tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39835348444403744202024-03-05T17:53:05.059-08:00A Virginia Oyster Lovers ParadiseRobert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-2627616529499361652011-10-01T08:59:00.000-07:002011-10-01T09:41:40.848-07:00Lynhaven River Oysters Have Not ArrivedYep - I'd been looking forward to a few dozen oysters that were supposed to have looked just like this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg67yVVTzsNHFjna2wQiXiLgtiDHyL7TcvjFf22cM0f5ITbIuxNswO-SH30axYLKCxEGt5JO-2BbMFSrSyAhBAvcOaZoRpqw2A_1dv_i8UOdSO-C3Mm9TMujZGlYzYA2_e5E8ImZhZftSM/s1600/Oyster_Chesapeake_bay.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 245px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg67yVVTzsNHFjna2wQiXiLgtiDHyL7TcvjFf22cM0f5ITbIuxNswO-SH30axYLKCxEGt5JO-2BbMFSrSyAhBAvcOaZoRpqw2A_1dv_i8UOdSO-C3Mm9TMujZGlYzYA2_e5E8ImZhZftSM/s320/Oyster_Chesapeake_bay.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5658554321114759106" /></a>I guess that I will have to be content with oysters from more reputable farms. <br /><br />Oyster season is coming very soon and I look forward to reviewing the harvest from as many <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chesapeake Bay Oyster Farms</a> as possible - stay tuned. <br /><br />In the meantime: join the Facebook group: <br /><br /><a href="https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=48543170558">Chesapeake Bay Oyster Farms</a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmPEzK8k79GlqhgH-z0bMwW28XIKT0ON-9IMSaFK_wB6_1jI2sfN39a3ek0ja1SwO5zFuZ0XTqnGTNQaaJEUwJZURa4-TGPZ4fAi6P2m3hnE0Q2PAJFpf85VEGXDBI3dY4hsdAaIlWud0/s1600/chesaprake+bay+oyster+farms.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 151px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmPEzK8k79GlqhgH-z0bMwW28XIKT0ON-9IMSaFK_wB6_1jI2sfN39a3ek0ja1SwO5zFuZ0XTqnGTNQaaJEUwJZURa4-TGPZ4fAi6P2m3hnE0Q2PAJFpf85VEGXDBI3dY4hsdAaIlWud0/s320/chesaprake+bay+oyster+farms.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5658555630365148098" /></a> <br /><br />Until the next post... enjoy Chesapeake Bay Oysters!!!Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-6952825967696803632011-07-14T12:22:00.000-07:002011-07-14T13:01:31.732-07:00Lynnhaven River Oysters<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidf7O_qo2XjyGBRfQASsfExm6dGO2Wc4H61dR_ukzGLQn0wmbbEmTBgoADv8gkcmw_5J29lyttbqZyRA2KyEe_b2rk0lZc2KLRnr0_pTyJn3ZSCLzmTrQJOpibOcMnL9Vh9giLGzZTqY4/s1600/lynnhavenoyster.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidf7O_qo2XjyGBRfQASsfExm6dGO2Wc4H61dR_ukzGLQn0wmbbEmTBgoADv8gkcmw_5J29lyttbqZyRA2KyEe_b2rk0lZc2KLRnr0_pTyJn3ZSCLzmTrQJOpibOcMnL9Vh9giLGzZTqY4/s320/lynnhavenoyster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5629295221940629058" /></a> I love finding new good oyster farms, and am looking forward to getting my first shipment from Lynnhaven River Oysters.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">"Fresh, outstandingly good, live oysters from the Lynnhaven River Estuary of the Chesapeake Bay".</span><br /><br /><br />How could I resist ordering after reading their ad copy from their website: <a href="http://www.seasidequalityseafood.com">www.seasidequalityseafood.com</a>. Tell me if this doesn't just make your mouth water:<br /><br /><br />"Salty and with that wonderful fresh ocean taste - directly from the boat to your home.<br /><br />World Famous - The Favorite of Presidents and Royalty<br /><br />The unique environment of the Lynnhaven River Estuary produces oysters that have been acclaimed around the world for their wonderfully salty taste of the ocean. The taste of oysters is highly dependent on their living conditions. They prefer a mix of fresh water and seawater and tolerate a range of saltiness (salinity). Generally the saltier the water (up to the limit in which oysters thrive) the better the taste of the oysters. Because our oysters live at the very southern end of the Chesapeake Bay where it meets the ocean the water has that desirable high salinity and ideal conditions exist for producing the best tasting oysters you can find". <br /> <br /><br />My shipment is on it's way.. and I will post whether they live up to the hype or not. Mmmmm. In fact, I will try a new oyster recipe with these and post it on <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com ">http://oysterrecipes.blogspot.com</a> - <span style="font-weight:bold;">be sure to check it out!</span><br /><br /><br />Here is an earlier post made on this blog: <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2008/07/lynnhaven-oysters-make-comeback.html">Lynnhaven Oysters Make a Comeback</a>: Here is the obvious sign of this comeback!!! <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Read the post here:</span><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2008/07/lynnhaven-oysters-make-comeback.html">http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2008/07/lynnhaven-oysters-make-comeback.html</a><br /><br /><br />Check back for the review...Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-49472147316488545562010-12-12T08:00:00.000-08:002010-12-12T08:20:53.402-08:00Virginia's First Oyster Co-op Launched<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6bTEz41dumM-eUjmYtzZ4ZAUfuNr7isO8Yz0vuf4IE3XveAvUyqUHODL6dSsZ1jsubfEZIKVXA4lx6XwSAYDSqEbD3xwkl3I5RRgKPf12Esga-tVAuoG-1C7jcrC1gaNYtENTVzKMO8/s1600/Oyster+Boats.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 213px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF6bTEz41dumM-eUjmYtzZ4ZAUfuNr7isO8Yz0vuf4IE3XveAvUyqUHODL6dSsZ1jsubfEZIKVXA4lx6XwSAYDSqEbD3xwkl3I5RRgKPf12Esga-tVAuoG-1C7jcrC1gaNYtENTVzKMO8/s320/Oyster+Boats.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5549829073385777170" border="0" /></a>Businessmen, watermen and scientists have collaborated to launch Virginia's first privately funded oyster co-op. <p>The Oyster Company of Virginia, founded in August by Northern Neck businessman W. Tolar Nolley, is goinf to equip a dozen watermen with the resources they need to farm oysters in the Chesapeake Bay.</p> <p>The cooperative will lease acres of bay bottom from the state, and buy oyster seed and cages to grow the oysters. Salaried watermen will then plant the seeds, and harvest and sell the mature oysters.</p><p>Profits from the program will pay the watermen's salary, fund the purchase of new equipment, and expand the program, said Ken Smith, president of the Virginia State Waterman's Association.</p><p>"I've never seen 12 people so excited in my life," said Smith, chief operating officer of the cooperative, which will officially unveil its plans Thursday at The <a href="http://www.watermens.org/">Watermen's Museum in Yorktown</a>.</p><p>Chesapeake oysters have been plagued for decades by disease, loss of habitat and pollution. They are at less than 1 percent of their peak historic population. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Many watermen have resisted calls to abandon the centuries-old hunter-gatherer approach in favor of oyster farming, also known as aquaculture.</span></p><p>The industry has made numerous advances in the last decade, most notably developing more disease-tolerant oyster seeds, that have made aquaculture a more viable option. That, combined with the endorsement of Smith and others trusted by watermen, led to the cooperative's formation.