Triploid Oysters, For the Months Without 'R's

A pretty good article on the use of triploid oysters in aquaculture here in the Bay.

Aquaculture endeavor aims to produce a more-sterile oyster

...the triploid oyster, a virtually sterile creature that grows faster and is more disease-resistant than wild or domesticated diploid oysters and, just as important, can be eaten in summer without the loss of taste and texture that afflicts bivalves tied to spawning cycles. The triploid might just put to rest the adage that oysters should be consumed only in months with an "R" in their name. Without question, the triploid increasingly is the go-to oyster of Chesapeake watermen.

Historically, oysters were not consumed months without Rs (May, June, July, August) for two reasons.  First, oysters spawn in the summer months, and are rather thin and watery as a result.  They're perfectly edible but they are not the plump oysters of fall and winter, which are accumulating the material to produce eggs (essentially all legal size oysters are females, since they change sex from male to female as they grow).  Triploid oysters are sterile from the extra chromosomes (being unable to match the chromosomes into pairs for meiosis. Hence, they don't spawn, and continue to accumulate the good stuff all summer long.  Hence edible all year long!

The second historical reason for the 'R' months rule was lack of refrigeration.  Oysters don't keep or ship too well at high temperatures, and so before refrigeration was widespread, oysters could only be held for long periods at low temperatures during cooler months (unless somebody was saving ice and snow from winter, which was done).

The months with 'R's rule has also been applied to mussels and other shellfish in various places, including the West Coast.  The reason there (refrigeration aside) is that summer months are usually when the toxic red tides bloom, and ordinary edible mussels can become deadly toxic. At least in the Bay, that has not become a problem.

Remembering the Oyster Wars

A Lecture on the Chesapeake Oyster Wars at The Marine Museum in Solomon on August 4.

The Calvert Marine Museum presents Lieutenant Gregory L. Bartles speaking on The Chesapeake Oyster Wars in the museum’s auditorium on Thursday, August 2 at 7:00 p.m. Lt. Bartles is the Area 8 Commander/Agency Historian for the Maryland Natural Resources Police and was responsible for bringing the oyster war cannon to DNR. The cannon is currently on exhibit in the museum’s lobby through the end of September. The lecture is free and open to the public.

In 1865, Maryland realized oysters were not an infinite resource, and implemented the first restrictions on their harvest, started requiring annual permits for their harvest. Watermen resisted, and in 1868, Maryland formed the Maryland Oyster Navy, the predecessor of Maryland Department of Natural Resources to fight poaching by local watermen and encroaching New Englanders, fleeing their own depleted beds.  Virginia too took measures to fight the poaching, and in1882, the Governor of Virginia led an expedition against armed and organized oyster poachers, and arrested 46 and seized 7 boats.

An amusing incident from "the second" oyster war, the escape of "Dancing Molly".

The Pirate Brides. The crew of the Dancing Molly was not so complacent. When the Pamlico came upon the little craft "lying close in one of the inlets on the Eastern Shore," it appeared as though no crew members were on board. Thinking to take the unmanned craft as a prize, the crew of the Pamlico bore down upon the vessel. The vessel, though unmanned, was not unwomanned. The captain's wife and two daughters were still aboard, and when their cries for help went unheard by the crew on shore, they unreefed the sails themselves and made their escape. As the Pamlico raced to block the mouth of the inlet the Dancing Molly strained at its sails to escape. The women were "equal to the emergency." All three "were skilled in handling the sails and were determined not to be taken." Despite solid shot flying past them, the three women continued on their way and reaching the open waters of the Bay, easily escaped into Maryland waters with a stiff breeze behind them. According to the Norfolk Virginian of March 4, 1883, spectators along the Virginia shore, though opposed to dredging, "really wished for the safety of the tiny craft when they saw it was simply manned by three women, and when the Dancing Molly got safely out the group of Virginians chivalrously gave three cheers for the pirate's wife and daughters."

Drop... Bucket

MD Senators Announce $1 Million In Federal Funds To Build Chesapeake Bay Oysters 

U.S. Senators Barbara A. Mikulski and Ben Cardin (both D-Md.) today announced the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released over $1 million to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to help restore the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population. The funding, secured by Senator Mikulski in the FY2012 Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) funding bill, will allow for targeted oyster restoration efforts in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and will help monitor oyster health.

A million bucks is a drop in the budget in the scheme of the resources needed to fix the Chesapeake Bay, when you consider that the overall cost of the 'Bay Diet' is estimated to be $15 billion (with a "b"), which I see as an underestimate. If they consider the oyster to be an important part of that restoration, and I think that's a fair assumption, then that is a trivial expense.

“The Chesapeake Bay is part of who we are as Marylanders – it is part of our heritage and part of our culture – and it’s our greatest natural resource. This funding is a federal investment in the lives and livelihoods that depend on the Bay,” said Senator Mikulski, Chairwoman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science which funds NOAA. “I will continue to fight to keep the Bay and Eastern Shore communities priorities in the federal checkbook.”

