NEWPORT NEWS On a gray and drizzly Monday morning, workers fired a water cannon to spray oyster shells off a barge in the James River beside Newport News.
As the weather cleared a few miles upriver, a giant dredge pulled up fossilized oyster shells buried deep in the mud and placed them onto two more barges for a later return to the James.
All of this dredging and replacing of shells was part of the largest oyster replenishment project in Virginia history, a $2 million effort this summer to help oysters by giving them new places to live and grow — bunches of their own shells, to which baby oysters attach.
Chesapeake Bay oysters — great to eat, important for the bay’s health — suffered a disastrous decline in recent decades because of disease, pollution and other issues.
But the oyster is making a big comeback, state experts say, and the shell-replenishment work is designed to give that restoration an extra boost.
People are also reading…
“Oysters are doing great,” said Jim Wesson, head of oyster restoration for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. “It’s a growth industry right now, and we have the growing pains that go with that.”
For example, Wesson said, the recent surge in Virginia’s oyster population has made it hard to find enough oyster shuckers — people who pry open the shells and cut out the tasty meat by hand.
Wesson spoke during an interview aboard a state-owned, custom deadrise, modeled after the classic bay watermen’s boat. The cargo on this trip consisted mainly of news people and state dignitaries who were shown the dredging and replenishment sites.
Oysters spawn in summer, producing shell-less, microscopic babies that float about before attaching to oyster shells. Then they grow their own shells and help build their shell piles, variously called reefs, rocks, shoals or bars.
An oyster reef is a watery village — part nursery, part housing complex and part burial ground. When English settlers plied the bay 400 years ago, the reefs were so big they posed hazards to navigation.
A century or so ago, watermen took huge numbers of oysters and their shells. The shells didn’t go back in the water. Many of them ended up on roads.
The removal of those shells just made things worse when pollution and other problems kicked in. In the late 1800s, Virginia watermen took an estimated 6 million to 8 million bushels of oysters a year. In 2001, the harvest was a meager 23,000 bushels.
That’s about when the comeback began.
The increase apparently was the result of state practices including allowing the harvesting of some areas on a rotating basis, giving young oysters two or three seasons to breed before they are harvested, private efforts that include raising oysters in cages, and possibly some natural phenomena that aren’t fully understood.
The 2012 harvest was 250,000 bushels — about a tenfold increase in a decade.
To help this comeback, Gov. Bob McDonnell proposed record state funding, $2 million, for the shell replenishment program, and the 2013 General Assembly agreed.
Over the past two decades, state spending for the program had ranged from nothing to $1.3 million.
This year’s shell-replenishment program began in May. When it ends late this month, about 1 million bushels of shells — about 1 billion individual shells — will have gone onto state oyster grounds. That’s enough shells to fill about 4,000 dump trucks, officials say.
The Chesapeake Bay oyster pleases palates and creates jobs. It also is a drab but crucial cornerstone of the bay, filtering water as it feeds down in the dark.
Doug Domenech, McDonnell’s secretary of natural resources, said aboard the viewing boat that helping oysters is good for the bay and the economy. “It’s a dual benefit.”
(804) 649-6453