</p><p>It hopes to reruit more watermen in the coming years and attract corporate support by promoting the program as a way to reduce bay pollution, Smith said. Oysters, which filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, help rid the bay of excess nutrients that cause dead zones and other problems.</p><p>"The oyster has a positive effect cleaning up the bay," Smith said.</p><p>The cooperative plans to lobby state and federal officials to include their efforts in the "pollution diet" the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is drafting for the bay.</p><p>The effort is similar to one introduced two years ago by the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2009/04/plans-for-non-native-oysters-in-bay.html">Virginia Marine Resources Commission</a>. It used part of the $15 million it received to revive the Chesapeake's blue crab population to train dozens of watermen to farm oysters.</p><p>In addition to oyster farming, Oyster Company of Virginia has partnered with <a href="http://www.reeftek.com/">Reeftek Inc.</a>, a reef-building company run by Middle Peninsula businessman Robert Jensen. The cooperative will work will Reeftek to create oyster sanctuaries, Smith said.</p><p><br /></p><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2010/09/oyster-festivals.html">Oyster Festivals</a>:<br /><br />Oyster Facts: <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-oyster-facts.html">Basic Oyster Facts</a>:Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-6014061891124215382010-09-27T14:06:00.001-07:002010-09-27T18:33:01.543-07:00Oyster Festivals<strong><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2010/09/oyster-festivals.html">Oyster festivals</a> are the EVENT OF THE YEAR for oyster lovers!</strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9-D7rxJpYFGw-S1GGbyiZjDdWA3Ke-qSTSK7lkJJRq_FiATBRZcjXisVURVGUBzmne4N-mY0P7exjdq4fw89sHvPXmP8qlEdJy3A0epL3PL44VputSZiR1SmCgpxcwsfDfrXVCg__yM/s1600/OysterFestival.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521707181425721714" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9-D7rxJpYFGw-S1GGbyiZjDdWA3Ke-qSTSK7lkJJRq_FiATBRZcjXisVURVGUBzmne4N-mY0P7exjdq4fw89sHvPXmP8qlEdJy3A0epL3PL44VputSZiR1SmCgpxcwsfDfrXVCg__yM/s320/OysterFestival.jpg" /></a><br /><br />I am not a vendor, oysterman, or merchant. You will not see me at a festival offering or selling anything. I am just an fan and <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2010/09/oyster-festivals.html">oyster lover</a>.<br /><br />I enjoy the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2010/09/oyster-festivals.html">oysterfest atmosphere</a> (almost as much as I love eating oysters).<br /><br />The people that you meet and the sounds and experiences makes one feel good to be alive.<br /><br /><strong>Just imagine any county fair that you have been to:</strong><br /><br />The sounds, the smells, the tastes. All of that and more can be found in any oyster festival.<br /><br />You can also find ALL of the usual fare: Corndogs, Italian sausages and Phillys, funnel cakes, and of course candy apples, and Peanut butter and Jelly on a stick? - (it's probably pretty good).<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2YLnQpRnX7pQC5OzPZd6L2Z1eF6K93mwCJcgSrdDjFOiKUVP7PhwYq8JV8RRuv64QfmgvTHndCLf22XbfwofNK_HBynYli4L9UWSaiVm81uZlwuvcjb9xLF_PzKxmlxGFhYyaItgE6dM/s1600/county-fair-peanut-butter-and-jelly-on-a-stick.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 194px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521710319661917810" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2YLnQpRnX7pQC5OzPZd6L2Z1eF6K93mwCJcgSrdDjFOiKUVP7PhwYq8JV8RRuv64QfmgvTHndCLf22XbfwofNK_HBynYli4L9UWSaiVm81uZlwuvcjb9xLF_PzKxmlxGFhYyaItgE6dM/s320/county-fair-peanut-butter-and-jelly-on-a-stick.jpg" /></a><br /><strong>PB&J on a stick - photo by Cheryl Carlin.</strong><br /><br />_____________________________________________________________________________________<br /><br /><br /><strong>Now of course, I am going for the oysters... </strong><br /><br />I will most likely hit a good half dozen vendors - which are usually churches or civic organizations - and buy (and eat) 1/2 dozen oysters from each.<br /><br />My choice of fried, raw, or steamed on the half shell will depend on the conversations that I have with the employees working the tent. I like to engage the workers around the corner or at the back of the tent.<br /><br />If the group is a church that is opening jars of shucked oysters and frying in a <strong>secret recipe</strong> - well... - give me an order of fried oysters <strong>RIGHT NOW!</strong> - with a healthy portion of their homemade dipping sauce - mmmmmm.<br /><br />If the tent represents a local restaurant who buys fresh from local oystermen - <strong>and I talk with the guy in charge and believe that the oysters that they are serving right then were pulled from the water earlier</strong> - well they need to immediately serve me some oysters raw - on the half shell (probably a full dozen).<br /><br /><strong>Anything questionable</strong> - give me 1/2 dozen steamed on the half shell - and I'm moving on.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipO8JSzVau1ZqwaemxsHjXD4jDvJsp50TYbff7yVzUtDxOOgMJ1HcZUYiEcHh-Qlzh1bu0DIwLU3iAbVqN8KWPy9BW8VNnI_fe_LPHOgwUkQl314-ungydUUP801SvGwj1-_bFXWOg5YU/s1600/oyster-festival1.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 213px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521707470838363954" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipO8JSzVau1ZqwaemxsHjXD4jDvJsp50TYbff7yVzUtDxOOgMJ1HcZUYiEcHh-Qlzh1bu0DIwLU3iAbVqN8KWPy9BW8VNnI_fe_LPHOgwUkQl314-ungydUUP801SvGwj1-_bFXWOg5YU/s320/oyster-festival1.jpg" /></a><strong><br />To all of my readers:</strong> I'm sorry that I haven't posted for a while. It;s all thanks to the new job and all. I will return soon.<br /><br />Check out the new recipe that I posted on our blog:<a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2010/09/oyster-festival-recipies.html"> OYSTER BLOG</a><br /><br />I hope to see you <strong>all</strong> at the <strong>53rd Annual <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2010/09/oyster-festivals.html">Oyster Festival</a></strong> in Urbanna Virginia. November 5th and 5th 2010.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx-V9JeMEUYGVAxZuf55uoGuSaMhJhBluKaHSJhvaXt9ielfBhzMB8DNypt0unXwoNSW8fGntcZf1_c-OYbGNkzlWaIUxSUE3-4E8VypqX-XYxziwrHybtOLR36L6mVmcK6PAf_5ROQrs/s1600/2010oysterfestival.jpg"><img style="WIDTH: 320px; HEIGHT: 137px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5521702858857027522" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx-V9JeMEUYGVAxZuf55uoGuSaMhJhBluKaHSJhvaXt9ielfBhzMB8DNypt0unXwoNSW8fGntcZf1_c-OYbGNkzlWaIUxSUE3-4E8VypqX-XYxziwrHybtOLR36L6mVmcK6PAf_5ROQrs/s320/2010oysterfestival.jpg" /></a><br /><br />Check out the <a href="http://www.urbannaoysterfestival.com/">oyster festival website</a>: <strong>HERE</strong> <a href="http://www.urbannaoysterfestival.com/">http://www.urbannaoysterfestival.com/</a><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br />Oyster Facts: <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-oyster-facts.html">Basic Oyster Facts</a>:Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-68909579587532808112010-06-21T11:54:00.000-07:002010-06-21T12:12:59.559-07:00The Chesapeake Bay is Fighting its Own 'Oil Spill'Baltimore Sun reporter Tim Wheeler posted this thought-provoking item on the <a href="http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/features/green/2010/06/what_if_the_gulf_leak_was_in_t.html">B'More Green blog</a>. