Eastern Oysters in Decline

A spring morning’s first light greets a fatigued, worn-out fleet of whitewashed boats sailing from this and other ports along Maryland’s Eastern Shore and on into the placid, blue Chesapeake Bay.

In no particular order, the box-topped, narrow vessels search out the ancient oyster beds that dot this sprawling estuary and its tributaries. With luck, the crews of one, sometimes two, find a productive spot to anchor.

Played out from early November’s quickening chill until the brisk, clear days of late March, the ritual is reassuring. Here, in one of the nation’s environmental treasures, this seafood harvest is framed by quiet fishing villages, stately tree-lined shores and a wide horizon broken only by flocks of water fowl.

Then, at day’s end, wooden bushels brimming with shellfish are unloaded at dockside packing houses for shipment nationwide.

Yet, the panorama is deceptive, for under the water’s surface an ecological torrent threatens the bay’s fragile species.

At greatest risk is the prized Chesapeake Bay oyster, whose precarious status seems only to deteriorate. The evidence comes in sharp declines in the annual harvests over the last decade. In fact, the recently concluded 1986-1987 season is believed to be the worst in this century.

Precipitating the downturn is a web of naturally occurring bacterial infections, severe weather patterns, pollution and the controversial specter of overfishing.

The situation is being described as a “crash” and presents serious problems for Maryland’s economy. For decades, the state had counted the oyster industry as its most valuable fishery, in terms of overall dollars. Now, it appears that reve-nue from blue crabs will exceed that of the brackish-tasting mollusks for the first time since records have been kept.

This year’s oyster landings, even though depressed, are estimated to be in excess of $18 million at dockside, according to Pete Jensen, the state’s director of fisheries. However, the Chesapeake oyster’s total value to Maryland is said to exceed $60 million when processing, packing and wholesale activities are included, he said.

The oysters’ gradual disappearance is not just a matter for local concern. Developments have been felt throughout U.S. seafood markets because Maryland is second only to Louisiana in total production. The Chesapeake’s marked decline, coupled with the emergence of surprisingly similar problems in the Gulf States, have caused retail oyster prices to soar.

No one here needs a marine biologist or government analyst to realize that the fishery is in trouble. Simple numbers tell the story: Estimates of Maryland’s current harvest are at about 900,000 bushels (roughly 60 pounds per bushel) compared with more than 2.3 million in 1978-1979 and 1.5 million in 1985-1986.

Hints that something was amiss in the bay have appeared for years. Historical records indicate that in 1884, for instance, the Chesapeake Bay oyster harvest was reported as high as 15 million bushels.

Even more worrisome is that this year’s meager season occurred despite an increasingly sophisticated effort by as many as 3,500 licensed oystermen. Maryland permits four tightly regulated harvesting methods that are monitored for abuses by an active marine police force.

At the height of the season divers crawl the bay’s floor filling bushels by hand; tongers in the box boats use 12-foot-long, scissor-like poles to scrape the bottom and more-mechanized patent tongers work hydraulic lifts to rake the bay with a claw-like cage.

These three methods are complemented by the most picturesque of all, namely, the elegant, old sailing ships, called skipjacks, which have plyed the bay for a century. These boats dredge while under sail by tossing overboard several metal cages in succession. Each is dragged along the bay until full and then hoisted on board for sorting. Until recently, Eastern Shore natives gave little thought to the seasonal harmony that found the fishing boats out in fall and winter harvesting oysters followed by a spring and summer spent catching crabs. But the current crash has forced those in the industry to contemplate the serious economic changes that threaten the area, which is dependent on the bay for survival.

“Without a living, producing Chesapeake Bay, Maryland is nothing,” said restaurateur Buddy Harrison. The words were chosen carefully, as if in appreciation of the waterfront vista just outside Harrison’s Chesapeake House, an inn and restaurant complex he owns and operates here.

A continuing decline, Harrison said, would not be restricted to the fishing industry. The effect would eventually stifle the booming local real estate market and, ultimately, deter the waves of tourists, who descend each summer upon this portion of the Eastern Shore, a 2 1/2-hour drive from Washington.

Talk in this inn’s dining room and bar can quickly turn to whether the unique way of life found here can continue in the face of the decline. Concern touches everyone from the part-timers, who shuck oysters for the packing houses, to the fishermen and to the area’s leading businessmen such as Harrison.

“The mystique and beauty of this place is deceptive because we are, in fact, fighting for our survival,” said Harrison, whose ancestors first settled in the area in 1856. “No one will want to live here if we don’t have a clean bay. We have a great environmental problem. And it just goes to show you, that you can’t be sure of anything. We took these oysters for granted.”

Harrison is not alone among those in Tilghman and neighboring towns with family roots extending back three and four generations. If the oyster disappears from these once rich waters then, so too, will a livelihood for many who spend half the year scraping the muddy bottom for the coarse-shelled bivalves or are financially dependent upon those that do.

