THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 2, 1997 TAG: 9701020083
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: ST. GEORGE ISLAND, MD. LENGTH: 38 lines
The silver lining in the cloud that dumped record rains on Maryland in 1996 was the effect it had on the Chesapeake Bay's oyster population.
The rain lowered salinity levels and kept in check two parasites responsible for the oysters' demise - MSX and dermo.
``We don't have a glut, but we've caught more oysters than we did for the past 15 years,'' said Jack Russell, who runs Sea Fruit, a seafood processing company on the Potomac River.
Russell said watermen he buys from have been bringing in six to seven bushels a day each, triple the amount they were bringing in several years ago.
The parasites, which kill oysters before they can reach market size, prefer salty water.
State biologists reported finding only light to moderate infestations of the two parasites during checks of oyster reefs this fall, said Steve Jordan, director of a joint federal-state biological laboratory in Oxford. MSX, the more harmful of the two, had all but disappeared and dermo was found in about 60 percent of the samples taken, down from 80 percent a few years ago.
Johnson, however, was not as optimistic about this year's harvest, saying it will be about the same as last year's 200,000 bushel harvest.
Although oysters got relief from parasites, they do not reproduce well in fresher water.
Oyster harvests had been about 1 million bushels as late as the early 1980s. The harvest dipped to a low of about 100,000 bushels, but has been rebounding since an agreement was worked out in 1993 among watermen, state officials and scientists to work together to save the species.
The plan involves restoring oyster reefs, stocking six rivers with disease-free young oysters and declaring certain areas off limits to harvesting. Since then the commercial harvest has doubled.
KEYWORDS: OYSTERS CHESAPEAKE BAY