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSTdMWU4p8VV0uoujZY8PzBwyyAXqhDfiusx2NXgMH43bHQB6ybVmFggNCzrh3kzSW_LX-7oRL2GNakmUPkxYq1etGMqElrATFrmD_04giSE8baZPkEl9tE8v1rePFB4AZyRlKaKq0xQ/s1600/oil_spill_cheapeake_bay.bmp"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 272px; height: 171px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXSTdMWU4p8VV0uoujZY8PzBwyyAXqhDfiusx2NXgMH43bHQB6ybVmFggNCzrh3kzSW_LX-7oRL2GNakmUPkxYq1etGMqElrATFrmD_04giSE8baZPkEl9tE8v1rePFB4AZyRlKaKq0xQ/s320/oil_spill_cheapeake_bay.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5485303245746072242" /></a><br /><strong>This map shows the BP Gulf oil slick superimposed over the Chesapeake Bay.</strong> <br /><br />That really puts things into perspective. <br /><br />For those of us in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, here’s another thought: the Bay has been struggling against a similarly sized danger for years in the form of high levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediment pollution. <br /><br />In a recent post on Chronicling the Chesapeake Bay, CBF Senior Scientist Beth McGee notes there are many similarities between the Gulf disaster and the Bay’s poor health. The big difference is one you can see and one you can't.<br /><br />"I think it is in a sense that nitrogen is our oil," said McGee. Degraded water quality makes portions of the Bay unlivable for fish, oysters, and crabs. <br /><br />It also puts stress on those that remain, making them more susceptible to disease, "which is exactly what oil does."<br /><br />"We’re not outraged because it's not in our face, like it is in the face of the folks in the Gulf," said McGee, referring to the fact that views of our waterways from the surface are misleading, as most of the damage is taking place underwater. <br /><br /><strong>The reality is that what is happening to communities in Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana is exactly what has been happening for years to communities in Virginia, Maryland, and throughout the Bay watershed—people can't go fishing, they can't buy fresh seafood, and those who make a living off the water have lost and continue to lose their livelihood and their culture.</strong><br /><br />That's why CBF is fighting hard for passage of the Chesapeake Clean Water Act, the most significant legislation for the Bay's future health since the 1972 Clean Water Act. <br /><br />As for whether the Gulf spill will make its way to Virginia’s shoreline: "it’s highly unlikely", as stated by a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, as reported by Examiner.com. <br /><br />Any oil that makes it into the Gulf Stream—which flows fairly close to North Carolina before veering east into the Atlantic—will likely remain in the stream.<br /><br />However, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation will continue to monitor the situation. <br /><br />While the oil might not make its way to the Chesapeake Bay region, its impact on the Gulf's oyster fishery has. <br /><br />Bay-area oyster processors who rely on Gulf oysters have lost work and restoration efforts that rely on Gulf shell anticipate shortages. <br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br />Next Page: <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2009/06/basic-oyster-facts.html">Basic Oyster Facts</a>:Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-59210404859301453642009-06-30T07:14:00.000-07:002009-06-30T07:22:11.136-07:00Basic Oyster Facts<strong>Here are some oyster basics:</strong><br /><br />The native eastern oyster, <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Crassostrea virginica</a>, usually lives in water depths of between 8 and 25 feet and naturally forms three-dimensional intertidal reefs. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguejrvLfcl0DxLBziyh8UHHPjDWtZLUV2skWedhuNaiqBKQWgmHPoMse1cpSEKEazpAqj0lNp5QcXb0gYZOGOdY352MOEQqg2p7TdT-IYmVBIGplpL4EJ3Vv21ISIrsa6sNx-48fuVvwc/s1600-h/oysterreef.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguejrvLfcl0DxLBziyh8UHHPjDWtZLUV2skWedhuNaiqBKQWgmHPoMse1cpSEKEazpAqj0lNp5QcXb0gYZOGOdY352MOEQqg2p7TdT-IYmVBIGplpL4EJ3Vv21ISIrsa6sNx-48fuVvwc/s320/oysterreef.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353124125176735378" /></a><br /><br /><br />An oyster orients itself with the flared edge of its shell tilted upward. The left valve is cupped, while the right valve is flat. The shell opens periodically to permit the oyster to feed on plankton.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJdwcMrSmPyXdzHoMlZT8ZN4ujAxwBlYT3DIZ-HznkvomhbNdwsU662C95fqk_vZooSO0Cd-ag3WyNJ_N8P3K1DlQSefjI5JHm1eNHK3p_FAEQ0zvwf3UOPIyDcFNxoHRmLlAOhCNVnkw/s1600-h/oysternativebay.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 201px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJdwcMrSmPyXdzHoMlZT8ZN4ujAxwBlYT3DIZ-HznkvomhbNdwsU662C95fqk_vZooSO0Cd-ag3WyNJ_N8P3K1DlQSefjI5JHm1eNHK3p_FAEQ0zvwf3UOPIyDcFNxoHRmLlAOhCNVnkw/s320/oysternativebay.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353124238872453858" /></a><br /><br /><br />Oysters usually mature by age one. They are <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">protandric</a>, which means that in the first year they spawn as males, but as they grow larger and develop more energy reserves in the next two to three years, they spawn as females. <br /><br />An increase in water temperatures triggers the male oyster to release sperm and the female to release eggs into the water. This triggers a chain reaction of spawning which clouds the water with millions of eggs and sperm. A single female oyster produces 10 to 100 million eggs annually. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCPuZsoXPw4eqkSJg34kK4H13L8jGpWNyV3g6yPOAgTm09FUBpOWbGKhUfbDLKoc4N7jMMNKzNRzDN4Wdbjjgv8nCUvLmFzLLgn9p15SIcPZgGqXrp4j-O0-fZJjqBbAKjqjRvNNJCWkQ/s1600-h/oysterspawning.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 185px; height: 117px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCPuZsoXPw4eqkSJg34kK4H13L8jGpWNyV3g6yPOAgTm09FUBpOWbGKhUfbDLKoc4N7jMMNKzNRzDN4Wdbjjgv8nCUvLmFzLLgn9p15SIcPZgGqXrp4j-O0-fZJjqBbAKjqjRvNNJCWkQ/s320/oysterspawning.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5353124398291873938" /></a><br /><br />The eggs are fertilized in the water and soon develop into larvae, or veligers, which are drawn to the chemicals released by older oysters on the bottom. Oysters need to settle in a suitable spot, such as another oyster’s shell. Juvenile attached oysters are called “<a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">spat</a>.” <br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-8622239910626794152009-05-13T19:21:00.001-07:002009-05-13T19:30:51.409-07:00Oyster Management and RestorationOyster reefs are more than just habitat, they are complex and diverse communities.<br /><br />Bay Program partners developed the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Management Plan to help restore and maintain the valuable ecological services provided by native oysters while continuing to support an oyster fishery. The strategy described in the Oyster Management Plan consists of three components: Defining oyster sanctuaries, managing harvest and overcoming the effects of disease.