Not far offshore, many more oysters can be seen just below the surface of the clear water, festooning reefs made out of concrete and construction rubble.
“The oysters are thick as can be,” enthused Bob Lewis, executive director of the St. Mary’s River Watershed Association.
The upper St. Mary’s River is an oyster sanctuary. Off limits to harvest pressure, this 1,300-acre area is brimming with bivalves. Lewis’s group has poured countless volunteer hours and $250,000 of donations into building new reefs and seeding them with hatchery-spawned, cage-nurtured baby bivalves.
The future of such protected areas is up for debate, though, as the Hogan administration weighs reopening some of Maryland’s 51 oyster sanctuaries to commercial harvest. Watermen say they need more areas to harvest because lethal oyster diseases are flaring up again, cutting into their harvest. And they argue that they deserve access to places like the upper St. Mary’s River. It was one of their most productive spots, they say, before it was made a sanctuary seven years ago.
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7 comments:
The sanctuaries need to be rotated regularly and yearly. 7 year old oysters are dying off and creating a perfect breeding ground for MSX and Demo. It's called FARMING. You ROTATE your crops on land, don't you? What happens if you don't?
Exactly!
Plentiful oysters in the bay are very important-- but not just for watermen to harvest and sell..
OYSTERS FILTER THE WATER.
The sanctuaries need to be rotated with harvesting limits that don't allow the sanctuary to be depleted - meaning one lucky waterman gets to take 40% and noting more!
A percentage per year, yes, until the harvest is over, while for the same time periods, (plural) there are new beds made and preserved until the 5-7 year cycle comes around again. CYCLE the "preserve" locations and STOP the over aging of the beds!
R O T A T I O N !
7:36 is an environmentalist whacko. I suppose you believe in Global Warming, too? Oh, wait, you lying liberals call it Climate Change now, don't you? God put oysters and everything else here for us to eat, so we should eat them. Duh!
Happy to see Capt. Craig is making it big
Let's eat!
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