May 22, 2014 — Captain Ed Farley is building a tourism business around his expertise in the Chesapeake Bay. After a winter spent oystering, Farley fills his summer with educational sailing tours on his historic skipjack. This sail-powered oystering boat is part of a rapidly dissolving fleet; with only 23 still in the water, he says, a mere six skipjacks continue to oyster. The dwindling fleet was designated one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places in 2002.
Watermen have long faced obstacles. Commercial fishing has been battered by pollution, climate change, high demand and unsteady yields. “The disease” — actually caused by two parasites, dermo and MSX — has all but destroyed the bay’s oyster populations. In 2008, the blue crab population hit record lows, and segments of the fishery were declared an economic disaster. Calling someone’s livelihood a disaster wouldn’t seem to bode well, but the news was welcomed among fishermen: The announcement triggered a wave of federal funding to help sustain what remains of the watermen community.
Part of the money went to the Watermen’s Heritage Tourism Training Program, where Farley and about 110 others attended three-day workshops that helped the watermen design tourism businesses centered on the history, environment and maritime heritage of Maryland and Virginia. Participants spanned generations, from teenagers to retirees. Watermen designed tours that played to their strengths: harvesting crabs or oysters; or offering fishing excursions, sailing sessions, lighthouse tours, marshland hikes and crab feasts.
Farley, a commercial oysterman for four decades, designed an ecology-focused sailing tour. He says the program set out to “train people to look at being on the water as a waterman differently.” Now, instead of bemoaning the die-off of oysters, he brings attention to it with his tours.
When Farley began oystering commercially in 1972, Maryland watermen were harvesting 2.5 million bushels a year. “When we had plentiful oysters, it looked like it was a great way to make a living ’til the day you die,” he says. But after MSX and dermo hit in the 1980s, yields fell as low as to 300,000 bushels a year. The bottom dropped out in 2004, when all watermen in Maryland pulled in a total of 26,000 bushels. Since then, numbers have seesawed.
“Over time, watermen started taking their jobs as an electrician or a plumber or a painter,” Farley says. Development was rampant in the ’90s, so watermen had no trouble finding work on land. When Farley began, there were about 4,000 oystermen working in Maryland. In 2011, there were 698 licenses sold for the oyster fishery.
Read the full story at The Washington Post