 However, I'm not convinced that efforts to stock and replenish oysters are the best use of funds.  If oysters can succeed in the bay, they can do it without help, other than to stop mining them.  If they can't, no amount of artificial enrichment of their numbers will succeed.

DNR was awarded $1,080,000 to implement a multi-year oyster population restoration process, which includes reseeding, monitoring, and evaluation of different restoration methods. To make this happen, DNR works directly with the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science to produce the oyster seed, or “spat on shell,” and then with the Oyster Recovery Partnership and local watermen for on-the-water operations to rebuild reefs. When complete, the project will place up to 300 million seeds in targeted Chesapeake Bay tributaries to aid with oyster population recovery.

The current strategy of replenishing oysters and then allowing watermen to fish them "because they'll just get diseased and die anyway" is an admission of failure.  Best to stop the fishing entirely, and find out if conditions in the bay will permit a recovery.

Maryland Hatchery on Pace for Record Oyster Production

Hatchery produces spat for oyster restoration

The ever-changing recipe for making oysters has nearly been mastered here at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Horn Point Oyster Hatchery.

This year's record spat production, which should continue through September, should well exceed last year's total of 610 million oyster spat. During the past decade more than 3.5 billion spat have been produced at the hatchery, with more than 2 billion of those spat deployed in the waters of Chesapeake Bay through Maryland's restoration efforts.

Still, there is a shortage of a key ingredient oyster shells needed for spat to set on. With more private companies now in the business of growing oysters and with fewer seafood packers in Maryland processing oysters, there is now a great demand for oyster shells.

An Oyster Shell Recycling Alliance started in 2009 by the non-profit Oyster Recovery Partnership is vital to the hatchery operation, providing around 75,000 bushels of shells reclaimed from restaurants and shucking houses after processing at the Partnership's shell cleaning facility at Horn Point, not far from the hatchery operation.

Hatchery Program Director Mutt Meritt, speaking during a June 19 media tour of the hatchery, said the need for more shell is an evolving problem. "We will solve it," he said. "It's just not solved right now."

UMCEES Horn Point Hatchery is well known around the Bay, and has been producing oyster spat for oyster restoration as well as scientific uses for as far back as I can remember.  There's a certain simple pleasure in just doing one thing very well, and doing it over and over and helping a lot of different people and organizations.  Mutt Meritt deserves all the praise he gets.

As for question of an alternative substrate for oysters, it's hard for me to believe it as difficult as they make it out to be  Back when I worked in the Patuxent River, in good oyster setting years we had oysters set on fiberglass tank wall, vinyl linings, wood, rock, bricks and even more.  I was afraid if I stood still in the water too long, they'd set on me.  Clearly, the problem is not with the substrates themselves, but rather with having enough good years for them to set it.

Head 'Em Up, Move 'Em Out!

How to become an oyster rancher and beat taxes

If you want to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay and you're fond of oysters, there's a program you should know about.

Buy a special float used to grow oysters on the water, and you can get all your money back in Maryland in the form of a state tax credit.  If you own a home on the water you can place the float under your dock and the growing oysters will naturally filter the water, improving its quality. If you don't have waterfront property, no worries -- you can still become an oyster "rancher".

Buy a float for $250 from Circle C Oyster Ranch in Southern Maryland and they will raise the oysters for you at their place along St. Jerome Creek in St. Mary's County.

Another advantage to buying a float from Circle C: You own the oysters. You can donate them to an oyster sanctuary, or eventually eat them.

Several of my friend have these floating oyster homes, and they do work.  Oysters in them grow faster than oysters on the bottom, often reaching the legal minimum of 3 inches in one year, compared to three or more for "wild" oysters on natural bottom.

Richard Pelz, the ranch's founder, says he has customers who live a good distance away, like in Bethesda and north of Baltimore. He says some will carpool together to go pick up their oysters from Circle C for eating.

"Each float will produce about a bushel and a half, and if we're taking care of it, that's what we do is we give you a bushel and a half of oysters when you want them," Pelz says.

In addition to helping oysters, Pelz says crabs are fond of the floats as well. "They feed on the growth that's on it, they hide on them, there's pockets on top that they can get into where they can mate and molt," Pelz says.

Blue Crabs love oysters as much or more than people.  If a crab get into the cage naturally, and then moults to a larger size it might find itself stuck with nothing to eat but oysters.  Oh, the horror!  A single crab can wipe out the population of a float if it doesn't get found and removed.

This program doesn't really appeal to me.  I don't think I'd want to eat oysters grown in my harbor with the live aboard sail boaters, and as far as the benefit to the Bay, you might as well try to empty it with a teaspoon. 

But if you want to try it, just for fun, for education, or for good eating, go for it!

Will Coal Burning Power Plants Make Super Crabs?

Carbon Dioxide Pollution Bulks Up Blue Crabs

The world’s oceans are changing, with waters today about 30 percent more acidic than they were two centuries ago, before the Industrial Revolution, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientists say this is because the burning of coal, oil, and gas released a huge amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that was absorbed by the water.

