Oystermen, BOHICA

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  • Antarctica

    YEEEEEHAWWW!!!!
    MDS Supporter
    Sep 29, 2012
    1,728
    Southern Anne Arundel
    ....Why don't we pay the few remaining oystermen to not catch oysters for a few years and let the oyster population recover. ....

    The oyster population will never recover in the Bay. Harvesting oysters heavily, and never returning the shells to the bay destroyed the bars that new spat needs to grow on. That's my understanding asking these same questions to a buddy of mine who studied oyster ecology in grad school and now works for DNR on exactly this issue. You can put all the spat you want in the bay, and if they don't have shells to grow on, then nothing happens. Oyster shells develop over many generations, and when we started using them to pave roads, we sealed their fate. even today, recovery of harvested shells from restaurants, etc, is practically nil.

    Basically everything that is done now is intended to preserve what we have as I understand it. About the only way you could really change it would be to figure out how to make a very cheap synthetic oyster shell.
     

    PJDiesel

    Banned
    BANNED!!!
    Dec 18, 2011
    17,603
    Ever seen a oystering or clamming operation? Last summer I was actually kind of hesitant to use razor clams for crabs. Makes me think.... they're dredging things up which disrupts the bottom of the bay, then I'm purchasing a byproduct to crab recreationally along with a shitload of other people throughout the late summer.

    Dunno, this is into the territory of we don't really know WHAT we are going to end up with if the populations get worse, oysters in particular. I'm not saying it was like the caribbean and Capt. John Smith was looking at the bottom in 10 feet of water but....... we sure have screwed things up in the past with our supposed brightest people watching over the situation. I'd probably be fairly sad to see the water quality from not that long ago. I'd imagine people even as recent at the late 1800's had a pretty badass view of the bottom (in the Susquehanna Flats or similar sand/grassy area in 10' of water.

    I've lived on waterfront a few different times including the C&D Canal, shits nasty up our way, run off from the roads and farms churns the Elk to a shit brown/weak chocolate milk color for days on end after a good rain. They went from bringing barges up to Elkton via the creek to you can barely navigate a canoe through there, 2' of muck on the bottom of very shallow water back by the homeless encampments.

    Now, let me try to get down off this soapbox without spraining an ankle or something.:sick1:
     

    PJDiesel

    Banned
    BANNED!!!
    Dec 18, 2011
    17,603
    For those who want the clifnotes version,.... we do pretty consistent job of fvcking things up, most times especially when we try to "fix" something we've already thoroughly fvcked.
     

    Enfield303

    Active Member
    Feb 12, 2011
    196
    Harford County
    When I fished the Susquehanna Flats as a kid in the early sixties it wasn't unusual to see the bottom clearly in six feet of water and there was so much grass that we had to find the swan holes for open water to make a cast. The big question about the Bay that no one will ask is, "How many people are we going to allow to live within the watershed?" Until we know that all of the other numbers don't mean anything. We can't plan to build sewerage treatment plants for one million residents and expect them to work when we have two million. The government (currently) can't regulate where people live so as long as the population continues to grow the Bay will get worse.
     

    44man

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 19, 2013
    10,129
    southern md
    In no way did I mean power dredging a product bar, yes that makes no sense. Power dredging without a bag should be done on silted in areas and dead , silted bars. And there’s plenty of those areas to dredge.

    For 3 generations myself, my father and grandfather operated two different oyster houses since back in the 20’s. I do so miss that. But it won’t be coming back in my lifetime
     

    Sealion

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    May 19, 2016
    2,710
    Balto Co
    It's a logical conclusion to make, and others have made it too, but it is an apples/oranges comparison. Yes, the striper moratorium worked. If you take less of them, more will thrive in healthy water conditions. The water is their "structure". Oysters however need something physical to bond to, otherwise they don't grow. The best structure is other oysters, but anything hard will suffice (that's why you see them on the side of pilings, rocks, etc).

    There is a sanctuary bed that has three-dimensional growth of oysters. Picture a giant clump of oysters growing up off of the bay floor. THAT is ideal. There is plenty for baby oysters to attach to, they are up out of the silt, and they are filtering and reproducing MoFo's when they grow like that.

