THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, February 20, 1995 TAG: 9502180628
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PEGGY SIJSWERDA, SPECIAL TO BUSINESS WEEKLY
DATELINE: HAYES, VA. LENGTH: Long : 163 lines
Every day but Sunday, Oscar Vernon Setterholm leaves his modest brick ranch, a mug of steaming black coffee in hand, and walks a hundred yards to the Viking Queen docked on Sadgey Creek.
He tinkers a few minutes with the diesel engine, which rumbles reluctantly, then thunders to life.
As the sun edges over the horizon, Setterholm puts the engine in gear and steers down the creek toward the Chesapeake and his life on the water.
Not long ago, Setterholm had to deal with Mother Nature and occasional engine problems as he went about the business of fishing. Nowadays, government regulations are just as likely to affect his livelihood as a northeaster on the Bay is.
Last fall, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which regulates the commercial fishing industry, set new rules limiting the oyster harvest and the blue-crab catch.
In recent years the commission has also imposed a two-year wait on obtaining a commercial fishing license, as well as shortened seasons and set moratoria on particular species.
While the regulators and the watermen agree that the health of the Chesapeake is at stake, they disagree over the need to regulate the Bay and the creatures in its briny depths.
It's a confrontation between modern science and the collective wisdom of generations of watermen who say they treat the Bay as they would their home.
``You can't burn your house down and live in it, too,'' said Setterholm, 50, president of the Working Watermen's Association of the Western Shore.
Setterholm believes there's hope for the Bay and the people who fish its waters.
Descended from English and Scandinavian settlers and Native Americans, Setterholm went on the water at age 11 with his father.
``I wasn't interested in football,'' he said. ``As children, we were given skiffs, tongs and nets.''
In those days, work boats crowded the Bay's coves and inlets.
``This was a busy place when I was a youngster,'' Setterholm said, gazing over his peaceful creek.
Except for a brief stint in the Army in the '60s, Setterholm has spent his life fishing on the Chesapeake and its rivers, one of about 3,200 commercial fishermen in Virginia.
Having grown up on the Bay, Setterholm and other watermen have learned to read it. They've been taught how and when to harvest the bounty by fathers and grandfathers, whom Setterholm calls the ``elder heads.''
``Uncle Wally was 27 years old in 1900,'' said Setterholm, whose skin looks tanned and leathery. ``He's the one that told me where to get the oysters.''
Pointing to where a tree once stood, Setterholm said, ``He sat me down under the pear tree with his corncob pipe, and he told me where to go.''
It was the James River. For centuries, Setterholm says, his ancestors have tonged for oysters in the James.
``I've got people registered in my family as oystermen in the 1700s,'' he said proudly. ``It's bred into us.''
He describes how his ancestors would stay on the James from October to Christmas, living in camps by the river's edge.``They knew the oyster business,'' he said.
In the centuries since, oystering hasn't changed much. While the maximum allowable length of the oyster tongs has decreased from 25 to 18 feet, the law still requires the metal, clawlike tongs to be muscle-powered.
``Anything mechanized would cause too much damage to the river bottom,'' Setterholm said.
``We have to clear enough money every hour to pay one or two men and run the boat. We can't catch it (the oysters) down - then there's not enough to pay the men,'' he said.
``We automatically leave 25 percent,'' he said, helping prevent an overharvest.
How many oysters are left is a question on everyone's mind. Record-low harvests prompted the VMRC in September to close all public oyster beds in the Chesapeake and its tributaries except a five-mile stretch along the James.
Closing the oyster beds for a year was necessary, said Jim Wesson, chief of VMRC's conservation and replenishment division. Overharvesting and two diseases - Dermo and MSX - led to a severe shortage of oysters.
Wilford Kale, VMRC public affairs chief, said scientists are mystified about Dermo and MSX.
``There's no known cure,'' he said. ``The diseases kill the oysters before they get to be market-size.''
The catch of 8,000 bushels in the 1993-94 oyster season was down from millions of bushels a decade ago, Kalesaid.
The oyster catch has been decreasing since the 1850s, Wesson said. Today's harvest is 1 percent of what it was 30 years ago.
While the diseases have very likely been around since the 1800s, something happened in the 1960s that allowed them to get the upper hand, Kale said.
Setterholm believes conditions are improving.
Waving an outstretched arm toward Sadgey Creek, he said, ``There's more fish out here than you've ever seen in your life.''
While he's generally against government regulation, he admits some of it has helped the Bay.
``I can see all the difference in the world,'' he said. ``The government has made people clean up the water.''
Ever an optimist, Setterholm believes the oysters will come back. Since the oyster diseases thrive in salty water, he says, ``plenty of snow in the mountains and a lot of rain'' is just what the oysters need.
He'd like to see some cultured oysters brought in from other parts of the world.
``Some people are worried about ruining the Chesapeake Bay oysters,'' Setterholm said. ``But an oyster is an oyster. It's good to mix breeds. They did this on the West Coast and on the Seine River in France. We've got to try it.''
While there have been some amazing success stories in France, Wesson said, conditions there are different, and introducing new oysters to the Chesapeake would be risky at best. Cultivating new breeds is not allowed, Kale said, although the VMRC has studied a Japanese oyster that scientists think can withstand Dermo and MSX.
What's holding scientists back is that in waters where the Japanese oyster has been planted, Kale said, ``it has superseded the native oysters.''
As president of the watermen's association, Setterholm often has a say in what happens in the industry. Last fall, watermen agreed on what to do about blue crabs and took the idea to the VRMC.
The agreement marked a milestone. In other years, watermen had argued and rarely reached consensus. With a boyish grin, Setterholm explained what happened.
``We fooled them (the VRMC) because there was no arguing among us,'' he said. ``We ironed everything out and came up with an agreement we can live with.''
This time around, watermen heading the associations spent hours on the phone hammering out an acceptable solution.
The new proposals shortened the trapping season from year-round to nine months and called for more cull rings or escape holes that allow smaller crabs to escape the crab pots. The number of peeler, or soft-shell, crab traps was also limited.
While the regulations are modest, Setterholm still questions the need for them. He said last year was the biggest crab season on record ``moneywise and poundwise.''
There are certain watermen who'll tell you they had a great season, but it depends on who you talk to,'' Kale said, adding:
``We have a keen fear that if we don't do something now, we'll have a crab industry in three years like the oyster industry is now.''
Kale tells of watermen who are ``grabbing any kind of job they can in the rural communities where they live. . . . I know some watermen that are building boats. Some are mating instead of running their own boats. I know a couple that are farming.''
Kale described abandoned fishing communities on the Chickahominy River, where the residents have ``absolutely vanished. I can show you cove after cove that has three or four docks, falling into disrepair.''
Setterholm's son, Oscar Jr., 21, these days delivers furniture to support his wife and child. He called living off the water a ``dying thing.'' Setterholm senior doesn't deny his is a risky business. He looked out over Sadgey Creek, where the Viking Queen gently rocked in the still water, as another day faded slowly into night.
``But the best of the best will always survive. I'm a maritimer. We can adapt to anything. I won't leave the water.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by Lawrence Jackson, Staff
Oscar Setterholm...
Color photos by Lawrence Jackson, Staff
...crab traps...
Oscar Setterholm walks out to his boat, the Viking Queen, docked on
a tributary of the York River.
Oscar Setterholm...
KEYWORDS: COMMERCIAL FISHING CHESAPEAKE BAY WATERMAN by CNB