Russell Dize had nothing but incidentals to busy himself with recently as he lingered around his dock here. Normally, boats would be unloading a day’s catch of oysters. But on this afternoon, the shell-littered area was quiet.

“This is as scarce as I’ve ever seen a harvest,” said Dize, who represents the fourth generation of his family to work the oyster trade. “All the people I know, and that includes my brother-in-law and my best buddy, will get out of this business and sell our boats if 1988 is as bad as this year. If that happens, then that’s it--I’m gone.”

In addition to operating the seafood company, Dize is also the owner/captain of a 60-foot, single-mast skipjack. The old ships represent the only U.S. commercial fishing fleet powered by sail.

Dize, vice president of the Maryland Watermen’s Assn., a fisherman’s trade group, says that the skipjacks are likely to disappear unless there is a turnaround. Another poor season would make it impossible to cover the costs of maintaining the boats, many of which were built in the early 1900s.

“(Higher) prices saved us this year, but that’s a poor way to get by. And we can’t alienate consumers by upping prices every year,” he said.

The thought of losing these sailing ships is in itself distressing. Fewer than 20 operational skipjacks remain in the Chesapeake, some of which are in serious disrepair. The current fleet is a far cry from a scene captured in a 1950 aerial photo displayed at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in nearby St. Michael’s. In the picture, more than 50 skipjacks are under full sail crowding a single oyster bed.

There is little consensus on how the industry could have deteriorated from the heady harvest of the 1950s to today. Another skipjack captain, Ed Farley, points to a combination of natural and man-made events.

A Weather Plague

“You can’t do anything about drought or lots of rainfall,” said Farley, a member of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a group dedicated to teaching school children about the area’s historic and environmental importance.

The two alternating weather conditions have plagued the bay in recent years. The summer drought of 1986 caused the water’s salt content to increase substantially, creating perfect conditions for a bacteria called MSX to multiply. The organism attacks older oysters, and some watermen report that as many as 70% of the shellfish pulled from the bay’s bottom this last season were dead.

On the other hand, excessive rain and flooding, a problem just a few years earlier, bring higher than normal run-off from neighboring farm lands and water treatment plants into the bay. Drainage of this sort introduces harmful levels of agricultural chemicals and other pollutants that can also devastate the fragile oyster beds.

“Whenever we are beginning to get optimistic about things, then we’re slapped in the face,” said Farley, who has lobbied for the introduction of disease-resistant oyster strains as one way of combatting the Chesapeake’s weather-induced problems.

Farley, a 10-year veteran oysterman, is also willing to question fishing practices. Unless some methods of mechanically harvesting oysters, such as those employing hydraulic lifts, are not curbed, then the fishery will die from exhaustion, he said.

“People came into the business to make a killing during the good years and that meant overharvesting the resource,” he said. “Now, after the damage has been done, it’s just a matter of how long can all the rest of us oystermen hold on.”

Fishermen’s Role

The fishermen’s role in the oyster’s decline is also an issue that Pete Sweitzer believes goes unaddressed. He says that every year there is an all-out assault on the bay and that the practice is finally taking its toll.

“Today everyone has electronic (sonar) gear, diesel engines, big boats and they go at it everyday, all day long. There is no way nature can keep up with that pace,” he said.

Sweitzer, who has worked on the Chesapeake for four decades, said greater conservation efforts need to be made or there will be no oysters in the future.

“Overfishing happens everywhere in this country. If you turn a fisherman loose, then he’ll run himself out of business. They’re built to self-destruct. Let me go at it and I’ll catch everything I can get my hands on,” he said. “The old guys want conservation and the young guys want to wipe out the bay. But there’s not as many of us older watermen today; most are under 40.”

Sweitzer fondly recalls a time when his fellow fishermen were more concerned with spending time with their children, tending to family gardens or playing baseball. Those days, he says, are gone.

“There’s too much pressure today to maintain a (high) standard of living. . . . These watermen work twice as hard as we did 20 years ago,” Sweitzer said.

“The sad part of this story is that I don’t see it looking too good down the road. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but that’s the way I see it,” he said.

None of the watermen who discussed the Chesapeake were willing to say that either the state or federal government was doing enough to preserve the bay.

Jensen, from the fisheries department, didn’t argue the point, especially in light of the fact that it takes several years for any intervention to be detected. Results lag because at least three years are required before an oyster reaches a marketable size after the spawning stages.

Conservation Plans

“There is nothing we can do about next year. It is going to be low and we have to live with that,” he said.

However, Maryland officials are considering conservation plans used by other states, such as California, which severely constrain the harvest of troubled seafood species during years when a fishery is endangered.

The state is also expanding its seeding efforts aimed at renewing oyster beds that are near dormancy and is working on controlling agricultural runoff. Jensen’s agency is also developing a policy that would offer a broad-based program aimed at revitalizing all the fisheries in the bay, because more than just the oyster is in trouble. Two species, the striped bass and the rockfish, are still recovering from near extinction.

“No one that lives in Maryland will say, ‘Who cares?’ if the Chesapeake dies,” he said. “Oystering is too important to this state.”