    The problem is, when these few successful bars reproduce and the spat (babies) float down in the current, they don't find other structure to bond to, and they die. And people want to power dredge these bars to harvest the successful oysters, killing the benefit of the 3D bar. It is short-sighted, when really they should be focusing long-term on building structure in other areas of the bay for spat to grow on.

    The sanctuaries were never meant to be the cure for oysters...they were supposed to be the starting block for other areas in the bay to succeed. But there is a strong push for the governor to open up the sanctuaries for harvest. This would cut off naturally reproduced spat significantly.

    /oysters101

    Thanks for the detailed response. Very helpful. :thumbsup:
     

    Antarctica

    YEEEEEHAWWW!!!!
    MDS Supporter
    Sep 29, 2012
    1,728
    Southern Anne Arundel
    The government (currently) can't regulate where people live.

    More or less, thank god. And lets keep it that way. I've got enough of the gub'ment telling me what to do.

    My house is about 20 feet from the bay proper, and these days, the gub'ment would prevent that.

    But have you ever seen the Chesapeake Bay Foundations digs? Yeah - they're about 20 feet from the water too. Those assholes are damned good at telling everyone else how they should or shouldn't live, and just as good at figuring out how to get around all the laws they passed on everyone else. F them.
     
    Last edited:

    Blacksmith101

    Grumpy Old Man
    Jun 22, 2012
    22,154
    Ever seen a oystering or clamming operation? Last summer I was actually kind of hesitant to use razor clams for crabs. Makes me think.... they're dredging things up which disrupts the bottom of the bay, then I'm purchasing a byproduct to crab recreationally along with a shitload of other people throughout the late summer.

    Dunno, this is into the territory of we don't really know WHAT we are going to end up with if the populations get worse, oysters in particular. I'm not saying it was like the caribbean and Capt. John Smith was looking at the bottom in 10 feet of water but....... we sure have screwed things up in the past with our supposed brightest people watching over the situation. I'd probably be fairly sad to see the water quality from not that long ago. I'd imagine people even as recent at the late 1800's had a pretty badass view of the bottom (in the Susquehanna Flats or similar sand/grassy area in 10' of water.

    I've lived on waterfront a few different times including the C&D Canal, shits nasty up our way, run off from the roads and farms churns the Elk to a shit brown/weak chocolate milk color for days on end after a good rain. They went from bringing barges up to Elkton via the creek to you can barely navigate a canoe through there, 2' of muck on the bottom of very shallow water back by the homeless encampments.

    Now, let me try to get down off this soapbox without spraining an ankle or something.:sick1:

    The Big Elk is brown when it crosses the state line the brown you see is PA mud. Tomorrow when it rains go up to the Strickersville Road bridge in PA and look at the water, then go to Black Bridge Road bridge in Fair Hill Park and compare the water color in the Big Elk to the stream feeding into it right by the bridge there (I looked at it this morning) the stream is practically clear until it mixes with the Big Muddy coming down from PA. You will never clean the bay until you can control what flows in from surrounding states in the watershed DE, PA, NY, VA, WV!
    https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MEDIA/stelprdb1046486.png
     
    Last edited:

    bkuether

    Judge not this race .....
    Jan 18, 2012
    6,212
    Marriottsville, MD
    The Big Elk is brown when it crosses the state line the brown you see is PA mud. Tomorrow when it rains go up to the Strickersville Road bridge in PA and look at the water, then go to Black Bridge Road bridge in Fair Hill Park and compare the water color in the Big Elk to the stream feeding into it right by the bridge there (I looked at it this morning) the stream is practically clear until it mixes with the Big Muddy coming down from PA. You will never clean the bay until you can control what flows in from surrounding states in the watershed DE, PA, NY, VA, WV!
    https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MEDIA/stelprdb1046486.png

    Yep. This is probably the most accurate fact on this thread. Until you turn off the pollution coming in at the very top of the Bay, any cleanup effort is worthless.
     

    JPG

    Ultimate Member
    Aug 5, 2012
    6,996
    Calvert County
    Depletion of oysters

    Regulation of the oyster beds in Virginia and Maryland has existed since the 19th century.

