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Man-made reef bears native oystersThis is a reprint of an excellent article on oyster restoration. Please see the original article at the Virginian Pilot online at this URL: http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=70902&ran=201749
It was low tide Wednesday morning as he stood in the middle of the bay in chest-deep water, the wilds of First Landing State Park a quarter-mile away on the northeastern shore and million-dollar homes planted along the southwest bank. Outfitted in wet suit, fins, swim mask and snorkel, he bounced slightly along the bottom. “I feel oysters,” he said, a goofy grin on his face. “This is it.” He disappeared, his finned feet kicking above the surface like a duck feeding. He came up holding a crusty gray bivalve about 3 inches long – large enough to sell on the commercial market as a cocktail appetizer. “Looky here,” he said. “This is a nice little guy right here.” Pay dirt. Rob Brumbaugh, a fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, eagerly followed Love into the water. Within minutes, he hoisted a wire mesh basket dripping with oysters onto the boat’s deck. It was the first visit to the reef to see how it was doing since Love, a real-estate lawyer with a conservationist’s bent, spent $2,000 to help build it. Two years ago, the 30- by 50-foot reef was nothing more than a foot-tall barren mound of old oyster shells on the bay bottom. But Wednesday, Brumbaugh and Love discovered a thriving young colony of oysters. The findings, Brumbaugh said, show “astounding progress” in the effort to restore native oysters to the Lynnhaven River, where pollution has rendered them inedible and deadly parasites nearly wiped them out. It also offers ample reason to forge ahead, even as a controversial experiment to introduce non-native Asian oysters into Chesapeake Bay waters proceeds. “It means we’re doing something right here, or at least we’re beginning to,” Brumbaugh said. “It shows that, yes, Virginia, we can restore the oysters.” Since 1997, Brumbaugh’s group, with help from schoolchildren and volunteers like Love, has transplanted 1.5 million oysters into the Lynnhaven, “carpet bombing” man-made reefs with the bivalves to jump-start a population. More help is on the way. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, impressed with the possibilities, last year unveiled plans to spend $3.75 million on the river over the next five years to build 150 acres of reef and stock them with 25 million adult and baby oysters. Love, who holds a 60-acre oyster lease where his reef was built, was one of the last to benefit from a cost-share program the state offered to encourage oyster restoration. The program has since fallen victim to tight budgets. Love’s reef is significant for two reasons, Brumbaugh said. The oysters established themselves naturally, proving, he said, that enough oysters now exist in the Lynnhaven to populate a reef without human help. Baby oysters likely anchored there after drifting on the currents from nearby reefs built and stocked as part of restoration efforts, he said. The findings also suggest that Lynnhaven oysters can be repopulated on deep-water reefs. Most of the reefs have been constructed near shore, where the oysters are covered by water at high tide and exposed during low tide. Brumbaugh came out of the water enthused. From a sample culled off the reef in a 2-foot-square area, he counted 38 live oysters – 15 large enough to market, 20 smaller ones and three baby “spat.” The largest was more than 4 inches long, not bad for oysters no more than two years old, he said. An oyster that large will produce millions of spawn, increasing the chance of re-establishing the native critters, he said. The sample suggests that thousands of oysters have taken up residence there, he said. Many of the oysters transplanted in the restoration effort were selectively bred at a aquaculture farm run by Brumbaugh’s group to resist the deadly MSX and Dermo, parasites that nearly wiped out the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population. Despite that, many of the bivalves continue to fall victim to the parasites before they reach market size, said Jim Wesson, head of oyster management for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. That means the goal of re-establishing a commercial crop of native oysters remains elusive, he said. Currently, the state is monitoring an experiment that has introduced 800,000 sterile Asian oysters into Chesapeake Bay waters. The foreign oysters grow faster, are resistant to MSX and Dermo and pass the all-important taste test, Wesson said. But Brumbaugh said the state should not rush to judgment. The results in the Lynnhaven show a “dramatic” rise in reproducing oysters, which is key, he said. “You can’t just jump right to the harvest as your measure of success,” he said. “What we want to accomplish first and foremost is higher reproduction. Without recruitment, you’ll never have another oyster.” Reach Jon W. Glass at 222-5119 or jon.glass@pilotonline.com Artificial Reefs
Maryland and Virginia Artificial Reef
and Oyster Reef Locations Oyster Reef and Oyster Research Links
Chesapeake Bay foundation- Help Build Living Oyster Reefs
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By JON W. GLASS, The Virginian-Pilot