Part 2: How do People Make Oysters?

UMD HornPoint Laboratories (HPL):  What an operation!  What a facility!  What a weird group of people!  (teasing…)  They started producing baby oysters in 1997.  Last year they produced 650 million spat-on-shell.  In a perfect world with a gentle mother nature, they hope to produce up to 1 billion.  Regardless, HPL is charged with jump-starting the oyster resurgence in Maryland’s Chesapeake.  Currently, our oyster population is at an all time low of 0.03% of historic levels.  The spat-on-shell that comes out of HPL is the seed oyster for our sanctuaries, harvest reserves and burgeoning aquaculture industry.   The Chester has been recipient for decades and most recently received seeded shell for a 2-acre oyster reef spear-headed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Alright, alright, but how does man make oysters and why is there such a variation in our Marylanders Grow Oyster  (MGO) cages!?  Well, people make oysters by first understanding the science of how oysters reproduce and then they must figure out how they eat.   By inducing female oysters to release eggs and male oysters to release sperm by methodically raising water temperatures, HPL can develop superior gametes from the fittest brood stock—hopefully enhancing the genetic fitness of our native Crassostrea virginica against disease pressure.  Once the gametes meet and form larvae, staff at HPL feed and monitor the microscopic swimmers through various stages of development. So here is how to make oysters:  you have to know how to make algae!  Oyster larvae eat algae, but not just any algae.  Their diet is a well-balanced buffet of different kinds of algae--highly regulated, highly supervised, and highly scientific!

Close monitoring of oyster larvae will reveal the formation of an “eye” or dark speck, that indicates the larvae are ready to set.   Ideally, we want the oysters to “set” on other oyster shells to form a reef, but they will set on anything.    So staff must drain massive tanks filled with millions of larvae before the larvae start attaching themselves to the walls and then……put them in the fridge!  Yup, millions and millions of oyster larvae can be stored right next to last night’s left-overs.    I don’t think there is a shucking knife small enough….

While the larvae are chillin’ out, the staff at HPL readies the setting tanks—located on a state-of-the-art pier that has recently been brought on line.   (Following the logic:  bring the larvae to the water, not the water to the larvae.  Much more cost effective!)  The setting tanks are where the larvae find their new home!   Each tank is filled with aged oyster shell that has been dried and cleaned by the Oyster RecoveryPartnership.  The vast majority of the shell comes from the Chesapeake’s shucking houses but a growing portion is coming from restaurants participating in the Shell Recycling Alliance. (Shameless plug: eat oysters at these restaurants; the shells will go back to the Bay with 10 more oysters attached!)

 Alright, so now we’ve got old oyster shell in water pumped straight from the Choptank River.  When we add eyed larvae looking to set, one precocious little oyster larvae will yell out, “follow me, I know where the prime real estate is!”  And that is when it happens.  Predictably unpredictably, oyster larvae will set in “clusters” on the shell, exhibiting what scientist call a “gregarious setting pattern.”  In other words, they like to grow next to other larvae.  The result is that the spat on shell coming out of the hatchery has a variation in density.  Some shell will have 15 spat attached to it and some shell will have 0 spat set to it.  

When our growers pick up their cages with spat-on-shell randomly distributed, each grower starts off with a different amount of spat to care for.  And then it happens.  Each member has different conditions for caring for our oysters!  It is one of the benefits of the MGO program; oysters come to our member’s home and become a real life aquarium at the end of their piers.  It is also one of the factors influencing the amount of spat on shell that survive the growing season and are planted on a sanctuary.  Each member will have to provide the right amount of care based on his or her water conditions.  That includes suspending the cages at the right depth to avoid lethal blow-out tides in the winter and dunking them periodically to avoid suspended sediments from settling on them to the point of suffocation.  And on top of all of that, we throw in the capriciousness of mother nature!  This past year, we experienced heavy spring rains that came down the mighty Susquehanna and essentially dropped the salinity to 0 at the Bay Bridge for a month or more.  Incredible.  Our spat-on-shell are equally susceptible to the harmful effects of low salinity, but there is little that we can do about that.   Some members that were exposed to the “freshet” coming down the bay experienced very high mortality.  Other growers in Langford Bay didn’t experience much of a difference from last year’s conditions--although there is some discussion that our oysters are a little smaller this year.