    While the Bay's salinity is ideal for oysters and the oyster fishery was at one time the Bay's most commercially viable, the population has in the last fifty years been devastated. Maryland once had roughly 200,000 acres (810 km2) of oyster reefs. Today it has about 36,000. It has been estimated that in pre-colonial times, oysters could filter the entirety of the Bay in about 3.3 days; by 1988 this time had increased to 325 days. The harvest's gross value decreased 88% from 1982 to 2007. One report suggested the Bay had fewer oysters in 2008 than 25 years earlier.

    The primary problem is overharvesting. Lax government regulations allow anyone with a license to remove oysters from state-owned beds, and although limits are set, they are not strongly enforced. The overharvesting of oysters has made it difficult for them to reproduce, which requires close proximity to one another. A second cause for the oyster depletion is that the drastic increase in human population caused a sharp increase in pollution flowing into the Bay. The Bay's oyster industry has also suffered from two diseases: MSX and Dermo.

    The depletion of oysters has had a particularly harmful effect on the quality of the Bay. Oysters serve as natural water filters, and their decline has further reduced the water quality of the Bay. Water that was once clear for meters is now so turbid that a wader may lose sight of his feet while his knees are still dry.

    Efforts of federal, state and local governments, working in partnership through the Chesapeake Bay Program, and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and other nonprofit environmental groups, to restore or at least maintain the current water quality have had mixed results. One particular obstacle to cleaning up the Bay is that much of the polluting substances arise far upstream in tributaries lying within states far removed from the Bay. Despite the state of Maryland spending over $100 million to restore the Bay, conditions have continued to grow worse. Twenty years ago, the Bay supported over six thousand oystermen. There are now fewer than 500.

    Efforts to repopulate the Bay via hatcheries have been carried out by a group called the Oyster Recovery Partnership, with some success. They recently placed 6 million oysters on eight acres (32,000 m2) of the Trent Hall sanctuary. Scientists from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William & Mary claim that experimental reefs created in 2004 now house 180 million native oysters, Crassostrea virginica, which is far fewer than the billions that once existed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesapeake_Bay
     

    hobiecat590

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 2, 2016
    2,434
    Oyster restoration is a thorny problem fraught w/ political and economic landmines. Having directed the creation of 7 reefs using shell from out of state shucking operations and the deposit of over 6 million oysters on these reefs using community resources I have the following observations/proposals:

    1. Suspend all harvesting of natural oysters until populations recover or aquaculture is the only lawful way to remove oysters from the Bay ecosystem. Regrettably, this is never going to happen since it would put over 500 watermen out of work and is politically a not viable.
    2. Power dredging should not be used to turn shell over on new or existing viable oyster reefs. Power dredging should only be used on dead reefs to expose new shell prior to mid June-July 1st when spat starts swimming around looking for some clean substrate to glom on to. I only put bleached shell down around mid June so that slime has a limited time to coat the shells. This promotes natural spat sets.
    3. The Oyster sanctuaries should be expanded to every creek on the Bay and permanently closed to commercial harvesting. New oyster reef creation and seeding should be concentrated on these locations. This proposal would keep newly created reefs free from human predation and serve as oyster nurseries for the entire bay. The smaller volume of water and higher population of fertile oysters would enhance reproductively and be the source of massive free spat production due to higher densities for the rest of the bay as well as significantly improving the water quality of the targeted creeks. An example of a success story are the Solomon’s Island creek systems that have been permanently closed to oyster harvesting. Over 12 million oyster spat have been distributed on these reefs. Water quality improvement has facilitated the increased growth of underwater grasses that have attracted increasing populations of geese, ducks since 2006. Natural spat sets have also been observed in this watershed since 2014.
    4. Power dredging of dead beds in the river and open portions of the Bay would provide the substrate needed for the spat produced in the creek nursery’s to find something to attach to. Once the creek reefs are established, additional shell or other substrate could be distributed to commercial harvesting areas for natural spat sets.
    5. State owned beds should closed 2 out of every 3 years in a rotational scheme to give the beds a chance to recover from over fishing. The beds on either side of the Thomas Johnson Bridge are being worked by 3+ boats every day every season. These boats won’t move on to rape another bed until they have “harvested” the last oyster.
    6. My proposals would guarantee the continued viability of the protected nursery areas while providing an increasing volume of spat to naturally replenish the rest of the bay waters on a continual basis. Water quality, crab, fish, and bird habitat would also be enhanced in the nursery areas to the betterment of the entire bay ecosystem.

