Saving Seafood

STUDY: MATURE OYSTER REEFS COULD BOOST BLUE CRAB NUMBERS BY 80%

June 9, 2020 — Restoring oyster reefs is a priority on the Chesapeake Bay, as we know healthy oyster populations can buoy Bay-wide clean water efforts. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wanted to know just how much restored reefs can help, and how that could translate to the Bay region’s economy.

So NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation used a high-tech model to predict long-term benefits of restored oyster reefs in the Choptank River system. Spoiler alert: the predicted benefits would be remarkable for both the ecology and the crab industry.

Together with six partner institutions, NOAA published a technical memorandum that looks at oyster reefs in Harris Creek, the Little Choptank River, and the Tred Avon River, all parts of the Choptank system that have been targeted with large-scale oyster restoration under the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. These reefs are considered “young” today (Harris Creek’s oyster sanctuary was just completed in 2015, and the other two are still underway), but the research model also looked at what may happen when the reefs are “mature,” roughly 15 years after restoration.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

After July Fourth crab feasts, an uncertain season for Maryland seafood industry

July 6, 2018 — Most summer mornings, Bunky Chance leaves his dock on Grace Creek before sunrise, in the hope of catching the crabs as they begin stirring for breakfast.

But on this steamy, still day, it’s too hot for many Chesapeake Bay crabs to bother grabbing at the chunks of clams Chance dangles in the Choptank River as bait. He’s back from his crabbing spots by 1 p.m.

It’s unfortunate timing, because the picnic-table delicacy is rarely as valuable as it becomes this week, when demand surges to supply crab feasts from Baltimore to Ocean City.

That’s especially worrisome this season, as uncertainty hangs over the next four months. Many Eastern Shore seafood processing businesses have been hamstrung, if not shut down, by a shortage of visas for the foreign guest workers on whom they have come to rely. Demand for steamed crabs typically starts to fall off after this week, and by late summer and early fall, those crab-picking businesses are some of the only buyers watermen can find for their harvest.

Watermen are used to slow periods, challenging weather conditions, and even shortages of the workers who pick the crabs. But the visa shortage has the entire Chesapeake seafood industry apprehensive that this season could present challenges more severe than they have yet seen.

Read the full story at the Baltimore Sun

Sonar revealing more river herring in Choptank River than expected

March 31, 2017 — Scientists have a powerful new tool to help them “see” fish in the Chesapeake Bay’s murky tributaries, and it’s yielding some surprisingly good news about two of the estuary’s most troubled species. “Imaging sonar” uses sound to help them view, and count, passing fish in dark or cloudy water. For the past few years, scientists with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have been deploying one of these underwater sound cameras in some of the Bay’s rivers to monitor spawning runs of alewife and blueback herring, collectively known as river herring.

No one knows for sure how many river herring are in the Bay, as fisheries managers lack the staff and resources to do a comprehensive assessment. But a SERC-led team of scientists deployed an imaging sonar device in the Choptank River in 2014 that captured images of the fish as they swam by. Based on the rate at which scientists saw the shadowy blips cross their computer screens, they estimated that as many as 1.3 million river herring swam upriver that spring to spawn. That’s more than expected, and way more than state biologists had figured were there in the early 1970s, the last time anyone looked intensively at the Choptank’s herring runs.

Read the full story at The Bay Journal