The best way to care for our oysters coming out of the hatchery is to follow the recommendations on the MGO website: hang the cages thoughtfully so they are not in the mud, but still underwater during low tides; then dunk them periodically to remove suspended silt--this can be as little as once a month depending on where you are and what time of year its.  But to get the full benefit of the program, don’t be shy about pulling up a cage with a friend or family member to see how the oysters are growing and what critters they have attracted into their mini ecosystem!

Mike Hardesty is Assistant Director of the Chesapeake Semester at Washington College and the MGO-Chester River Coordinator.

How do People Make Oysters?

Well before we answer that question, let’s talk about how people grow oysters.  In 2008 the MD Department of Natural Resources along with Oyster Recovery Partnership and University of Maryland’s Horn Point Laboratories launched “Marylanders Grow Oysters” (MGO).   In a nut-shell, this is a state funded program that puts oyster restoration into the hands of the thousands of citizens living along the Bay’s shoreline.  It’s local.  It’s community-based, and it's fun!

Our local Chester River-MGO program has been in operation for two seasons now, with great success.  Coordinated by CES and assisted with the help of partner organizations like the Chester River Association, it is 100% dependent upon the sweat equity of thoughtful and energetic community members who want to improve the water quality of the Chester—and learn a little something about oysters as they go.

With 60 members and their family and friends, Chester River-MGO is responsible for 260 cages of baby oysters (spat-on-shell).  Each cage can grow anywhere from 0-300 oysters through our September to June season.   If we get a conservative average of 50 oysters per cage that is still 26,000 oysters a year planted on a local sanctuary in Langford Bay.  Not to mention that we also conspire with MGO programs on the Corsica River and Swan Creek to put oysters back in the Chester. 

This past spring CES organized a survey dive of our sanctuary site.  It was murky, and it was hard to find oysters, but find them we did!  There were at least two distinct “age classes” of oysters: our oysters from 2011 and hatchery oysters from probably around 2009. 

Despite the heavy spring rains from 2011, our oysters were alive and well; we didn’t find any “boxes” or empty oysters that had died.  This came as a great relief to our growers in the Chester as other MGO groups around the Chesapeake had experienced high and unavoidable mortality due to the fresh water coming down from the Susquehanna. (Just in case you are wondering, oysters will grow from around 7ppt salinity to full salt water at 35 ppt.  While many of us like them salty for eating, the high salinity water of our Bay also attracts high disease pressure.  With an average salinity of around 12 ppt towards its mouth, the Chester is a low disease area that lends itself for oyster plantings.)

But let’s back track a little.  “Each cage can grow anywhere from 0-300 oysters….”  That is a huge variation!   Somebody should ask the guy who coordinates this effort what the deal is!  Well, a lot of members did ask me what the deal is, so I punted and said, “we should ask the guy who grows these things what the deal is!”  (Actually, it is a team of people at University of Maryland’s Horn Point Labs and they are dedicated, hard working, and smart.  But are they smarter than mother nature...?)

So instead of watching re-runs of “Freddy vs. Jason” last Friday the 13^th,  about fifteen members of Chester River-MGO piled into a Washington College bus and took a field trip to one of the east coast’s largest oyster hatcheries.  (Find out more in Part 2, tomorrow!)

 

Mike Hardesty is Assistant Director of the Chesapeake Semester at Washington College and the MGO-Chester River Coordinator.