    Rant over
     
    To be fair, put a moratorium on recreational crabbers. I hate to say that because I love crabbing, but why use tax dollars?

    Recreational crabbers take less than half of the number of crabs that commercial crabbers take and zero percent of the females...You know, the crabs that make baby crabs..If there is a moratorium to be placed, it needs to be o n the harvest of female crabs...

    The commercial crabbers scream bloody murder when this is brought up...I say let em scream...they are the ones killing off the resource..
     

    44man

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 19, 2013
    10,129
    southern md
    Oyster restoration is a thorny problem fraught w/ political and economic landmines. Having directed the creation of 7 reefs using shell from out of state shucking operations and the deposit of over 6 million oysters on these reefs using community resources I have the following observations/proposals:

    1. Suspend all harvesting of natural oysters until populations recover or aquaculture is the only lawful way to remove oysters from the Bay ecosystem. Regrettably, this is never going to happen since it would put over 500 watermen out of work and is politically a not viable.
    2. Power dredging should not be used to turn shell over on new or existing viable oyster reefs. Power dredging should only be used on dead reefs to expose new shell prior to mid June-July 1st when spat starts swimming around looking for some clean substrate to glom on to. I only put bleached shell down around mid June so that slime has a limited time to coat the shells. This promotes natural spat sets.
    3. The Oyster sanctuaries should be expanded to every creek on the Bay and permanently closed to commercial harvesting. New oyster reef creation and seeding should be concentrated on these locations. This proposal would keep newly created reefs free from human predation and serve as oyster nurseries for the entire bay. The smaller volume of water and higher population of fertile oysters would enhance reproductively and be the source of massive free spat production due to higher densities for the rest of the bay as well as significantly improving the water quality of the targeted creeks. An example of a success story are the Solomon’s Island creek systems that have been permanently closed to oyster harvesting. Over 12 million oyster spat have been distributed on these reefs. Water quality improvement has facilitated the increased growth of underwater grasses that have attracted increasing populations of geese, ducks since 2006. Natural spat sets have also been observed in this watershed since 2014.
    4. Power dredging of dead beds in the river and open portions of the Bay would provide the substrate needed for the spat produced in the creek nursery’s to find something to attach to. Once the creek reefs are established, additional shell or other substrate could be distributed to commercial harvesting areas for natural spat sets.
    5. State owned beds should closed 2 out of every 3 years in a rotational scheme to give the beds a chance to recover from over fishing. The beds on either side of the Thomas Johnson Bridge are being worked by 3+ boats every day every season. These boats won’t move on to rape another bed until they have “harvested” the last oyster.
    6. My proposals would guarantee the continued viability of the protected nursery areas while providing an increasing volume of spat to naturally replenish the rest of the bay waters on a continual basis. Water quality, crab, fish, and bird habitat would also be enhanced in the nursery areas to the betterment of the entire bay ecosystem.

    Rant over

    So all you see when you see a waterman is a rapist harvesting every last oyster? You don’t see his wife and kids and extended family he’s supporting? The businesses he frequents? The people he feeds??

    And when every native oyster is gone and there are no watermen Left and the bays still so filthy from run off from Pennsylvania and other states who will be to blame then?

    I know!! Md farmers!!

    Then the state will have killed both birds it wanted dead with one stone!!
     

    44man

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 19, 2013
    10,129
    southern md
    Recreational crabbers take less than half of the number of crabs that commercial crabbers take and zero percent of the females...You know, the crabs that make baby crabs..If there is a moratorium to be placed, it needs to be o n the harvest of female crabs...

    The commercial crabbers scream bloody murder when this is brought up...I say let em scream...they are the ones killing off the resource..

    Look another vote to be rid of watermen!!

    I wish every person working for the government would loose their jobs, then they couldn’t afford crabs so fewer crabs would be caught then maybe the crab population would grow. I say let them government workers scream.
     
    Look another vote to be rid of watermen!!