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVJyMXPoQrQCVCbMwj6Xe0N3aO7cWupDQzdS3BKmoU555EamplNB-OSDYCGZ_UxlPgOYrrQxLEj_kgIPuP5cSXWlETpiqNKYVORoGmKewAQIYjTxoOEJs3XV3YdTT6iF_p1-v4m7MTXBQ/s1600-h/oysterreef2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 175px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVJyMXPoQrQCVCbMwj6Xe0N3aO7cWupDQzdS3BKmoU555EamplNB-OSDYCGZ_UxlPgOYrrQxLEj_kgIPuP5cSXWlETpiqNKYVORoGmKewAQIYjTxoOEJs3XV3YdTT6iF_p1-v4m7MTXBQ/s320/oysterreef2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5335500616190235170" /></a><br />Chesapeake Bay Oyster Restoration<br /><br />However, it is important to understand that the Bay's poor water quality is not due solely to the loss of the oyster population and, therefore, cannot be corrected by restoring oysters alone. Other pressures on the Bay's ecosystem—including land use practices and nutrient and sediment pollution—must be addressed for future oyster and water quality restoration efforts to be successful.<br /><br /><strong>Oyster Sanctuaries</strong><br /><br />The first component of the oyster management strategy defines sanctuaries—areas where harvesting is prohibited—to increase the ecological function of oyster beds. <br /><br />Scientists also improve habitat in these areas by cleaning sediment off the reefs and adding cultch (clean, empty shells or other hard material) for new spat to settle on. <br /><br />By restoring oyster reefs and protecting them from harvest, there is potential to increase populations of spawning adult oysters and, in turn, larval production. <br />In the short term, factors like disease and water quality will significantly limit the success of oyster sanctuaries and the increase in oyster populations; however, sanctuaries will become important contributors to oyster restoration if disease resistance is allowed to evolve over time in wild populations and is supported by management practices. <br /><br />Decisions about where to locate sanctuaries are guided by the Virginia Oyster Restoration Plan, developed by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC); and by Maryland's Priority Restoration Areas, developed by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MD DNR) and the Maryland Oyster Roundtable Steering Committee.<br /><br /><strong>Managing Oyster Harvest</strong><br /><br />The second component of the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">oyster management strategy</a> implements harvest strategies to build a sustainable oyster industry in both Maryland and Virginia. <br /><br />The main strategy for regulating harvest and enhancing harvest potential is to establish sanctuaries and special management areas throughout the Bay. <br />The ideal situation is to estimate the amount of oysters that can be taken safely from the population while maintaining a sustainable Bay-wide population of oysters. <br />A major challenge is to determine what level of exploitation is appropriate and will not compromise restoration efforts. <br /><br />Management strategies for the Maryland oyster fishery are considered by a number of advisory groups working with MD DNR. In Virginia, oyster harvest is managed on a bar-specific basis.<br /><br /><strong>Oyster Disease</strong><br /><br />The third component of the oyster management strategy recognizes the constraints of disease and implements management strategies that reduce the impact of disease. <br /><br />A major challenge to <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">oyster restoration</a> in the Bay is to overcome the effects of the diseases MSX and Dermo. It is estimated that, by age 3, 80 percent or more of a year class in high disease areas (i.e., the Virginia portion of the Bay) will die due to disease. <br /><br />Maryland and Virginia confront different problems concerning disease. Virginia oysters are faced with constant disease pressure because MSX and Dermo thrive in warmer, saltier waters. Maryland's situation is more variable depending on weather conditions. <br /><br />Research efforts have been underway for a number of years to breed strains of native oysters with greater disease resistance. Current research will give scientists a better understanding of how these disease-tolerant strains could contribute to large-scale oyster restoration efforts. <br /><br />Recently, it has been found that oysters in areas subject to high exposure to MSX are evolving to resist the disease. Scientists and managers are adjusting harvest and sanctuary management strategies to optimize the long-term benefits of the development of MSX resistance.<br /><br /><strong>Introduction of a Non-native Oyster</strong><br /><br />In response to the decline in the native oyster population, Maryland and Virginia have proposed intentional introduction of a non-native oyster species, Crassostrea ariakensis (also known as <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Suminoe</a> or Asian oyster). This species is believed to have greater resistance to MSX and Dermo.<br /><br />Considerable controversy exists over this proposal, and many questions remain about the possible implications of introduction. In 2003, the U.S. Congress mandated that an environmental impact statement (EIS) be prepared to examine both the risks and benefits of introducing this species to the Bay, compared with the risks and benefits of other management alternatives. A draft EIS is expected to be released in 2008.<br /><br />In 2004 the National Research Council of the National Academies published its year-long study, Nonnative Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. This independent study is the most complete analysis to date on the possible introduction of non-native oysters into the Bay. <br /><br />According to the study, introduction of a non-native oyster should be delayed until more is known about the environmental risks. However, carefully regulated cultivation of sterile Asian oysters in contained areas could help both researchers and the Bay's oyster industry. <br /><br />The study also noted that it could take decades before there are enough oysters to improve water quality. While Asian oysters would filter excess algae from the water, they would not be a “quick fix” to restore water quality.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.creditra.com">credit repair va</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-26898774935066327922009-04-13T12:52:00.000-07:002009-04-13T13:01:52.224-07:00Plans for Non-Native Oysters in Bay DROPPEDForeign species deemed ecologically dangerous<br /><br />By <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/bal-md.asian07apr07,0,5805449.story">Timothy B. Wheeler</a> <br /><br />Proposals to use a foreign species to restore the Chesapeake Bay's depleted oyster population were essentially scrapped Monday as state and federal governments agreed to focus on bringing back the native oyster.<br /><br />Maryland, Virginia and federal agencies announced that they remain "fully committed" to using only native oysters, even in trying to help rebuild the bay's seafood industry. Using non-native oysters poses "unacceptable ecological risks," officials said.<br /><br />The decision ends years of debate about whether to introduce an Asian oyster into the bay and concludes nearly five years of formal study, costing $17 million in state and federal funds.