The General Assembly will considers a bill that allows the state to lease out land beneath the Chesapeake Bay in order to restore oyster populations.
Watermen can now lease land in the Bay with the intention of dredging and tonging for oysters there.
The bill, which has been introduced in the House and the Senate, would also allow the Maryland Department of Natural Resources to restrict the harvesting of oysters on the land it would lease.
The bill “addresses a fundamental inconsistency in our policy on oysters,” Sen. Brian Frosh, D-Montgomery County said.
“We are spending lots of money to plant oyster spat [immature young] in the Bay, only to allow people to drag them out as fast as they can,” Frosh said.
“The basic idea is putting the oysters there and leaving them there,” Chesapeake Bay Foundation fisheries scientist Stephanie Reynolds said.
“It gives our oyster restoration effort one more tool to bring back the oyster population,” Reynolds said.
However, the measure could take land from the watermen who need it for their harvests, said oyster hand tonger John Vanalstine, who leases land in the Rhode River.
The bill would also create a Task Force on Oyster Restoration and increase penalties for oyster-harvesting violations.
So far this oyster season, the Department of Natural Resources Police have charged 16 people with oyster-harvesting violations, and charges are pending on eight other individuals, according to a news release.
The DNR did not have an official position about the bill as of Tuesday, spokesman Aaron Kraus said.
Oyster populations in Maryland are at only 1 percent of historic levels, according to a 2004 report from the National Academies.
“We have proved without a shadow of a doubt that what we are doing now doesn?t work,” Frosh said.
