August 19, 2019 — People, aside from oyster researchers and farmers, likely won’t feel the impact for at least another 18 months.
But, eventually, everyone will know just how bad a year it has been for Maryland oysters.
Thanks to record levels of persistent rainfall throughout the bay watershed, salinity levels in the Chesapeake Bay have remained perilously low since May 2018. The absence of salt in the bay and its tributaries has been annihilating oyster spat production and oyster growth at hatcheries and farms around the region.
At the University of Maryland’s Horn Point Hatchery, the largest oyster hatchery in the state, the carefully controlled operation is on course to produce hundreds of times fewer larvae this year than it would during a regular season, its manager said. This is bad news both economically and as an indicator of bay health, which data shows has suffered greatly under the deluge.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Baltimore Sun