Disturbing reports abound on the continuing decline in the health of the Chesapeake Bay and its most famous produce, oysters and blue crabs. Though once abundant in the nation’s largest estuary, both species have been in numerical free-fall for years. The failing oyster harvest is especially acute because healthy oyster reefs are also essential for the food chain upon which crabs rely. So, it is especially important to restore the oyster population that has fallen to about 1 percent of its historic size. Unfortunately, despite $58 million in government spending to save the Bay’s oysters since 1994, there are now fewer oysters in the Bay than there were 14 years ago.
Terrible problems sometimes cry out for Draconian solutions. Washington region officials should ponder the successful effort in the Gulf of Mexico to replenish the delicacy called redfish. Many Cajun food lovers know the story: Redfish were long a relatively ignored species until Chef Paul Prudhomme created his famous “blackened redfish” dish, which became so popular and so imitated that commercial fishermen began overharvesting the species. Within about a decade, natural stocks of the Gulf species had fallen to dangerously low levels. In 1988, the federal government banned all redfish catches in federal waters, and every Gulf state but Mississippi banned commercial (but not recreational) redfish catches in state waters as well. Result: A stunningly successful turnaround for the species, with the recreational catch tripling from 3.5 million fish in 1986 to 9.8 million in 2006.
Which leads us back to the Chesapeake oysters. One problem identified with the replenishment efforts to date is that almost as soon as new oyster beds are successfully seeded, commercial outfits harvest them before they can adequately reproduce. The most obvious solution, painful as it may be for the oystermen, is to ban the commercial oyster harvest in the Bay for a set period of time, perhaps three or four years. Such a respite for the oysters is likely also to benefit the crabs.
At the least, such an approach ought to be studied by policymakers, along with the consideration of some sort of special financial allocation to existing oystermen to make up for the temporary disruption of their livelihoods. In the long run, however, even the oystermen themselves might be better off after such a temporary ban. Their jobs will fade away anyway unless their bivalves make a comeback and soon.
