“Chesapeake Oyster Recovery Efforts Failing” was the headline I read in my local paper this morning. At least they said it better then the headline in the Washington Post article yesterday which read “Oyster-Saving Efforts a Wash In Chesapeake“. Let me fix the headline for both papers, “Chesapeake Bay Oyster Recovery Efforts have Failed: New Approach Needed Now”.  I have been talking about the fact that we needed a moratorium on oysters for many years now.  I’ve been talking with conservation organizations in the Chesapeake Bay and voicing my concerns about this on our recreational fishing community site’s, TidalFish.com, message boards for years.  We’ve spent approximately $58million of taxpayers money to “restore” the oysters in the bay and where are we? Most estimates say and many scientists and others agree we are at a lower percentage then where we were when we started 10 years ago.  David Shulte, an oyster expert from the Army Corps of Engineers is quoted in the paper as saying, “We’re at 1 percent or less of oysters historic prevalence. That’s collapsed. We’re still fishing. It’s kind of like if were were still whaling on the East Coast.” Amen brother, I could not have said it better myself.  When I have asked people why we are not closing the fishery down to commerical fishing I have gotten all sorts of answers, “It takes time Brandon”, “Well, we are considering that position”, “People like seeing watermen on the Chesapeake” etc… I have not heard, except from a few people, “We need to do what is right for the oyster so its still around in a 100 years”. CCA MD stepped up to the plate and has called for a moratorium. MSSA, I have not heard from on the issue. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation was actaully the first to call for a moratorium back in the early 1990′s, then were convinced to give a “restoration effort” a try. Over ten years later, we tried, it failed. I asked them when they would change their position back to where they were when they correctly envisioned what was needed and they said they were waiting for the oyster recovery report to come out. It did and basically called for harvests to stop. I am anxiously waiting to open my email box one morning soon and read an email from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation explaining they have changed their position and call for a moratorium. I believe from what I know they will officially state it soon. Good work.

In the article in the Washington Post and in my local paper Thomas O’Connell, director of the Maryland State Fisheries Service, is quoted as saying “I wouldn’t use the word ‘failure.’ We obviously have not achieved the restoration response that we had hoped for. Every year we have learned to do it better. But there is no oyster restoration [instruction] book out there.”  Tom, great way to spin some positive things out of the $58m that was spent and the fact the department has not closed the oyster fishery down despite it being at 1% of historic levels. But, with that comment and not wanting to face failure, I am pretty scared of what your definition of failure is. If it’s not being lower then where we started over ten years ago and $58m and being at 1%, yes folks 1%, of historic levels, then what is failure to you? I am now worried oysters, or the Chesapeake Oyster as we know it, will now be gone forever. I hope philosophy or definition of failure does not spill over in other management of fisheries because if we let all our fisheries get to1% and do not use the word failure when trying to recover them we are in some real trouble. I will admit that we learned some things during the process, in fact we even created what basically amounts to a welfare program for the commerical oyster fishermen, but we are talking “recovery” here. Recovery to me means that the population as a whole is larger, and much more so, then we started. That is not the case here, in fact it’s gone down.

There is no good way to spin the below chart other then to say we failed, the plan failed and restoration efforts have failed.

My definition of failure is my opinion, I leave it up to you as the reader to develop your own opinion. If for some reason after seeing the above chart you believe we need more time or more evidence for a moratorium then please contact me so I can give you the name of a good psychologist because even myself as as person with a Masters in Psychology is at a loss of how to counsel you. If for some reason you are thinking of emailing me for more evidence and your job depends on there being a commerical harvest of oysters in the Chesapeake, let me save you the time of drafting that email and just say, “A person will never understand something when their job depends on them not understanding.”

If you are interested in another article concerning how this whole oyster conundrum is similar to some fisheries management we have already seen fail in the Chesapeake Bay read my
Fisheries “Management” of Sturgeon in the Chesapeake Bay post.

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