Aquaculture In the Mid-Atlantic:
A 20-Year Perspective

By Jack Greer

When Don Webster came to Maryland in 1974, he had fish on his mind. The first Sea Grant Extension agent to arrive in the state, he brought a range of experience on the seafood docks of the Atlantic coast, especially Rhode Island. He had not only worked the docks, he had also worked aboard trawlers, including one that overturned and left Webster and other members of the crew sitting on the bottom of the ship, as the sun went down and the temperature dropped. Fortunately a passage-making sailboat happened by, and plucked them off, almost certainly saving their lives.

Once in Maryland Webster began working with commercial fishermen - he had his own feeling boat for a while - but before long he began to see the writing on the wall.

"How could we increase seafood production? That was the question that faced us."

One way to increase production, Webster felt certain, was through aquaculture. "Even in the 1970s we were seeing reproduction problems," he says. Webster and his colleagues began working on improving the reproduction of oysters, helping oyster growers set spat on shell before placing it on the Bay bottom to grow out.

Webster's work with oysters was the beginning of what would become an extensive aquaculture outreach effort.

"We started with a conference for oyster growers in 1979," he says. Then in 1981 we had a conference that went to two days, with the second day focused on finfish." The conference gradually expanded to include other species such as crawfish and clams, and other states - Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia. Now titled the "Mid-Atlantic Aquaculture Conference," the gathering covers everything from testing the acidity of fish ponds to marketing farm-raised seafood. But aquaculture was not always the topic of polite conversation.

Going Against the Grain

"The biggest change in aquaculture in Maryland," says Webster, "is that now you can talk about it.

In the early days of Webster's work, aquaculture remained a contentious subject. Despite growing aquaculture industries such as catfish in the South and oysters in the Pacific Northwest, in Maryland aquaculture had become entangled in the controversy over leased bottom in the Bay. To grow oysters, aquaculturists have to lease the underwater ground for planting them. For many watermen, leased bottom meant private control - namely ownership of a traditionally wild and open fishery. Still others doubted whether finfish aquaculture that relied on pond construction would be possible in a state like Maryland, where land values may often be higher than, say, in Mississippi.

Unfortunately, the debate over leased bottom and the traditional fishery has largely been diffused, if not decided, by two microscopic interlopers: MSX and Dermo, parasitic diseases which have devastated an already stressed oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay. Many of the oysters planted by watermen in the Nanticoke River in the early 1980s had died by the mid-80s, when these diseases made a sudden and disheartening appearance. It didn't matter whether the oysters were on public or private grounds. They all died.

"At this point," Webster says, "the oyster will probably not be able to make a comeback without aquaculture." He points to the possibilities of breeding a disease-resistant oyster, of refining a genetically engineered oyster, or of introducing a new species of oyster to the Bay, one that, unlike the Eastern oyster may be resistant to parasitic disease. Even reconstructing the once prolific reefs of native Bay oysters will likely depend on aquaculture. Already growers are moving oysters around the Bay, from high-salinity waters to low-salinity waters and back again in an attempt to out-maneuver the generally salt-loving parasites.

Anyway you look at it, says Webster, some form of aquaculture will likely be needed to bring back the Eastern oyster.

Going With the Flow

Besides the once-plentiful and much-touted oyster, there are other fish in the sea, and the fish most popular in the sea's arm known as the Chesapeake is the rockfish, or striped bass. In an effort to protect its official state fish, Maryland instituted a complete moratorium in 1985 which prohibited even possessing a rockfish - a law which caused problems for Webster and his colleagues as they explored options for spawning and raising the fish. At one point University personnel were intercepted at the airport for sending fish to Germany as part of a cooperative aquaculture experiment.

"Thank goodness all that is over," says Webster.

There is more than one reason to be thankful. According to researchers and resource managers alike, the moratorium and the tightly controlled fishery that followed have resulted in a comeback for the striper. Even so, some argue that (with striped bass as with so many other species) even healthy natural stocks may not be able to supply numbers great enough to meet growing demands for seafood.

The striped bass presents a likely species for aquaculture in Maryland, says Webster, because people know it here and they like it. As a result, there is a better market for striped bass than for catfish in the Mid-Atlantic.

Most fish are grown in ponds, though according to Webster the state has issued two permits for netpen culture in the Bay on an experimental basis. "We're working with Pintail Point Farm," says Webster, "to study the impacts of netpen culture on water quality."

The Bay is a shallow body of water - the netpens at Pintail Point are in less than ten feet of water, says Webster - and resource managers want to know what kinds of effects intensive culture might have on the Bay bottom, on dissolved oxygen levels, for example. Prior studies have focused on very different water conditions, he says, and on different species, such as salmon.

"Ten years ago I would not have thought that we would be as far along as we are," Webster says. "Recent production of hybrid striped bass (usually a cross with white bass) have far exceeded projections." Harvests of cultured striped bass hybrids have risen from 4 million pounds a year to 7 million and, estimates Webster, perhaps to 10 million this year.

"It's fascinating," says Webster, "what new species people are looking at. Cod. Halibut. Black sea bass. Sturgeon."

It may be that aquaculturists of the future will raise a range of species, species now in serious decline. "This winter I visited some of the old commercial fishing ports in New England," says Webster, "and they are in dire straits. The government is even providing funds to train fishermen in aquaculture - quite a change from the old days."

Webster traces his interest in aquaculture back to courses he had at the University of Rhode Island, but he never would have predicted that it would become his life's work. In fact, he never intended to settle on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. "I came to Maryland for three or four years," he says, "and stayed. That was twenty years ago."

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