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQwXlQ69OU5ARCxTkXHovJrKFRHd0fcKw2vQ2pr756jueKYF8a6ep4wpsfISIvZW_im4PeEwabiabTJv6qd8p1lrIIAQKfZxtIy6imnu8EXwLNv9WORaPB6MIMtujZQNLteNoAZyHPvfY/s1600-h/NonNativeOysters.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 283px; height: 191px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQwXlQ69OU5ARCxTkXHovJrKFRHd0fcKw2vQ2pr756jueKYF8a6ep4wpsfISIvZW_im4PeEwabiabTJv6qd8p1lrIIAQKfZxtIy6imnu8EXwLNv9WORaPB6MIMtujZQNLteNoAZyHPvfY/s320/NonNativeOysters.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5324268529150301474" /></a><br /><br />The Ehrlich administration had pushed for seeding the Chesapeake with the fast-growing Asian oysters because they resist the diseases that have nearly wiped out the bay's native shellfish. Amid scientific fears that the alien species could create ecological havoc, the O'Malley administration abandoned that stance.<br /><br />In Virginia, though, the seafood industry sought to farm Asian oysters bred to be sterile. The state backed the industry through seven years of "field trials" in which businesses grew batches of the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">sterile shellfish</a> in cages.<br /><br />But the state relented in the face of widespread scientific concerns that, despite safeguards, some Asian oysters eventually would reproduce in the bay and their offspring would spread.<br /><br />Yesterday's joint statement left open the possibility that small, carefully controlled studies might still be approved. But any research in open bay waters would require approval from all parties - unlikely, given firm opposition to such experiments by Maryland and federal environmental agencies.<br /><br />The governments now plan to craft a strategy for replenishing oyster reefs and seeding them with native bivalves bred in hatcheries. Watermen, meanwhile, will be encouraged to try <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">oyster farming</a>.<br /><br />But scientists caution that unless native oysters develop a resistance to the diseases killing them, replenishing the bay's wild population could be time-consuming and costly. Large-scale restoration could require spending as much as $50 million a year over the next decade - 10 times what has been spent so far, officials estimate.<br /><br />The federal government has committed $6.6 million in the coming year, Maryland $5 million and Virginia up to $1 million. The two states are seeking $24 more million in federal economic stimulus funds to apply to oyster restoration efforts.<br /><br />"We cannot guarantee success, but we'll give it a helluva go," said Col. Dionysios Anninos of the Norfolk District of the Army Corps of Engineers, which has directed two reef restorations in Virginia, where native oysters appear to be thriving. <br /><br />The decision was hailed by environmental groups, including the Nature Conservancy and the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chesapeake Bay Foundation</a>, which had threatened to sue if the governments authorized using non-native oysters.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.creditra.com">credit repair va</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-77131428757387314392009-03-25T13:56:00.000-07:002009-04-13T12:54:36.136-07:00Asian oysters off the Bay menu?From: <a href="http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bay_environment/blog/2009/03/asian_oysters_off_the_bay_menu.html">BaltimoreSun.com</a><br /><br /><br />A surprising development in Virginia may mean the end - at least for now - of the debate over whether Asian oysters have any place in the Chesapeake Bay.<br /><br />On Tuesday, the Virginia Seafood Council abruptly withdrew its request to raise 1.1 million Asian oysters in 11 locations around the bay. The oysters would have been genetically modified and <strong>bred to be sterile</strong>, though critics have said there is still at least a slight chance that some would be able to reproduce.<br /><br />In a statement read at a hearing before the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Virginia Marine Resources Commission</a>, Frances W. Porter, the seafood council's executive director, said the group remained "firm in its confidence in the Asian oysters, but we have exhausted our negotiating capabilities with federal and state authorities." <br /><br />According to this story by Scott Harper in the Virginian-Pilot, Porter said the council dropped its push for the Asian oyster field trials after "conversations with unnamed state officials over the weekend."<br /><br />Porter also said the group believed that the Asian oyster would never realize its potential as an aquaculture product, and that Virginia's oyster industry would never be restored to its historic prominence. <br /><br />The withdrawal comes on the eve of a conference call scheduled Wednesday between Maryland and Virginia natural resources officials and the Army Corps commander to try to reach agreement on whether even <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">sterilized Asian oysters</a> should have a role in restoring the bay's oysters. <br /><br />Watermen and seafood businesses in both states contend that years of costly efforts to restore the bay's native oysters after decades of devastation by habitat loss and disease have not succeeded. They have pressed for permission to try Asian oysters, since they have proven to resist the diseases killing off native bivalves.<br /><br />A four-year scientific study of how to restore the bay's oysters, however, said there were uncertainties about whether the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">non-native bivalve</a> could be grown in a controlled way that would prevent it from spreading.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.creditra.com">credit repair va</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-41996980538208392082009-02-28T12:18:00.001-08:002009-03-25T13:59:24.926-07:00Memorabilia of Bay's Heyday Selling WellBy <a href="http://www.somdnews.com/stories/02272009/indytop165223_32256.shtml">JOANNE MALENE</a><br /><br /><br />Joe Parlett, owner of Keeper's, holds two of his favorite oyster cans, both with custom labels. The can on the left comes from the Leonard Copsey Oyster Co. Copsey's wife, Josephine, drew the waterman on the label. The can on the right comes from Shorter's Place in Benedict. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd1Tfe8VLQR42E2ASSf0MOZuv46VRcYsOaGKfBTvLlz3P4Y2GedxudQiTnlwTnv5vUJeQSQZKQOQPvSZ-iRKoXeJUy7zBDJuJaiw0sWbzaxOonlWW2g5_TXDwFQyIQojB0QiAmd9ldkZA/s1600-h/oyster-can.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd1Tfe8VLQR42E2ASSf0MOZuv46VRcYsOaGKfBTvLlz3P4Y2GedxudQiTnlwTnv5vUJeQSQZKQOQPvSZ-iRKoXeJUy7zBDJuJaiw0sWbzaxOonlWW2g5_TXDwFQyIQojB0QiAmd9ldkZA/s320/oyster-can.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307945708943273762" /></a><br />Staff photo by JOANNE MALENE <br /><br />Banagan holds oyster cans from Capt. Sam's Seafood in Bushwood and the Potomac View, which also operated in St. Mary's County. <br /> <br />The first sign of sunshine and warm weather motivates many people to clean their garage or storage area, throwing away old trash like rags, jars or paint cans.<br /><br />But, before you heave that old paint can, take a good look to see if it was meant to hold paint – or oysters.<br /><br />And, if you find an old oyster tin, there are a couple of fellows who would like to talk with you.