Mike Hardesty, MGO Program in Chester River Association Currents

It’s June, 2011. Mike Hardesty digs an oyster shell out of a bushel basket a volunteer has just handed him. He likes what he sees. "This is just loaded. There are 25 or 30 oysters on that shell. That’s great," says Hardesty, who coordinates the Marylanders Grow Oysters program for the Chester River. "You’ve just created habitat. This isn’t just any shell. It’s the foundation for an ecosystem."
Read the rest of the story here or download the entire issue here.

MGO Program in Kent County News

On June 14, Michael Hardesty, Chesapeake Semester Program Coordinator, led an oyster planting on Lankford Creek. With the partnership of DNR's Maryland Grows Oyster (MGO) program, growers on the Chester River raise oysters from spat in cages on their docks, which are then released on protected oyster bars. Read the full article here, and find out more about CES's involvement with MGO on our oyster page.

CES in Rock Hall Wave

Rock Hall Wave: Big Plant Planned by Swan Creek Oyster Growers

Recently, Oyster growers from the Chester, Corsica, and Swan Creek tributaries gathered for a picnic to meet each other and share experiences. The picnic was held Sunday the 10th at the Leila Hynson Pavilion in Wilmer Park, Chestertown, MD and hosted by the Center for Environment & Society (CES) at Washington College. Mike Hardesty, CES Program Manager and the Marylanders Grow Oysters Coordinator for the Chester River, organized the event to bring growers together and plan the most favorable placement of oysters on a local sanctuary.

CES Hosts First Annual Oyster Growers Picnic

The Center for Environment & Society (CES), hosted the first annual “Picnic at the Pavilion” for local waterfront property owners participating in Governor O’Malley’s “Marylanders Grow Oysters” program. The event, held Sunday, April 10 at the Leila Hanson Pavilion in Wilmer Park, Chestertown, MD, was designed as a “meet and greet” session. CES successfully applied to the program last year, purchased oysters in September, and currently have 55 community members growing oysters in 260 cages hanging from their piers along the Chester River. Read the full article on the Chestertown Spy. For more information on the Marylanders Grow Oysters Program see http://www.oysters.maryland.gov/ or contact Mike Hardesty, Chester River MGO coordinator mhardesty2@washcoll.edu or 410 699 1940.

MD Grows Oysters in the News

CES gets a little credit in the news! Find out more about the MD Grows Oysters Program, managed for the Chester River by Chesapeake Semester Program Manager Mike Hardesty '05.

Chestertown Spy: Local Oyster Stewardship

Maryland Grows Oysters Workshop - July 7

July 7, 2010

The Center for Environment & Society at Washington College will host a "Marylanders Grow Oysters" workshop on the lawn of the Custom House in Chestertown on Wednesday, July 7th, at 5:30 PM. Chris Judy, with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, will go over the basics on how to grow your own oysters on the Chester River.
Volunteers will learn how to maintain and monitor oyster cages as part of the State's restoration projects on local tributaries. With the right salinity levels, the cages provide an ideal habitat as small "spat on shell" grows to year-old oysters. At that point, hundreds of oysters from the cages will be introduced to existing oyster bars on the upper Chesapeake Bay.

If you do not have waterfront access from your own property, but still want to get your feet in the water, then come aboard as a volunteer monitor. Volunteers are needed to help with data collection on oyster growth and mortality at the College's test sites along the Chester River. Opportunities are also available through the College's Adopt-A-Spat program, where people can feel great about supporting oyster awareness and stewardship on the Chester without dealing with the barnacles, algae and flatworms.
The July workshop is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. To register or for more information, call 410/810-7488 or contact mhardesty2@washcoll.edu.

The Marylanders Grow Oysters program was established in 2008 by Governor O'Malley. The initiative is designed to foster stewardship of the Chesapeake Bay and create living oyster reef populations in sanctuaries. The Governor announced the Center's partnership status in June. In April, the Center received a Coastal America Partnership Award for its involvement with the Hail Cove restoration project at Eastern Neck Island. The College and the Friends of Eastern Neck were among the 17 partners who garnered this award.