Portfolio V: Restoring Oysters To The Chesapeake Bay

Managing For Success: Taking the Lead and Partnering

Maryland Sea Grant's commitment to oyster outreach and education has resulted in the development of wide-ranging expertise. By targeting our limited resources and utilizing programmatic strengths we have worked to effectively deliver research-based information. In some cases we have taken the lead - for example, through our newsletters,

• Policy Making. In 1993, Maryland watermen, aquaculturists, scientists, legislators and policymakers signed The Oyster Roundtable Agreement, a landmark change in oyster management. For the first time restrictions were set on the movement of oyster seed from public seed beds to grow-out areas. The strategy is to maintain oligohaline regions as disease-free, harvest free, spawning areas. Upper reaches may only be planted with certified disease-free hatchery reared oyster seed. Dermo is especially prevalent in higher salinity beds, so these oysters should not be moved from infected beds upstream to the oligohaline reaches. This change in policy resulted in large part from scientific evidence that it could be possible to rear disease-free seed to harvest size before Dermo or MSX disease became systemic. Sea Grant Extension Shellfish Specialist Don Meritt was an instrumental member of the Roundtable and has been credited as a key influence with commercial watermen who have long opposed such harvesting restrictions but agreed to zoning the river systems.

• Commercial and State Managers: Hatchery Operations and CROSBreed Oysters. An important achievement of the Oyster Disease Research Program is the continuing development of CROSBreed oysters, hatchery-reared strains of Crassostrea virginica that have been bred over several generations to resist both MSX and Dermo. While these strains are still being tested, SGEP specialists teamed up with researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Rutgers University Haskin Marine Laboratory to conduct hands-on workshops at commercial and state hatcheries on the east coast.

• Public Outreach: To assess the progress of the Oyster Disease Research Program, Maryland Sea Grant took the lead with the Virginia Sea Grant Program and the National Sea Grant College Program in writing and producing "Restoring Oysters to U.S. Coastal Waters," a magazine feature-style report related to research and outreach progress on combating disease.
  
  
• Public Outreach: The Oyster Alliance. Maryland Sea Grant was instrumental in organizing the Alliance in cooperation with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF), the largest non-government organization in the region, the Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP), and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The Alliance's aim is to enhance citizen efforts in restoring Bay's oyster resources and brings together CBF's oyster gardeners and ORP's citizen volunteers for enhanced educational programs.
  
  
• Hatchery Production of Oyster Larvae and Seed Oysters for Research and Restoration Programs. Sea Grant Extension has a long-term partnership with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) at the Horn Point Laboratory to support the Shellfish Specialist who operates the oyster hatchery. Hatchery production currently accounts for some 90 percent of the oyster larvae produced in the state of Maryland.
  
  
• Commercial Watermen and Aquaculturists. East Coast Commercial Fishermen's Trade Show and Aquaculture Expo. Maryland SGEP works closely with the mid-Atlantic Sea Grant Programs to run seminars for commercial watermen and aquaculturists. Specific seminar topics have focused on the CROSBreed Project (see above), including presentations by SGEP faculty, oyster restoration and oyster gardening programs.