<br /><br />Joe Parlett, owner of Keeper's in New Market, has been collecting, buying and selling oyster cans for a long time.<br /><br />Parlett grew up in St. Mary's County with parents who had the antique collecting bug. He started going to auctions with them, buying fishing lures for $8 to $10 each. When prices of lures started going up, he switched to oyster cans.<br /><br />"I sell crabbing supplies and sometimes I would see oyster cans being used as paint buckets," Parlett said. "So, I told my wife I was going to start collecting oyster cans. I started talking to people and trying to learn as much as I could about cans."<br /><br />Originally, oysters were packed in stoneware crocks and in glass jars. During the Civil War, oysters were packed in plain square tins. After the war, oysters were packed in plain round metal cans. Paper labels and then embossed labels were added as a marketing device. Cans from before World War II have bail handles on them.<br /><br />According to Parlett, by the late 1960s, local oyster packing companies had given up packing oysters in metal cans. Most companies began using plastic tubs because they were less expensive and easier to store.<br /><br />"There were two different types of tin cans used, stock cans and custom cans," he said. "A stock can had a generic label, maybe one that was used by a number of different companies. To get a custom can, a company had to pay thousands of dollars for the graphics and then had to buy 2,000 or more of the cans. A lot of small packers couldn't afford to pay that."<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBAQsvdvycerBAJD1peX1NLFDIyOyTZQn760Dtsy4J5UpZAi64C72pon0HoB04X5yAaknboSamvx9ZkkfOo07xA7kFhlzdWPrKp_DqlkljNUoAuoWFBeEZLMDGy9YyZrQXD_GQSR_ciAk/s1600-h/oyster-cans.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBAQsvdvycerBAJD1peX1NLFDIyOyTZQn760Dtsy4J5UpZAi64C72pon0HoB04X5yAaknboSamvx9ZkkfOo07xA7kFhlzdWPrKp_DqlkljNUoAuoWFBeEZLMDGy9YyZrQXD_GQSR_ciAk/s320/oyster-cans.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307945483909378978" /></a><br /><br />The graphics or picture on the can, the condition and the name on the can all entice a buyer.<br /><br />"Everyone had the same product — it's all oysters," said Parlett.<br /><br />"But, look at the different cans — some have mermaids, some have boats, some have Native Americans on the labels. The graphics alone can make you want to buy their product. When I started collecting, I just wanted a can with a boat on it."<br /><br />Jimmy Banagan of Abell is another oyster can collector.<br /><br />"I had a janitorial company and we were cleaning out a garage," Banagan said. "I noticed the guy had cans with `Capt. Sam's Oysters' on it and it caught my eye. Now, I collect oyster cans, oyster knives, crab cans — anything to do with seafood."<br /><br />Like Parlett, Banagan collects cans because of the graphics.<br /><br />"Every can is different — and every one of them has a different story," Banagan said.<br /><br />"The most colorful ones go for the biggest money. Good cans are hard to find. Sometimes you find cans and they are filled with nails and screws.<br /><br />"When I first started collecting them, people would give them to you," Banagan said with a little smile. "If I had started collecting 10 years before I did, I would have been good."<br /><br />According to Banagan and Parlett, there used to be about 75 oyster companies in St. Mary's County. Now, it is an industry that has largely died.<br /><br />Starting in 1925, according to "It Ain't Like It Was Then," a book written by Richard J. Dodds and Robert J. Hurry and published by the Calvert Marine Museum, health permit numbers were required on all cans.<br /><br />If someone got sick eating oysters, the health department would be able to track where the oysters originated. Each facility had its own number.<br /><br />"It is a wonder more people didn't get sick from eating oysters," Banagan said. "Some of the early tins were sealed with lead solder. When they opened the can, the solder would drip down onto the oysters."<br /><br />When local companies went out of business, many of them destroyed their cans. Parlett said companies were worried that someone else, who might possibly have bad oysters, would use the cans.<br /><br />"When they got out of the business, they got out of the business," Parlett said. "Some of these older oystermen don't even have one of the cans with their name on it."<br /><br />Labeled oyster cans are not limited to companies that were located around the Chesapeake Bay; they can be found in Michigan, Ohio and even Iowa, Parlett said. In the early 20th century, oysters were harvested in Southern Maryland, trucked to and shucked in Baltimore, then packed in big cans and sent all over the country. Companies would repack the oysters in their own cans.<br /><br />Prices for oyster cans with labels in good condition can range from a couple of dollars to thousands of dollars. The rarity and condition of the can drives the market.<br /><br />Parlett said he knows hundreds of oyster can collectors, some with more than 2,000 cans in their collections.<br /><br />"Everyone wants them all," he said. "We trade, we shop and we barter. I think the part I enjoy the most about collecting is getting the story behind it. People would say, `Are you still looking for oyster cans? Well, so and so has one.' I am kind of picky — I don't deal with rust buckets. Condition is everything. If you are a collector, you are always willing to upgrade, to find a better can."<br /><br />Banagan said that local antique shops and even eBay are good sources for cans.<br /><br />"The competition to find them is terrible," Banagan said.<br /><br />"There are the high rollers, or people with lots of money, who can spend what they want to get a can. Sometimes you can find cans on eBay, and then someone comes in and outbids you. That can be frustrating. But there are still good cans out there."<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.creditra.com">credit repair:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-10306966249304848162009-01-26T17:53:00.000-08:002009-02-28T12:26:34.591-08:00Oystering - a Skeleton of its HistoryP. <a href="http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/state_regional/article/JAME26_20090125-223217/188458/">KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9xH6mMQD0E8z31p2VMc_yhRqgix7DD3GTiS7IjEYK6tr8peSlBdwrKjf985SXg39BtK8-Z-NFVRTxZNKwRkeFUuJH4mGiijCLNxopK2c4eaKxHsLcIgm0ghwmCa9RlRtOsw8K6aLxXRE/s1600-h/oystering-16-foot-tongs-james-river.bmp"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 260px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9xH6mMQD0E8z31p2VMc_yhRqgix7DD3GTiS7IjEYK6tr8peSlBdwrKjf985SXg39BtK8-Z-NFVRTxZNKwRkeFUuJH4mGiijCLNxopK2c4eaKxHsLcIgm0ghwmCa9RlRtOsw8K6aLxXRE/s320/oystering-16-foot-tongs-james-river.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295786255444308210" /></a><br /><strong>Billy Lett uses 16-foot tongs to pull in a load of oysters in about 7 feet of water. </strong> <br /><br />Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population was so abundant that Indians named the bay Chesepiook, or “great shellfish bay.