I’ve watched the bay degrade for over 30 years. The problem seems well understood, too many people, cars, houses. Storm runoff carries all kinds of polution right into the bay. The remedy is less understood. Engineers now create catchment areas to hold storm runoff instead of piping it straight to the bay and that helps, but it seems like too little too late.
What we need is a way to clean the bay itself. But how? Cleaning the whole bay would be a monsterous task. Recently I came across the oyster gardening project. Waterfront home owners can pay a fee to raise oysters and return them when mature to be dumped onto oyster beds on the bay. You can see the problem with this program, can’t you. It will never attract the numbers it needs to make much difference. And that seems to be just what has happened. The program is a good idea, but no where near big enough. We need to expand this program exponentually .
Let’s redesign the program. First we want to get ALL of the commercial property involved. The bay is lined with marinas perfectly designed to raise oysters. But how do you get the marinas involved? How about a tax rebate? A small, token rebate just for the marina owners trouble. It doesn’t have to be much, $10 or $20 per bag of oysters. Then lets give away the seed oysters and bags, free to a good home. Finally let the marinas and home owners keep their oysters. If they don’t want to be bothered with the maintenance they could sell their oyster rights to a waterman. Aquafarmers could expand their operations through agreements with marina owners and private waterfront owners around the bay.
I confess I haven’t spent much time or effort on this idea. The few people I talked with were very interested, but no one knows how to get past the politics. There are currently several interested organizations, all trying to save the oysters and the bay, all doing their own thing. No one seems to know how to get these diverse groups organized, and that’s what we need.
I’d like to see the governor use some of the fourtune in taxes he costs me every year to purchase the seed and bags. I’d like to see The Chesapeake Bay Foundation develope an educational program. Get the word out. Get people signed up for the program. I’d like to see the Oyster Recover program work with the watermen and property owners to monitor the health and abundance of the oysters. I’d like to see the program developed to maximize the oyster’s spawning. Imagine millions of oysters all over the bay, releasing baby oysters into the water, baby oysters that will end up on oyster beds. A small government investment could create a whole new aqua-culture industry, reseed the oyster beds and restore the oyster harvesting industry and oh by the way clean the Chesapeake Bay, improving the ecological health of the entire area.