THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, November 7, 1994 TAG: 9411070044
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B01 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 182 lines
Scientists, oystermen, legislators and fisheries officials will begin work today on a plan to help state fisheries managers restore the oyster population and market the bivalves.
The committee of 15 citizens and state officials with fishing interests will undertake the state's most comprehensive review of the state's oyster population and industry.
``If we have the will to manage these resources, I think the answer is, yes, we can restore the oyster industry to what it once was in North Carolina,'' said Dirk Frankenburg, professor in the Marine Sciences Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Frankenburg, a member of the state Marine Fisheries Commission, will serve as chairman of the oyster study commission.
Frankenburg is just one of those appointed by Sen. Marc Basnight, D-Dare, and Rep. Daniel T. Blue, D-Wake, to the committee. The General Assembly appropriated $100,000 for the study.
The steering committee will report its findings quarterly to a state legislative panel studying seafood and aquaculture issues and will present its plan to the General Assembly at the start of the 1996 session for action by state lawmakers.
``The task is monumental but this is a step we had to take,'' said Basnight in an interview from Elizabeth City earlier this week. ``We're doing reviews in North Carolina that have never been done before.''
This commission and its report will ``turn around our effort to manage the state's oyster population,'' Basnight said.
``We can certainly bring it back,'' he said. ``We can be as productive as any state in the country if we decide to to that.''
That's a tall order, according to Mike Marshall, who oversees the state's oyster management program for the Division of Marine Fisheries, one of the agencies that will help with the study.
``It's going to require a lot of work,'' he said. ``It's a tall task ahead of us.''
For eastern North Carolina oystermen and processors the review could not come too soon.
Noxious waters, killer parasites and heavy-handed fishing have put North Carolina's oysters on the brink of extinction in recent years.
The state's oyster catch has dropped about 95 percent from 1902, when oyster landings totaled 5.6 million pounds. In recent years, the catch has declined from a decade high of 225,000 bushels in the 1987-88 season to an all-time low of 39,505 bushels in the 1993-94 season.
And as the stocks of oysters have dwindled, so have the number of oystermen. On the opening day of the season for mechanical harvest of oysters in the 1980s, at least 50 boats were counted dredging the bottoms of Hyde County' bays for the bivalve. But at the beginning of last year's season, the number of boats had dwindled to 30 or 35, fisheries officials said.
``It's as bad as it could possibly be,'' said Gary Mayo of Scranton, owner of Rose Bay Oyster Co., one of the last remaining oyster-shucking houses in eastern North Carolina.
In response to a dwindling oyster supply, the Division of Marine Fisheries instituted strict harvest and season limits in 1989.
In 1993, the division further reduced its limits on the daily catch and they were continued into this season. Now oystermen are limited to a five-day work-week with a daily limit on their catch of 15 bushels of oysters per operation, down from 50 bushels per day and a seven-day work week prior to 1989.
For years the state has operated an oyster ``seeding'' program that has deposited more than 400,000 bushels of shells and similar materials each year in state coastal waters to try to encourage new oyster growth.
It has also conducted oyster shoal surveys in the Pamlico Sound and adjacent waters to evaluate the health of the fishery and estimate the size of that year's oyster catch.
Fisheries officials blame the decline in oysters on a variety of factors:
Deteriorating water quality and loss of habitat. Thousands of acres of productive shellfish bottoms, especially in the southern coastal area, are closed to the harvest of oysters because of probable pollution from fecal coliform bacteria, generally associated with human activities.
Overfishing. A toxic algae, known as red tide, appeared off the state's southern coast during the 1987-88 season and led to overharvesting of oysters in some of the state's waters. After many of the high salinity oyster areas from Core Sound south were closed to harvest that season because of the danger of contamination by the algae, many fishermen who normally worked in these areas changed to the lower salinity areas of western and northern Pamlico Sound, seriously depleting the resource.
