Organizations throughout Maryland and Virginia collect empty shells from restaurants, clean and set them with spat (oyster larvae), then replenish sanctuary
AILEEN DEVLIN / VIRGINIA SEA GRANT
AILEEN DEVLIN / VIRGINIA SEA GRANT
reefs with the spat-on-shell.
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ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com | November 2022
the diseases initially killed some, the oysters that survived began forming a disease-tolerant stock. In the summer of 1993, the state of Maryland brought together a panel of 40 experts known as the Oyster Roundtable, which released a 30-page Action Plan for Oyster Recovery. The plan detailed a series of next steps, including the restoration program now underway at the UMCES Horn Point Laboratory’s oyster culture facility on the Choptank near Cambridge and the founding of the Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP) in 1994. A key element of Maryland’s Action Plan was to reestablish three-dimensional reefs for ecosystem restoration on natural oyster bars closed to harvest. Meanwhile, in 1997, VIMS established a new Aquaculture Genetics and Breeding Technology
Center (ABC). Its scientists use a combination of selective breeding and genetic research to domesticate the native Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, for aquaculture and improvement of traits such as survival, growth rate, shape and meat yield. ABC raises these oysters to supply brood stock for oyster farmers along the East Coast, a crucial role in helping build what has become Virginia’s $16 million aquaculture industry. In 1999, the Chesapeake Research Consortium released guidance for restoration that specifically described the value of reefs: “Three-dimensional reefs, standing substantially above the bottom, are essential for oyster reproductive success, for predator protection and to create habitat for other organisms.” Today, many more people understand the broad
