BALTIMORE — The federal government just invested in a big way in Maryland's oyster population - and it's just the tip of the iceberg in a major push to get oysters back in the Bay.
Maryland's Congressional delegation just announced $10 million in funding going toward building about 50 acres of oyster reefs in the Chesapeake Bay.
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Oysters are considered a "keystone species" that have major benefits for the Bay (including filtering nutrients) and a serious economic driver, but their numbers have been at historic lows for a long time, thanks to environmental changes, fishing pressure, and lack of "substrate" material (the foundations on which oysters build their habitats).
Most of the oysters eaten or bought in Maryland are imported.
Now there's a renewed focus on boosting the local population.
State leaders have been working to build hundreds of acres of restored oyster reefs. There's more than 1,000 acres now, which is larger than 800 football fields.
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"Maintaining a healthy oyster population hugely important for the overall ecosystem health of Maryland waters and the coastal waters as a whole," said Brian Callam, aquaculture director for Maryland Department of Natural Resources. "They're environmental architects by building three-dimensional reef structures that provide habitat for a number of other aquatic animals, including things that we look at, things that we enjoy fishing, and things that we enjoy looking at."
Back in May, a seafood company from the West Coast shipped millions of Pacific oyster shells to Maryland. The shells can be used as substrate for oyster habitats.
It's believed to be the first time Maryland has allowed shells from the West Coast at all.
Callam noted:
People are looking now for other sources of shell. There's places like the West Coast where their fishery operates a little bit differently than ours and they don't use their shell the same way, so they have massive stockpiles of them. It's a problem for them because they have these mountains of millions and millions of bushels, and they can only build so many driveways out of them before they run out of space to put it. It's a biological issue, making sure it's safe, and two, just logistical of how... you get it cross country in an economical way. But we leave that to private enterprise to innovate and figure out on.
It's among the many new signs of life for local oysters - and the sanctuaries have hit some of their 2030 goals already, which Callam called "great news."
The last two years of oyster harvests have been the largest since 1987, bringing in more than $52 million in dockside values.
