History of the Virginia Oyster Fishery, Chesapeake Bay, USA

Abstract

Oyster populations in Virginia's waters of Chesapeake Bay were lightly exploited until the early 1800s, when industrial fishery vessels first arrived, driven south from New England due to the collapse of northeastern oyster fisheries. Early signs of overexploitation and habitat degradation were evident by the 1850s. The public fishery, where oyster fishers harvest on state-owned bottom, rapidly developed after the Civil War and peaked in the early 1880s. Declines were noted by the late 1880s and eventually prompted the creation of Virginia's shell-planting and oyster-seed (young-of-the-year, YOY) moving repletion program in the 1920s. Despite management and increasing repletion efforts, the public fishery collapsed (annual landings <10% of peak historical landings) by the early 1960s. The private leasehold fishery, in which individuals rent areas outside the public grounds to plant shells and oysters for their own private use, surpassed the public fishery by the late 1920s, which partly masked this decline due to overfishing, habitat degradation, and diseases until both public and private fisheries completely collapsed in the mid-1980s after a third disease outbreak. This disease outbreak was likely related to warming waters. Overfishing and concomitant habitat loss followed a pattern of sequential population collapses observed in wild oyster fisheries along the Coastlines of the United States and worldwide. In recent years, expanding hatchery-produced seed oysters and aquaculture significantly increased leasehold landings. The wild fishery has also increased as disease resistance is developing naturally in the wild stocks, but remains ∼5% of peak landings. Improved management has assisted in this recent limited recovery, improving these efforts further by enhancing stock recovery via large no-take sanctuaries, among other actions, could assist in stock recovery.

Gear and survey efficiency of patent tongs for oyster populations on restoration reefs

“…They may simply not hold enough generations of oysters fixed together into a cohesive structure that would negatively influence the efficiency of the patent tong. The more contracted size-frequency distributions on modern reefs due to disease and harvesting may also be easier to sample when compared to historic reefs [ 18 , 28 – 32 ] that held more age classes with larger adults, as well as greater cohesion and rugosity. It may take many generations of oysters on an unfished sanctuary reef to produce a truly cohesive reef similar to unexploited reefs found in the Winslow era.…”

“…All reefs were built as sanctuaries and relied on natural recruitment to establish an oyster population on the reefs, which occurred (Schulte et al 2009). Due to the world-wide [ 16 ], as well as Chesapeake Bay wide [ 17 , 18 ] depletion of oysters and destruction of their habitat, oyster restoration efforts are expanding to restore this ecosystem engineer, which provides a wealth of ecological services [ 19 , 20 ]. Due to significant and ongoing financial commitments in the Chesapeake Bay region towards oyster restoration, a goal implementation team (GIT) was formed in the Bay region, consisting of a mix of state and federal fishery managers, scientists, and those agencies (NOAA and the US Army Corps of Engineers) involved in construction and monitoring of restored oyster reefs.…”

Restoring the eastern oyster: how much progress has been made in 53 years?

“…As in the Gulf, the pace of oyster restoration in the Chesapeake escalated in the mid‐2000s (Figure a). These restoration activities, that left substrate in place to rejuvenate and sustain overfished reefs, marked the introduction of a new strategy to the region; since the 1920s, coastal resource managers tasked with supporting commercial fisheries in the Chesapeake had run oyster repletion and broodstock enhancement programs that typically deployed substrate, assuming it would eventually be harvested (Southworth and Mann ; Schulte ). However, through the implementation of many generally large‐scale projects (project size between 1999–2016 averaged 2.85 ha; see WebTable 3 for project size data), practitioners have steadily increased constructed reef area in the Chesapeake over the past 25 years.…”

Effects of Infectious Diseases on Population Dynamics of Marine Organisms in Chesapeake Bay

“…Mortality, growth, reproduction Paynter and Burreson 1991, Ben-Horin et al 2018, Barber et al 1988, Andrews 1979, Andrews and Castagna 1978, Ragone Calvo and Burreson 2000, Carnegie et al 2004, Schulte 2017, Keppel et al 2015 Soft-shell clam (Mya arenaria)…”