very same men came up Bay to harvest them. To supplement the need for shell there was an “old-shell dredge” program that had been in operation for many years in the upper bay. It provided for shell to be taken down bay to seed bars and take advantage of that region’s high rate of natural recruitment. That spat on shell would then be divided up for various county oyster bars, the bay, and sanctuaries to be delivered from the diseased waters of the lower bay to fresher waters. This went on for almost 45 years. It was a successful set of programs that not only provided oysters for the public fishery it also provided oysters for the state’s sanctuary projects. All user groups benefited from this project. It was funded in part through watermen oyster surcharges, bushel taxes and state money. If you were to follow the money through the value chain of the oyster industry through the Maryland state economy you will find it goes deep into the communities and industries both in state and out of state. Under the O’Malley/Griffin legacy the value of an oyster bushel was reduced from its worth in the value chain to just its dockside value. In hindsight this among other changes represents a cynical effort to devalue the value chain of oysters in the Maryland economy. Once the industry was portrayed as not being a cost effective part of the state economy it was easier to dismantle any programs that supported it. Such a piecemeal destruction was fully supported by special interest groups such as the CBF, NOAA, CCA, MSSA and the DNR. CCA made the dredge permit renewal for the old age shell operation so politically charged that the Ehrlich administration walked away from it. This one effective tactic, led by a special interest group masquerading as a conservation association, brought the oyster industry to a standstill. This action by CCA caused an unfortunate side effect that affected many more people than just the commercial sea food industry.
Lead photo: Marc Castelli’s original works including “Oyster Claw/Rough Water”
Part 2 to follow.
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Dan Watson says
What are your views on promoting a substantial increase in oyster aquaculture here in Maryland? It has long been a very successful industry in VA, I believe with oysters harvests greater than in MD, and increasing at a more rapid rate.
Marc Castelli says
Mr. Watson,
I believe that aquaculture has a place in the oyster industry.I do not believe that it will supplant the public fishery. No reason for it to do so. Maryland was never as friendly to aquaculture as it is now. But I might suggest that it should prove itself before thinking its advocates deserve any kind of parity with the public shell fishery. How much aquaculture is on bottom? How many landowners want floats or cages out in front of their waterfront property?What is the rate of failure? What is the rate of failed lease applications to approved ones? There are loans made available to lease holders and those interested in supplying seed. Despite the overly generous terms of these loans how many loans have been defaulted on? The money invested by watermen and the cost effectiveness of the public shell fishery when compared to aquaculture puts it all in perspective. Aquaculture has a long way to go before it is a major contributor to the value chain that the public shell fishery is today. Virginia has a long and friendly relationship with its aquaculture industry.In fact the state shellfish director would like to see the end of the public oyster industry. Maryland does not see the need for such a drastic sea change in direction. The state has bent over backwards, and in some cases disregarded its own protocols to guarantee approval of lease applications despite of other groups having long term past history of usage. In one instance rather than appear to be disapproving of a contentious lease the state allowed itself to be buffaloed by the applicant “winning” his case in the court of public opinion. There are only a couple issues with aquaculture with which I personally do not agree. For one;I like to know whether the oysters I am thinking of ordering at a restaurant are natural diploid oysters or “naturally” produced triploid sterile oysters. Until the industry and restaurants are willing to label their oysters as wild caught, aquaculture diploid or triploid I will not eat any oysters out of season that I do not know who or how they were produced. In this age of genetically manipulated organisms, we seem to have so many choices taken away from us by well meaning food industry advocates. It is argued that triploid oysters are not genetically manipulated. They are far from natural. Mother Nature does not encourage such organisms. How many layers of science do we need between us and the foods we eat?So… I do believe that aquaculture has its place in the oyster industry. But not at the price of replacing the public shell fishery. The bay is big enough for lease applicants to do their research and find bottom that is not being used by other groups. Lastly I would hope that truth in labeling would become a reality and consumers would then know what they are eating. We should have that right.
Marc Castelli says
I have to make a correction about the time line I used to explain the appearance of the disease MSX in the Chesapeake bay.
Christine Keiner author of a great book ,The Oyster Question, informed me that MSX appeared Delaware Bay in the spring of 1957, the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay in January 1960, Pocomoke Sound in 1961, and Hooper Strait in 1962. Not appearing first in the Bay as I asserted in the 1940’s.
Hope that my mistake did not alarm anyone.