    I wish every person working for the government would loose their jobs, then they couldn’t afford crabs so fewer crabs would be caught then maybe the crab population would grow. I say let them government workers scream.

    It's not a vote to get rid of watermen. It is a vote for the DNR to stop bowing to the pressures of the waterman lobby in Annapolis. Many people do not know this, but the only reason there was a striped bass moratorium back in the 80s that saved the resource was because ONE delegate decided to change his vote at the last minute...The bill barely passed..the watermen didn't want the moratorium...had it not passed there is a extremely good chance the striped bass in the Chesapeake bay and maybe the entire east coast would be gone now the same way that Atlantic Sturgeon and Atlantic Salmon are virtually extinct in the bay, wiped out by commercial fishing..I've been fishing and crabbing in the bay for over 50 years now. It's obvious that the natural resources that use to be very abundant in the bay are being harvested faster than they can be renewed...It's only a matter of time before another species is wiped out by over harvest..And in the case of oysters, once it was determined that disease was destroying their biomass why was continuation of commercial harvesting allowed? There are very few people who recreationally harvest oysters...disease nearly wiped them out and yet the comms continue to take take take...sadly, it appears that it will only stop when the resource is so scarce there is no money in it..
     

    hobiecat590

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 2, 2016
    2,434
    So all you see when you see a waterman is a rapist harvesting every last oyster? You don’t see his wife and kids and extended family he’s supporting? The businesses he frequents? The people he feeds??

    And when every native oyster is gone and there are no watermen Left and the bays still so filthy from run off from Pennsylvania and other states who will be to blame then?

    I know!! Md farmers!!

    Then the state will have killed both birds it wanted dead with one stone!!

    You misunderstand, I want the state to responsibly MANAGE our oyster and crab natural resources in order to preserve the watermen's way of life. In this case, the needs of the many (millions) out weigh the needs of the few (<500 watermen). For example, look at how the Alaskan King Crab fishery was saved by quotas. Left to their own devices, there would be no King crab to harvest instead of the current thriving fishery. How about the Rock Fish that were going the way of the oysters in the bay? Rockfish are now plentiful again in spite of all the moaning and groaning at the time. Have you noticed an increase in the deer population nationally since this century compared to the last? Natural resource management works to ensure sustainable harvesting of wild game, fish, and oysters now and for our posterity.
     

    44man

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Feb 19, 2013
    10,129
    southern md
    It's not a vote to get rid of watermen. It is a vote for the DNR to stop bowing to the pressures of the waterman lobby in Annapolis. Many people do not know this, but the only reason there was a striped bass moratorium back in the 80s that saved the resource was because ONE delegate decided to change his vote at the last minute...The bill barely passed..the watermen didn't want the moratorium...had it not passed there is a extremely good chance the striped bass in the Chesapeake bay and maybe the entire east coast would be gone now the same way that Atlantic Sturgeon and Atlantic Salmon are virtually extinct in the bay, wiped out by commercial fishing..I've been fishing and crabbing in the bay for over 50 years now. It's obvious that the natural resources that use to be very abundant in the bay are being harvested faster than they can be renewed...It's only a matter of time before another species is wiped out by over harvest..And in the case of oysters, once it was determined that disease was destroying their biomass why was continuation of commercial harvesting allowed? There are very few people who recreationally harvest oysters...disease nearly wiped them out and yet the comms continue to take take take...sadly, it appears that it will only stop when the resource is so scarce there is no money in it..

    I will Be glad when there’s not an oyster, fish or crab in the bay and the watermen all gone. Only then will people actually decide to clean up the bay. Maybe. And it can’t happen fast enough to suit me.
    The sooner the better.

    I remember the September we learned the most every oyster died, I remember the year the moratorium started, I caught more rockfish that year than I had ever caught in my life, there were shit tons of them and we couldn’t give them away and we couldn’t get any news people to report that there were a lot of fish that year, because it wasn’t what they wanted to report.

    Once upon a time in md you couldn’t get elected dog catcher without farmers and watermen, now there aren’t enough farmers and watermen to elect a dog catcher.

    Yep, I will Be glad when the bays so filthy that it’s void of life. Maybe folks will actually try to remedy the real problem.
     

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