“ <br /><br />Indians and European settlers easily collected oysters to eat. <br /><br />Oysters kept many Jamestown settlers from starving. <br /><br />The bay’s oyster fishery became the largest in the world in the late 1800s. <br /><br /><br /><strong>Its plight:</strong><br /><br />Today, the bay’s oyster population is estimated to be 1 percent or less of its size in the late 1800s. <br /><br />In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not only were oysters valuable as food, but their shells were an important building material. <br /><br />Watermen took all the oysters and shells they could get. <br /><br />With the reefs nearly wiped out, shell-less baby oysters found few places to take hold. That devastated reproduction. <br /><br /><br /><strong>Hope, trouble:</strong><br /><br />In the late 1920s, people began trucking in rocks from the west, and oyster shells were no longer needed for construction. State workers started tossing shells back in the water. <br /><br />Oysters began coming back. Virginia’s landings topped 4 million bushels by the late 1950s. <br /><br />Then diseases called MSX and Dermo, harmless to people, began killing oysters just before they reached market size. <br /><br />Also, development along the bay and its rivers creates pollution that kills oysters and erosion that smothers them in mud. <br /><br />The light of a cold dawn revealed an endangered species on the James River -- waterman Rodgers Green of Gloucester.<br /><br />Green catches oysters the old-fashioned way, with 16-foot tongs that resemble two rakes attached like scissors.<br /><br />Disease, pollution and long-ago overharvesting have sunk Virginia's oyster population to about 1 percent of a century ago. For Green, 55, thoughts of the future leave a bad taste in his mouth.<br /><br />"This is about the last of it," Green said aboard his 36-foot workboat, the Donna Lisa. "I can't see nothing to encourage the younger generation to even try to get into it."<br /><br />In the 1920s, thousands of oyster boats worked the slightly salty James in southeastern Virginia. In the 1980s, there were hundreds. Now, a big day would be 20, and on this morning only three were in sight.<br /><br />"Oystering on the James is just a skeleton of its history right now," said Jim Wesson, head of oyster restoration for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.<br /><br />People familiar with the rocky James in Richmond would not recognize the waterway that Green and friend Billy Lett worked -- 5 miles wide, giant sky above.<br /><br />Lett pulled up some oysters, swung the tongs close by Green's head and dumped the catch with a clatter on a wooden platform called the culling board.<br /><br />There, Green's strong hands broke market-size oysters from masses of mussels, barnacles and too-small oysters, then swept the remains overboard.<br /><br />At mid-morning, the temperature reached about 40, with little wind. In the brogue of the watermen, the river was "cam," or calm -- just right for catching "arsters."<br /><br />The oyster was once so abundant in the bay region that huge piles of them and their shells -- variously called reefs, rocks, shoals or bars -- posed hazards to boats.<br /><br />Parts of the James today, such as Wreck Shoal and Horsehead Shoal, were named after oyster reefs, which loomed just below the surface or, at low tide, jutted slightly above water.<br /><br />Indians and early settlers waded to hand-pick oysters. Colonists took up tonging, and more-effective, mechanized dredges joined tongers' boats after the Civil War. By the end of the 1800s, the bay region's oyster fishery became the largest in the world, stocking restaurants from New York to San Francisco.<br /><br />In the late 1800s, Virginia watermen harvested between 6 million and 8 million bushels a year. Today, the annual catch totals a meager 20,000 to 80,000 bushels.<br /><br />On a typical day, Green and Lett collect eight to 10 bushels, which they sell for about $30 a bushel. After subtracting for gas and other expenses, the men made about $135 each.<br /><br />A decade or so ago, Green said, "We'd catch twice that many in half the amount of time."<br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chesapeake oysters</a> are important to more than the palate and pocketbook. They filter dirt and other impurities from water. Their reefs provide homes for small crabs, fish and young oysters.<br /><br />"Oysters are like coral reefs," said Tommy Leggett, an oyster scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group. "They provide a lot of the same ecological services."<br /><br />The bay, like Rodgers Green, needs the oyster badly.<br /><br />Since 1993, Virginia has spent about $40 million to bring back the oyster, doing such things as creating artificial reefs to which young oysters could attach.<br /><br />During that time, the oyster declined an additional 60 percent. The main culprit was diseases called MSX and Dermo, harmless to people, that kill oysters as they approach market size.<br /><br />The diseases, the first of which surfaced in the late 1950s, have been particularly deadly over the past two decades.<br /><br />Oysters spawn in summer, producing shell-less, microscopic babies that float about before attaching to oyster shells. Then they grow their own shells and help build the reef.<br /><br />The James historically produced oysters in huge numbers. Among other reasons, an unusual movement of the James' tidal waters doesn't take baby oysters far away. They remain close to their parents, increasing the odds that they can find shells to which they can attach and grow.<br /><br />Through the decades, the James River oyster has never been particularly popular with diners. Some said they have a gray, snotty look.<br /><br />But the James was a hot market for "<a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">seed oysters</a>" -- tiny ones that buyers dropped in other rivers to harvest later.<br /><br />The James declined as a source of seed oysters in recent years because, after all the effort of moving the young oysters, they ended up succumbing to disease.<br /><br />The James, for all its troubles, has fought back. A roughly 5-mile stretch of the river near Newport News is salty enough for oysters but not for the diseases. There, the diseases infect the oysters but don't kill them. The oysters in that stretch produce the closest thing to natural reefs you can find anywhere, experts say.<br /><br />"It's a national treasure," said Wesson of the marine resources commission. "It's just too unique to take any chance on losing it. There is just nowhere like it."<br /><br />For that reason, the state does not allow <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">mechanized oyster dredges</a> there. But tongers like Green, who are less destructive, work that area for market oysters.<br /><br />Raised by his grandparents, Green became a waterman at 13. "Granddaddy wasn't able to work, so I had to pretty well do it to take care of the family." His schooling ended in sixth grade.<br /><br />Years of tonging have damaged Green's back, and the work often pains his wrists and forearms, a condition watermen call "tongitis."<br /><br />But you can tell Green and Lett enjoy being on the water, where they have no boss and no time clock.<br /><br />"It's the onliest thing I know how to do," Green said.<br /><br />The men bantered as they worked, telling tales of the time Green tried to put a dead possum in Lett's truck, and of the day Lett pulled up a Navy bombshell from the Potomac River. Lett whistled at a loon, trying to make it call.