Diseases. The oyster's worst enemy in recent years has been parasites, specifically MSX, for multinucleate sphere unknown, and dermo, two little-understood strains that have devastated the resource in North Carolina waters and in the Chesapeake Bay. MSX and dermo were first identified in North Carolina during the summer of 1988 and have devastated oyster beds throughout much of the coastal area. But others, such as Basnight and some oystermen, have blamed the decline on mismanagement by the division.
``People are tired of waiting for the oysters to come back. We need to change the way we're doing things,'' said Marshall. ``There's a lot of different things that can be tried other than what we're doing now.''
Among the issues that the group will review:
Restoration of oyster production on public beds;
Development of oyster aquaculture production;
Implementing zoning or other protective measures for oyster reefs and culture operations;
Development of a market for the state's oysters and development and marketing of new products using oysters;
Changes in the leasing of water columns and bottoms for oyster culture;
Development of public-private partnerships for oyster production;
Development of a management plan to restore the oyster population.
Ultimately, the study commission recommendations may include such things as construction of a hatchery for oysters; development of a public-private partnership to provide oyster spat, or juvenile oysters, for privately operated oyster beds, and an increased emphasis on aquaculture.
One emphasis of the panel will be the development of a market for the oysters that are caught in the state, Frankenburg and Mayo said.
``There is no need to work to restore the oyster industry, if there isn't a demand for the resource,'' said Frankenburg.
The decline of the state's oyster industry and possible solutions moved to the forefront of fisheries issues at a one-day meeting in Wilmington in April when a crowd of about 110 politicians, scientists and fishermen met to discuss the industry.
At a time when interest in fisheries issues is very high and the attention of many state lawmakers is turned to the coast, the pressure on the committee to develop viable solutions for the problems facing the state's oyster industry will be intense, committee members and fisheries regulators said.
But because of the increased interest, state budget leaders will also be under pressure to allocate funds for the management programs recommended by the committee.
``The oysters didn't get where they are now through neglect. They didn't just die on their own,'' said Marshall. ``When you damage a resource like that, it takes money to put it back in shape.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff color photo by DREW C. WILSON
Gary Mayo of Scranton, owner of Rose Bay Oyster Co., one of the last
remaining oyster-shucking houses in eastern North Carolina, stands
on oyster shells that are to be used as part of an oyster
``seeding'' program to try to encourage new oyster growth.
Charts by STEVE STONE
APPROVED WATERS
In 1990, North Carolina ranked second among Gulf and neighboring
Atlantic Coast states in the acreage of waters suitable for
shellfishing. Here's a look at the number of acres of shellfishing
waters for North Carolina and five neighboring states:
Louisiana 1,885,000 acres
N. Carolina 1,812,000 acres
Texas 1,058,000 acres
Virginia 1,311,000 acres
Maryland 1,253,000 acres
S. Carolina 192,000 acres
Source: N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries
OYSTER HARVEST
North Carolina's oyster landings were the highest on record in 1902
at 5.6 million pounds and, by 1962, landings had fallen below one
million pounds. They remained below that amount until 1987 when the
oyster catch reached a decade high and then continued to decline.
Here's a look at the number of bushels harvesting in North Carolina
over the last 10 years.
1983-84 117,000 bushels
1984-85 115,000 bushels
1985-86 94,000 bushels
1986-87 29,000 bushels
1987-88 225,000 bushels
1988-89 138,000 bushels
1989-90 90,000 bushels
1990-91 52,000 bushels
1991-92 58,482 bushels
1992-93 45,745 bushels
1993-94 39,505 bushels
Source: N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries
WHAT'S NEXT?
The first meeting of the Oyster Blue Ribbon Advisory Council will be
at 10 a.m. Monday at the Institute of Marine Sciences, 3431 Arendell
St. in Morehead City. The meeting is open to the public. For more
information, contact the Division of Marine Fisheries at (919)
726-7021.
KEYWORDS: OYSTERS SEAFOOD INDUSTRY
by CNB