But she questioned whether this could be a repeat of what happened about a decade ago, when another good spat count was followed by the harvest topping 400,000 bushels, driven at least in part by a near doubling of the number of watermen going out to harvest them.

“I’m happy to see the watermen doing well,” said Allison Colden, senior fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. It can also reflect the effort put into it by the watermen. He predicted another good harvest next season as well, based on the number of juvenile oysters seen in the past year.Įnvironmentalists, though, point out that the harvest is not a reliable indicator of the Bay’s overall oyster abundance. “What’s going on is a natural thing,” Harrison said of the harvest increase. They also disagree on the need for costly restoration efforts underway, in which tens of millions of dollars are being spent on building new oyster reefs, often with a stone instead of natural shells, and seeding them with oysters spawned in hatcheries to supplement the limited reproduction of wild oyster reefs. Ruark in 1992.Įnvironmentalists and watermen have been at odds for years over oyster management in Maryland, differing over the value of the extensive network of harvest-free sanctuaries established in 2010. Rachel Dean, who oysters in Calvert County, said she wouldn’t mind seeing the daily bushel limits restored to what they had been in 2018.ĭeckhand Alan Harrison communicates the number of live oysters he culled from a dredge-full aboard the skipjack Rebecca T. “The question then becomes, what’s going to happen in future years?” “You’d expect the fishery to show a response after a stellar spat set year,” Wilberg said. Factoring in reams of historical and recent data, the scientists’ mathematical model had projected the harvest this past season would be nearly 500,000 bushels. The fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science helped to lead a computer-driven stock assessment of the oyster population for DNR. The increase in Maryland’s wild harvest gave Mike Wilberg some satisfaction. “It’s a good time for oyster farmers,” said Scott Budden, co-owner of Orchard Point Oyster Co. The same weather and water conditions in 20 that helped the wild oyster stock reproduce and grow also aided Maryland oyster farmers, who saw their harvest from leased bottom reach a record 90,029 bushels last year, surpassing its previous high of 73,000 bushels in 2017, according to DNR data. Virginia did not ease any of the curbs on its wild fishery, which Button said has meant that, lately, the state’s wild harvest has not grown as much as Maryland’s. The agency lifted its Wednesday harvest ban in 2021 while retaining the lower daily bushel limits. The salinity has since rebounded, and DNR’s juvenile spat count in 2020 was the best in more than two decades. Virginia also shortened its season by a month, while Maryland banned harvests on Wednesdays, reducing the workweek to four days.

Maryland and Virginia both imposed harvest restrictions, reducing daily bushel limits. Record rainfall in 2018–19, though, lowered salinity in the Bay and its rivers, curbing oyster growth and reproduction and even killing oysters in some places. But the diseases have since abated and haven’t caused significant a die-off for years.

Virginia harvest figures for the season are not yet available, but Andrew Button, deputy shellfish manager for the state Marine Resources Commission, said that the oyster population has increased to record numbers there based on annual reef surveys.Īs MSX and Dermo drove the wild harvest down in both states, Maryland’s landings hit a record low of 27,000 bushels in 2003–04.

Students oyster spat