Volume 14, Number 5 • September-October 1996

Planting Oysters in the Chesapeake

By Jack Greer

Jackie Takacs had spent the whole day standing in the Choptank River, and now the tide was cresting at about a foot and a half above normal.

The waves moving across the surface of the river were hitting her at neck level, and she literally had to dive down to find the remaining bags of oyster shell she had been helping to move all day long. Sea nettles, which had drifted in with the tide, were waiting for her when she surfaced, draping their stinging tentacles over her hair, her face, her arms.

Anyone else might have considered this a rather dismal situation. But for Takacs it was a great day.

For more than a month, Takacs, an oyster hatchery assistant, had worked with Sea Grant Extension specialist Don Meritt and others at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) Horn Point Oyster Hatchery to set oyster larvae - despite the fact that low salinities had made this effort extremely difficult. According to Don Meritt, salinities in their section of the Choptank River reached only 7 parts per thousand (ppt) by mid-summer, and barely reached 7.5 to 8 ppt as summer drew to a close. "About 8 to 10 ppt seems to be the magic number for setting oysters," says Meritt.

Last year, mid-summer salinities reached 9 to 10 ppt up river, at the newly reclaimed oyster bar where the oyster spat are taken to mature. In a "normal" year (and Meritt cautions that there is no such thing as a normal year, since climatic patterns swing from wet to dry years) the salinity may hover at 12 to 14 ppt in their region of the Choptank. Last year, which was at least a bit more "normal," hatchery operators began setting oysters at the beginning of the summer. This year, they had to wait.

Although production setting of oysters did not start until the beginning of August this year, by the time a month had passed the Horn Point Hatchery had set 5 million oysters - twice the amount they set last year. This is a remarkable achievement, especially in a low-salinity year.

"We are really proud of what we were able to do this year," Meritt says, and he gives a great deal of credit to Takacs.

Their success was due to a number of factors, but according to Takacs, the most important ingredient was "tender loving care."

Far More Than Oysters

Although spawning and setting oysters have occupied both Takacs and Meritt for much of the year, they have also helped to educate a wide range of people about oysters and their importance in the Chesapeake Bay. "We spent 20 days working with teachers and students this past year," says Takacs, who estimates that well over 500 people passed through the hatchery, from kindergarten students to the University System of Maryland Board of Regents.

In September, Takacs called Doug Romano, a teacher at Dorchester High School, to ask for high school student help with moving oysters from grounds off Horn Point to well up the Choptank River - the project is part of a larger effort to rebuild oyster bars in the Chesapeake Bay. So far the bar looks promising, according to Kennedy Paynter, University of Maryland College Park researcher who is working with Meritt on the project. Last year's spat on the upriver oyster bar are showing a sixty percent survival rate.

One group in particular, the Living Classrooms Foundation, has worked closely with the Horn Point Hatchery, bringing students both from "at-risk" groups and from "gifted and talented" classes. All of them work hard learning about oysters and ecology in an intense hands-on program.

"A mother called me after the oyster planting this year," Takacs says, "because her son had left his shoes." The parent said that her son had arrived home exhausted but excited after a long day of moving oyster shells.

Working together and building team spirit is one of the goals of the Living Classrooms Foundation. To help foster this sense of teamwork, Takacs divided the students into teams this past summer and had them examine a four-year-old oyster reef off the beach at Horn Point. The students studied oysters and their habitat and the organisms growing on and around them. "I asked the students to think about what might be eating the oysters," she says, "and what might be eating what is eating the oysters."

The students studied the spat being raised in the hatchery's large tanks, called upwellers. "I asked them whether we could just plant them [the tiny spat] in the Bay," she says. After looking at the four-year oyster bar, the students could see that without being set on other shell (cultch), the spat would simply sink in the mud or become easy food for predators.

As well as teaching students about the biology of oysters, she has put their energies to good use, moving shell bags, counting spat and calculating survival rates. She has recruited graduate students at Horn Point to help bag shell - something they can do throughout the year.

Says Meritt of Takacs's contribution to this year's successful oyster hatchery production: "She did it. She basically did it."

The year of '96 will go down as a cool, wet one, and a bad time for anyone trying to set oysters in the Chesapeake region. Oyster hatchery operators up and down the Chesapeake Bay, especially in Maryland where the water is fresher, found it extremely difficult -- if not impossible -- to set oysters in the low salinity water. Don Meritt (shown above in the field and in the hatchery), of the University of Maryland's UMCES Horn Point Lab and a Sea Grant shellfish specialist, was one person who succeeded. He and Jackie Takacs, after overcoming numerous stumbling blocks, finally set even more oysters than they did last year. In 1995, from June through August, they set some 2.5 million oyster spat. In 1996, and not starting until the beginning of August, Meritt and Takacs set more than 5 million oysters before the summer ended.

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