THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, June 20, 1996               TAG: 9606200465
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B2   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: NEWPORT NEWS DAILY PRESS 
DATELINE: GLOUCESTER POINT                  LENGTH:   33 lines

TESTING OF ASIAN OYSTERS TO BEGIN BY END OF YEAR

Researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science will begin testing Asian oysters in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries at least a year earlier than planned.

A new technique of producing sterile Asian oysters will eliminate the threat that the experimental animals could reproduce in the Bay, said Robert Byrne, the institute's director of research. Under the revised plan, the first sterile Asian oysters will be in the water by the end of the year, rather than in 1997, Byrne said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon.

The field tests are part of a four-year project to determine whether any of four Asian oyster strains would thrive in the Bay and, more importantly, whether they are resistant to two diseases that have all but wiped out native oysters.

Under the old timetable, fertile Asian oysters would be introduced into the Bay in limited numbers in 1999. That will now likely happen a year sooner, said VIMS Director Donelson Wright.

``The entire process will be accelerated,'' Wright said.

The experiments with Asian oysters are supported by Virginia's oyster industry, which has begun to give up hope that the native animals will ever come back. The state's oyster harvest from both public and private grounds has dropped from more than 4 million bushels in 1959 to fewer than 50,000 bushels in 1995.

KEYWORDS: OYSTERS by CNB