The image to the right of native Chesapeake Oysters on the half shell may be one that will be one of history sometime in my lifetime. I’ll be able to say, “I remember when the Chesapeake Bay had it’s own oysters…”.

For the record, I prefer oysters on the half-shell on crackers with heavy dollops of cocktail sauce, horseradish and a dash of Tabasco. If I have lemons available, I’ll squirt a bit of the juice over top.

We’re likely headed for a future with a Bay full of Crassostrea ariakensis or “Asian Oysters” and the memory of our own native Crassostrea virginica will be a distant one.

Oh, we’ll probably continue the restoration of our own species along with the new introductions for “appearances”, clinging on to the romantic notion of saving our own, but the plight is over and we’ve damaged their ecosystem beyond a point where they can survive. We may restore the Bay some time in the future to a level of health that could sustain Chesapeake oysters, but it will be way too late.

What is left today of our Oysters is being rapidly pushed off a cliff. I’ve very recently spoken to a long-time Chesapeake Oysterman and he tells me an unbelievable story of how the watermen are driven to a plight reminiscent of the Wild Wild West.

Realize that these tales are the exception and not the rule (I hope) and that most waterman are observing the regulations (I hope):

• Rampant illegal oystering at night
• Advance tip-offs to inspections from enforcement officials
• The harvesting of sub-legal sized oysters (1″) and the transfer of them from Maryland to Virginia oyster beds
• Un-policed illegal powered dredging
• Abandonment of oystering in the waterman’s local waters and having to drive to distant Chesapeake locations where oysters still remain to make a living.  These are the areas where the fisheries regulations are adequately enforced.

From what I hear, this isn’t a case of isolated individuals sprinkled across they Bay, but rather entire sections of the oyster fishery are experiencing concentrated and continual abuses mentioned above – all at once.

It makes my stomach churn.

Don’t these waterman conducting these illegal acts realize how short-sighted they are being? They are finishing off the last of the oysters by ignoring the law, and although they can feed their family today, there will be zero oysters for feeding their family tomorrow.

I don’t blame them since the survival of your family is priority number one. All of us are to blame for the state of the Chesapeake for putting off any hard measures that inconvenience our lives, the profits of our businesses, and the minimization of our taxes.  We, collectively, have put the Chesapeake seafood industry in this position.  The 400,000 of us septic system owners around the Bay can’t live without our Cascade for our dishes and our Chlorine bleach for our clothes, which eventually just enters the Bay.

Introducing Crassostrea ariakensis is a convenient “out” for our collective irresponsibility. In a “throw-away” society where everything is disposable, we just buy our way out of our issues at the last moment.

I recently saw a cover crop sign proudly displayed in a corn field during the winter, advertising their participation in the Maryland Cover Crop program.  I know little about this program but I’ll bet a notable number of the 500,000 acres covered under the program may end up getting funding even though their fields are not adjacent rivers or streams connected to the Bay and are miles away from the Bay itself.  They may be in Maryland, but there is no runoff in these cases.

The devastation isn’t limited to the oysters.  I recently heard that 50% of the Bay’s Rockfish are affected by mycobacteriosis, a disease that causes nasty exterior lesions and internal tumors.  I see the lesions on the Rock first-hand regularly when fishing.  We generally throw those back when we catch them, but I bet that a scary percentage of Rockfish sold in seafood markets had the disease.  Do you think anyone would buy the Rockfish for their families if they knew that one out of two fillets in the fish case looked this hours before:

According to the Bay Journal, The disease infects the majority of rockfish by the time they are 3 years old.  What are we going to do when all the Rockfish are depleted to unsustainable levels?  There will be no alternative species of Rockfish to “introduce”.  Even if they never reach technically unhealthy levels, no one is subtracting the majority of lesion-infested mycobacteriosis Rockfish which will die within 3 years;  many within 1 year.  For me, the raw numbers do not convey the true health of the Rockfish fishery and we put our head in the sand when reporting them.

I love fishing, crabbing, kayaking and just looking at the Bay and it’s wildlife, but after 35+ years under it’s spell I’ve often thought about picking up and moving to another watershed somewhere far away where there is more respect of the ecosystem paid by the surrounding populations and governments.  It’s something that pains me greatly.