A water cannon on an Oyster Recovery Partnership boat shoots spat-on-shell oysters from the University of Maryland’s Horn Point hatchery onto a sanctuary in Maryland’s Tred Avon River in 2018.
As Maryland works to complete the last of five large oyster restoration projects it committed to a decade ago, state officials have decided to tackle three more.
The state has restored more than 1,100 acres of reefs so far in Harris Creek and the Little Choptank, Tred Avon and Manokin rivers, all on the Eastern Shore, and in the St. Mary’s River off the lower Potomac.
Now, the Department of Natural Resources has announced it intends to restore and repopulate hundreds of acres more in oyster sanctuaries in Herring Bay on the Western Shore and in the Nanticoke River and Hooper Strait on the Eastern Shore.
“These three large-scale restoration sanctuaries represent a new chapter for oyster restoration in Maryland,” DNR Secretary Josh Kurtz said in announcing the selection on Oct. 9. “We’ve had tremendous success with our existing restoration sanctuaries, and we’re excited to build on that achievement and keep up the momentum for oyster recovery in the Chesapeake Bay.”
Maryland and the federal government have spent more than $87 million so far rebuilding reefs and planting hatchery-reared oyster spat in the first five sanctuaries. The effort has proven durable to date with nearly all reefs at least 6 years old yielding the minimum expected densities of bivalves, or better — and 83% sustaining the hoped-for goal of more than 50 oysters per square meter.
All but the Manokin, off Tangier Sound, are considered at least initially “restored.” DNR expects to finish seeding the Manokin in 2025, which would meet the deadline set in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay…
