Maryland’s watermen – many of them – want to get back to cultivating some of the 250,000 acres of productive oyster beds off limits to them since the institution of the 2010 sanctuary program.
The state’s aggressive oyster sanctuary program, aimed at restoring historic populations in Chesapeake Bay, has received considerable attention during the current session of the state’s General Assembly.
In a recently circulated summary of a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) review of oyster management between 2016 and 2020, the Talbot Watermen Association cites statistics showing that more than half of the state’s 51 oyster sanctuaries are not showing signs of helping to repopulate the Bay. Many of the others have shown either inconclusive or mixed results. That, despite the expenditure of millions of dollars spent on “planting fresh and dredged shell, transplanting natural, wild seed, and planting hatchery-reared spat in hopes of increasing oyster populations,” according to the state report.
Now a push is on to force the state to revisit the sanctuary program with an eye to changing some of the boundaries, permitting watermen to work in those previously off limits areas. Sen. Johnny Mautz, who represents constituents in Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot, and Wicomico counties, filed legislation in mid-February that would give the state the authority to change some of those sanctuary boundaries without first receiving the blessing of a number of nongovernmental scientific agencies such as the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. As it is now, those organizations have to be part of developing fisheries management plans for oysters, with 75 percent agreement among them on what those plans should include. The numbers of sanctuaries in Maryland’s portion of Chesapeake Bay and how they are managed are addressed in those plans.
“My goal with this legislation is to force DNR to update its management plans and take accountability for oyster management,” said Mautz recently. “They were supposed to have an updated plan over a year ago. It’s interesting that on the date of a recent Senate committee hearing on this legislation, they announced they now have an updated plan.”
Details of that updated plan were not available as of the writing of this article. Mautz said he wants to continue running the bill despite word of a new plan that may address some of the issues.
“The way the law is now, the onus is on the other organizations to come to some agreement. They never have done that and on top of that, the 75 percent agreement provision – that’s ridiculous. I want to put accountability on the DNR.”
Oysters dying on sanctuary beds due to lack of cultivation is a constant theme among disgruntled watermen. They say oyster shells, with and without spat, placed on sanctuary areas eventually get silted over without harvesting or other activity. That, they say, leads to the death of little oysters. Tonging and dredging, culling and putting empty shells and little oysters back on the bars, they say, cleans up the oysters and keeps them growing.
“Look at this example,” said Mautz. “If you take a crab pot and throw it off the dock in the spring, and then come back and pull it out in August, you’ll find it covered with growth. That’s what happens with oysters. They need to be worked.”
Proponents of the sanctuary program point to results of the 2023 fall oyster survey, showing a four decade-high spat set of oysters throughout much of Maryland’s portion of the Bay, as proof the sanctuary program is working. When announcing those survey results, state Shellfish Division Director Chris Judy said salinity levels favoring the natural productivity of the Bay’s oyster grounds in 2023 drove the historic spat counts. They were not, he said, simply the counting of hundreds of millions of spat – baby oysters – placed on sanctuary grounds via the Oyster Recovery Program.
Watermen don’t discount the value of spreading spat on oyster grounds and allowing them to grow into larger oysters. But, they say, allowing them to simply silt over and die because they aren’t cultivated in the years after placement amounts to a waste of millions in taxpayer dollars.
Mautz’s legislation, SB922, would also authorize watermen to use power dredges in Eastern Bay. “My goal with that provision is to get DNR to focus on power dredging a little. When Gov. Ehrlich authorized power dredging in parts of the Chesapeake a few decades ago, it was the best thing that ever happened for the oyster industry. Down the Bay, in Fishing Bay [in Dorchester County] and in parts of Broad Creek [in Talbot County], ever since power dredging has been permitted the oyster ecology is robust.”
While opponents often cite destruction of the bottom by power dredging, others – like Mautz and many of his constituents – say dredging keeps the smaller oysters cleaner, turned over and healthier.
Another hearing before the House Environment and Transportation Committee on the companion legislation to Mautz’s bill – HB1231 – is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Wednesday, March 6. That hearing will be in the House office building at 6 Bladen Street in Annapolis, room 251.
Delegate Chris Adams sponsors the House bill. He also represents constituents in Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot, and Wicomico counties.
Synopsis of the bill, the same as the Senate version, reads: “Repealing a provision of law prohibiting the Department of Natural Resources from taking any action to reduce or alter the boundaries of certain oyster sanctuaries until the Department has developed a certain updated fishery management plan for oysters; and authorizing a person to dredge by power boat in the public oyster fishery area in Eastern Bay in Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties.”
Maryland’s current sanctuary program came into effect during the O’Malley administration in 2010, with an eye toward “materially repopulating the Bay with oyster larvae.”
DNR’s current report (2016-2020), according to the Talbot Watermen document, characterizes the Bay’s oyster bottom in Maryland as 7,953 acres of aquaculture; 253,007 acres in sanctuaries; 175,836 acres of public fishery areas; and 121,761 acres of historic but currently unproductive oyster bottom.
The overarching Oyster Recovery Program, with approximately $40 million in federal and state money, has provided funding for the planting and seeding of oyster shells and spat – in varying degrees – on the 51 Maryland sanctuaries for the replenishment and restoration efforts now being questioned.
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