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Portfolio V: Restoring Oysters To The Chesapeake Bay
Our Response
Though Maryland Sea Grant
through its core program has funded oyster research, major scientific
support over this decade has come from the Oyster
Disease Research Program;
there has been additional support from the Chesapeake
Environmental Effects Committee (CBEEC).
ODRP's major research goals include the following:
- Develop optimal
strategies for managing around disease.
- Improve understanding of
the processes of parasitic infection.
- Improve understanding of
the oyster's immune system.
- Develop hatchery
techniques for producing disease-resistant strains.
- Develop molecular tools
to better monitor the onset and presence of disease.
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Commitment to Oyster
Restoration
For more than 20 years,
Maryland Sea Grant has been a leader in research, outreach
and education efforts related to oysters in the Chesapeake
Bay. Sea Grant Extension Program (SGEP) specialists were
instrumental in organizing the first bay wide Oyster Culture
Conference in 1979, now an annual meeting that covers
diverse issues related to shellfish and finfish. In 1981,
Maryland Sea Grant supported the development and publication
of Maryland's Oysters: Research and Management, the first
comprehensive assessment of the history of oyster
policy-making. SGEP faculty, working with the University of
Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and the
hatchery at the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory, adapted the
technology of remote setting of shellfish from the West
Coast for applications in Chesapeake Bay. They have
conducted scores of remote setting workshops for commercial
operators, state resource managers and extension specialists
throughout the east coast, so that remote setting at
different production scales is now being employed by many
operations in the region.
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Building on the findings of
ODRP and related research, on Sea
Grant Extension Program
field studies at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental
Science Horn Point Laboratory and on more than two decades of
innovative outreach and education efforts, Maryland Sea Grant began
to formulate a comprehensive outreach strategy designed to synthesize
emerging knowledge about disease and oyster ecology for important
stakeholders. Our key goals included the following:
- Clarify the reasons for
oyster declines in Chesapeake Bay.
- Provide accurate
information on oyster restoration.
- Explain the function of
research in restoration activities
- Demonstrate remote
setting techniques and grow-out of oysters.
- Adapt educational
activities for hands-on applications.
Our long-term goal is to
foster the restoration of sustainable oyster populations in the
Chesapeake by influencing the basis of decision making. The driving
force of these efforts is the applicable findings of ODRP and related
research in order to inform decision makers across the spectrum of
stakeholder interests.
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