Of the CO2 added to the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels, about half appears to accumulate in the atmosphere, the other half being sequestered by either the ocean or terrestrial carbon sinks.  Scientists are still trying to quantify those fluxes, but yes, a lot of carbon is disappearing into the ocean. 

The chemical reaction between this pollutant -- C02 -- and water creates carbonic acid, according to Dr. Ries and other researchers.

Uh, that particular reaction has been known for a very long time.The only research needed is to read standard texts on water chemistry.

To discover how different forms of life will react to ocean acidification, Dr. Ries performed an experiment by growing 18 different species in laboratory tanks with varying levels of carbon dioxide. The result: the shells of crustaceans, including blue crabs, grew faster and larger in lab tanks with higher carbon dioxide levels.

Meanwhile, creatures that crabs eat—such as clams and oysters – suffered because of the pollution, with their shells becoming thinner and more fragile and growing more slowly.

More acidic water (by virtue of adsorbing CO2) has less of it's CO_2, in the form of  carbonante ion (CO₃^2-) and more as bicarbonate (HCO₃^-).  Carbonate is used by most shell forming organisms to form calcium carbonate (basically limestone), and decreased the carbonate decreases energetic ability to make the calcium carbonate.  It may or may not decrease actual calcification; it depends very much on the organism and the levels of carbonate (and hence pH).  And the paper tends to show that higher CO2 favors calcification by crabs, shrimp and lobsters, and decrease the calcification of bivalves.

So will this mean the crabs of the future will be super crabs, breaking everything in sight?  I doubt it.  The daily fluctuations of pH and carbonate ion in the Chesapeake Bay currently can be greater than his range of testing.

I'll Drink to That!

Flying Dog Brewery Offering Beer Year-Round to Benefit Oyster Recovery Partnership 

Drink beer and restore the Chesapeake Bay – all year round.

Next week, Flying Dog Brewery’s Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout will be available for purchase year-round with distribution throughout the country.

A dry stout brewed with local Rappahannock River Oysters, Pearl Necklace was initially released as a limited edition brew last November.

Flying Dog decided to brew the beer year-round not only because the beer itself was well received, but also because it supports a cause essential to the brewery’s backyard. Proceeds from the beer benefit the Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP), one of the region’s leading nonprofits restoring oysters back into the Chesapeake Bay.

“Our initial work with the ORP was just the beginning,” Ben Savage, Flying Dog’s VP of marketing, said. “Sales of Pearl Necklace will continue to benefit the ORP and also raise awareness nationwide of how critical oyster restoration is to the Chesapeake Bay.”

The goal is to enable ORP to plant at least 1 million baby oysters back into the Chesapeake Bay through proceeds from Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout.

A million oysters really isn't that many; when they spawn oysters, the eggs and young oysters are extremely small; one female oyster can literally produce more than a million eggs.  Getting them to grow through the larval stages and to settle as a small oyster spat is a bit of a trick, but oysters hatcheries have been producing billions of them for years.  Having done that, the hard part is putting them into a place in the Bay where they stand a decent chance of surviving until adulthood.

“A healthy oyster reef not only filters the Chesapeake Bay’s waters, but also provides habitat for other important marine life such as blue crabs and striped bass,” Stephan Abel, Executive Director of the ORP, said. “Every oyster we plant back into the Bay will have an immediate, positive impact.”

Savage added: “Drinking Pearl Necklace literally helps restore one of the most endangered habitats on the planet.”

I still don't know about brewing beer with oysters, but I've had other Flying Dog beers, and they were drinkable.  The Oyster Recovery Partnership is not high on my list of  favorite charities, but, yeah, I'll buy a six pack to help them.  But that wasn't a very high bar was it?

 Thanks to Wombat-Socho for taking my early submissions for the weekly Rule 5 link around at The Other McCain's "I Need to Know", and also to The Classical Liberal who linked it with "She's the Woman."

But Answer Came There None--

And this was scarcely odd because they'd eaten every one

Watermen skeptical of government oyster plans

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently held public meetings to discuss the corps’ plans to restore oyster populations in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. The plan was developed with help from the states of Virginia and Maryland, three federal government agencies, the Potomac River Fisheries Commission and two nonprofits, with the stated goal of restoring an “abundant, self-sustaining oyster population” to restore ecological balance and contribute to the oyster fishery.

“I don’t think the government programs do very much to help, especially in the long-term,” 58-year-old Robbie Johnson said Friday, pausing briefly to talk in his Spartan office while catching up on some paperwork. “We’re very fortunate that we have now more oysters than we’ve had in the past 20 years. I personally don’t attribute that to anything that a government agency has done.”

Sadly, I tend to agree with him.  To date, oyster restoration programs have been a huge disappointment.  But on the why, I think the watermen have played a huge part, being allowed to take the "restored" oysters (on the grounds that they were going to die of disease anyway), and illegally plundering those they weren't permitted to.