By Kenny Fletcher, Chesapeake Bay Foundation

Photo credit: Chris Moore, CBF

A thriving Chesapeake Bay and healthy Potomac River depend on a healthy population of our native oysters.

The Eastern Oyster has long been an iconic part of our region’s culture, cuisine, and ecology. Through a combination of harvest pressure, pollution, and disease, the Bay region has lost invaluable reef habitat and the oyster population today stands at a fraction of historic levels.

Fortunately, federal and state partners are on track to fully restore oyster habitat in 11 Bay tributary rivers by 2025, making the Bay home to the world’s largest oyster restoration project. Monitoring of the reefs so far is showing incredible success, with oyster population density in several rivers exceeding the restoration targets.

With oyster recovery at a crucial point, building on current momentum will increase resiliency to climate change in the region while creating multiple benefits for people and the environment, according to a report released this year by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Recommendations in the report, titled “Hope on the Half Shell: Harnessing Oysters to Build Ecological and Community Resilience,” include targeting oyster restoration in 20 additional Bay rivers, equitably growing the oyster aquaculture industry, and modernizing management of the wild oyster harvest.

“Increasing oyster numbers benefits all facets of life in and along the Chesapeake,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation Virginia Executive Director Chris Moore.  “Now let’s expand on the achievements to date. With oysters, we can adapt to climate change, support the Bay’s ecological, economic, and social resilience, and build vibrant communities where people and nature thrive together.”

Oysters are at a critical juncture. The decline of oysters and their habitat has exacerbated water quality issues, reduced productivity of key Bay fisheries, and left critical shoreline habitats like marshes and underwater grasses susceptible to erosion and loss.

But there is reason for hope. A growing aquaculture industry in the Chesapeake is now bringing delicious farmed oysters to our tables, while at the same time benefiting the environment. By eating locally farmed oysters from Virginia and Maryland, you’re supporting local businesses and healthy waterways.

Oysters have tremendous ecological value, which may be the most important benefit they provide. Sediment and nitrogen pollution fouls Bay waters. Oysters filter these pollutants either by consuming them or shaping them into small packets, which are deposited on the bottom where they are not as harmful. A single adult oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day.

Anyone who fishes in brackish waters knows that oyster reefs are among the best fishing spots because they are teeming with life that attract large predator fish, such as striped bass and sea trout. The hard surfaces of oyster shells and the nooks between the shells provide places where small marine animals find shelter.

Hundreds of animals use oyster bars: grass shrimp, amphipods, bryozoans, anemones, barnacles, oyster drills, hooked mussels, mud crabs, and red beard sponge, to name a few. These in turn serve as food for larger fish and animals.

Oyster restoration efforts to rebuild this important reef habitat have greatly accelerated in recent years.

Following a banner year for Chesapeake Bay oyster restoration and aquaculture, the Chesapeake Oyster Alliance (COA) recently announced it has recorded a new total of 6 billion oysters directly added to the Bay since 2017.

The group’s count aims to include all oysters directly added to the Bay and its tributaries through restoration and aquaculture. These efforts have now surpassed the halfway mark to the group’s goal to promote adding 10 billion new oysters to the Bay by 2025.  There are many ways you can help beyond eating locally raised oysters. That includes recycling oyster shells for use on new reefs, volunteering for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s oyster restoration efforts, or advocating for state and federal investment in oyster restoration.

If you have access to a dock on brackish water you can even grow your own oysters to be planted on sanctuary reefs. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is offering workshops throughout tidal Tidewater Virginia this summer, visit www.cbf.org/vaoystergardening.

Want to take a fun first step right now? Test your knowledge of this fascinating local critter by taking the oyster quiz. The first two questions are below:

Oysters might be encased in immovable hard shells, but they’re hiding a very flexible secret. They can actually change which of these things?

1. Their sex—they start as male and turn female later in life.
   b. Their location—oysters have a “mid-life crisis” and detach during their adult lifecycle.
   c. Their diets—depending on the water salinity, some oysters consume radically different types of food.
   d. Their dreams—oysters are ruthlessly ambitious.

Oysters have achieved great notoriety…for all the work they do cleaning up the Bay. But do you know what all the whispers and rumors are based on?

1. Oysters filter up to 50 gallons of water each day!
   b. Since they spit out nitrogen for bacteria to eat, they stop the nitrogen from fueling algae that clogs up the Bay.
   c. Those oyster reefs are also awesome homes for crabs, fish, and other creatures.
   d. Those dang overachievers—it’s all of the above.

Find out if your answers about our beloved Bay bivalve are correct and finish the quiz at www.cbf.org/oysterquiz.

About the Author: Kenny Fletcher is the Director of Communications and Media Relations at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Founded in 1966, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is the largest independent conservation organization dedicated solely to saving the Bay. The foundation is a nonprofit, tax-exempt charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law. http://www.cbf.org