
DATE: Sunday, August 31, 1997               TAG: 9708310096

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   78 lines

PUBLIC PITCHES IN TO HELP LYNNHAVEN OYSTERS

Bigger is better and more is merrier when it comes to oyster love. Larger oysters produce more young, and proximity to other oysters also aids reproduction.

With these postulates of shellfish amore in mind, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation on Saturday held a bivalve parenting class to benefit a state-built oyster reef in the Lynnhaven River.

Through the workshop held at Great Neck Park, people living along the Chesapeake Bay learned to raise young oysters in secure oyster cages floating in the waters behind their homes. There, with a little tender loving care, oysters should safely grow in the next year - a small bag of 1,000 pebble-like baby oysters can become 200 pounds of shell and muscle in just one year.

Then, owners may eat them.

Or, the foundation hopes, donate many of the 1-year-olds to stock the reef. There the oysters will hopefully grow and spawn, increasing the population.

``This is the first time the public has had the opportunity to actually participate in a restocking of this kind,'' said Rob Brumbaugh, a 30-year-old fishery scientist.

``These aren't state or federal hatcheries,'' he said. ``This is a marriage of reef construction and enhanced reproduction.''

Fifty locals answered the call, purchasing baby oysters at $15 per 1,000 and floats for them to live in for $65. Volunteers and backyard oyster breeders were on hand to help assemble the floats, made from PVC pipe and caging.

The Gardner family purchased some young oysters to grow in the Elizabeth River behind their Portsmouth home. The area is polluted to the point where they may not consume the oysters, but they hope to raise the oysters and give many back to the foundation for the reef in Virginia Beach.

``It'll help the water behind our house,'' Alexis Gardner said. ``We use the water back there. It'll help with the fishing and crabbing.''

Oysters help clear the waters. They filter water as it passes through them when they eat. A century ago, when oysters were plentiful in the bay, sailors could see their anchors to depths of 40 feet.

The Lynnhaven was once the home of tasty oysters sought by the rich and hungry. The famed oysters often grew bigger than a mid-sized shoe. That was when the river supported more than 3,000 acres of oyster beds.

Times have changed.

The Lynnhaven has had no oyster harvests since the 1980s thanks to decades of over-harvesting, pollution and parasites.

Backyard oyster folk such as Richard Anderson, 54, have pledged to bolster the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay by caring for oysters, then moving them to area waterways.

Anderson began growing his own oysters about a year ago and has raised 8,000 for consumption in the waters of Broad Bay. This year he was contacted by the foundation and agreed to give part of his harvest to their efforts to bring the creatures back.

The last time oysters were harvested there was in 1986. Two parasites, known as MSX and Dermo, are blamed for nearly vanquishing the oyster population in the bay.

There may be hope. Contractors preparing to dredge the waterway discovered mature oysters living in the mud last year.

These had lived past the age by which parasites normally kill them. The foundation hopes these oysters are made of strong stock. The youngsters passed on to growers Saturday are descendants of the Lynnhaven survivors.

``We can clear up the water if enough oysters survive,'' Anderson said. ``So far it looks like our best hope.''

Other programs involving children and members of the foundation have been launched this year to help bring the oysters back to the reef where, hopefully, they will continue to multiply. ILLUSTRATION: JIM WALKER photos

At a workshop sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation on Saturday

in Virginia Beach, Paul Krop and his daughter Nicole of Virginia

Beach saw PVC tubing to build a float for raising oysters. The

workshop taught about 50 local residents how to raise the creatures.

Whitney Snyders of Virginia Beach, left, and Lisa Drake, a

Chesapeake Bay Foundation volunteer, build an oyster float. Once

grown, the oysters can be used to stock a state-built reef in the

Lynnhaven River.