<br /><br />"This is the type of work where you take the bitter with the sweet," Lett said.<br /><br />In hopes of restoring the industry, some people want to release an Asian oyster in the bay region; others say it could drive out the few remaining native oysters. Some believe the answer may be finding disease-resistant natives and growing them in cages.<br /><br />Green hopes he can keep tonging James River oysters. On his boat, he pried one open. It looked tan and succulent.<br /><br />For the record, it was delicious. <br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-42610904434068348732009-01-18T17:07:00.000-08:002009-01-18T17:15:42.329-08:00A Skipjack's Extreme MakeoverBy <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.skipjack18jan18,0,3015906.story">Timothy B. Wheeler</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithBwhNym0i0EMUUUkFki6Y36P8DHS0LzgOFlKsCuSGIwssJx0neihjaA1K3wv2BCX3n9Re3eX9LDt2hyHdUcNO-eWyE3fO_WWYOJ6bqm-VQjJYfZn-O1aW40mXsI_k8ITOm1ZSXlREio/s1600-h/oyster-skipjack-restore-picture.bmp"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEithBwhNym0i0EMUUUkFki6Y36P8DHS0LzgOFlKsCuSGIwssJx0neihjaA1K3wv2BCX3n9Re3eX9LDt2hyHdUcNO-eWyE3fO_WWYOJ6bqm-VQjJYfZn-O1aW40mXsI_k8ITOm1ZSXlREio/s320/oyster-skipjack-restore-picture.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292806187513692706" /></a><br /><strong>Oystering sailboat to teach about life on the bay</strong><br />(Baltimore Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum / December 10, 2008)<br /><br />Mike Vlahovich uses a plainer as he squares up an oak timber to be used as the inner bow stem on the mastless Caleb W. Jones in background on left. <br /><br />The skipjack Caleb W. Jones is being restored at The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum by the staff and apprentices of the non-profit Coastal Heritage Alliance. <br /><br />The deck of the Caleb W. Jones gleams with a fresh coat of white paint, as does the new cabin aft. Down below, though, the 55-year-old skipjack is showing its age - and even some daylight. You can poke three fingers through a hole in its rotted wooden hull.<br /><br />Built in 1953, this remnant of the Chesapeake Bay's fading fleet of sail-powered oyster dredging boats is getting an extreme makeover at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. On dry ground for now, the Caleb's hull is being taken apart and put back together again, a timber and plank at a time.<br /><br />"The boat was partially sunk when I got it," explains Mike Vlahovich, a veteran boat builder and founder of the Coastal Heritage Alliance, a nonprofit that works to preserve the vessels and culture of fishing communities. "It was pretty clear that no one really cared too much about it."<br /><br />With the help of apprentices and volunteers, Vlahovich spent more than a year rehabbing the topside of the 44-foot skipjack while it sat in the water, its leaks controlled by pumping. A few weeks ago, he had it hoisted out of the water with a crane at the museum so he and his helpers could restore the hull on land.<br /><br />"It has to be done in careful fashion, and braced up, so we don't lose shape," Vlahovich said. It's painstaking work, pulling the hull apart a bit at a time to replace the rotten wood. Like a jigsaw puzzle, no two pieces are exactly alike; each replacement piece must be carefully measured to fit the gap it must fill.<br /><br />The restoration is being underwritten by the boat's owner, Michael Sullivan, a developer from Charles County. Sullivan, 53, grew up in Charles and has supported land-based historic preservation projects there. Though not a sailor himself, Sullivan said he was drawn to restore the Caleb W. Jones because his great-grandfather had worked on the water and had a skipjack.<br /><br />"I just wanted to help preserve the heritage of Maryland," he says. "There are so few of them left."<br /><br />Indeed, there are only five still dredging the bay bottom for oysters - three based in Somerset County, one that sails from Tilghman Island and one from Baltimore. In the late 1800s, more than a thousand reportedly plied the bay.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.skipjack18jan18,0,3015906.story">Read the rest of the article HERE:</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-47223779400124286742009-01-15T09:11:00.001-08:002009-01-15T09:26:25.886-08:00Chesapeake Sportsman: Outdoorsmen Must be EnvironmentalistsBy <strong>C.D. Dollar</strong> — For <a href="http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2009/01_14-55/OUT">HometownAnnapolis</a><br /><br />It’s a good bet that this year professional resource managers, conservation leaders and sport anglers will again discuss the best strategy to <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">restore native oysters</a> – important for fish habitat and clean water – to Maryland waters. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhQnUl3QoRzhr-oUfYllABq2Cjk080eXV0zxCUKbAb0u30dJ_H7crNLfvAOrMHtSz3E2sLk50SrRw0Bse5KdyBRNNdG-Yxz4T3BGWZJwbHO2Qo3R8iS159ZCvqy-jDz-ezGeG4g7k9KoM/s1600-h/090114oysters.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 313px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhQnUl3QoRzhr-oUfYllABq2Cjk080eXV0zxCUKbAb0u30dJ_H7crNLfvAOrMHtSz3E2sLk50SrRw0Bse5KdyBRNNdG-Yxz4T3BGWZJwbHO2Qo3R8iS159ZCvqy-jDz-ezGeG4g7k9KoM/s320/090114oysters.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291569474116398898" /></a><br /><br />The geese flew late that frigid morning, and a pause in the blind banter offered a chance for the mind to wonder. How half of January had already swept past the hull remains a mystery, and soon my thoughts mulled over the fisheries and wildlife challenges confronting the collective outdoors community in 2009.<br /><br />On a personal level, one of this year’s goals I’ve set is to simplify my life, pare down the extras that I probably can do without. That list, of course, is a work in progress, but so far much of it seems achievable. For example, I plan to buy more of the necessary staples that are made or grown locally, or catch, grow or shoot it myself. <br /><br />What led me to zero in on this was the hunk of smoked goose passed down the bench in the blind. Infused with hints of orange, teriyaki, <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com">Old Bay</a> and a few other spices, it was delicious, making the phrase “eat local” have real meaning – that goose was shot over the very field we were gunning. And over the holidays, my family and I enjoyed grilled oysters from the Choptank River, freshly caught Chesapeake rockfish, and plump crabmeat taken from the Wye.<br /><br />(I could almost imagine being there - <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Oysterman</a>).<br /><br />While there is a practical reason for my undertaking – to save money of course – it has a philosophical bent as well. As the world struggles to untangle the <a href="http://autofinanceinsider.blogspot.com">financial mess</a> ensnaring virtually every sector of the economy, I often wonder what compels some people to soar to new heights of avarice. What inspires them to squeeze out every extra ounce of resource just because they can?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2009/01_14-55/OUT">Finish reading this excellent article here:</a><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-88798813620058933952009-01-07T18:38:00.000-08:002009-01-07T19:00:58.856-08:00The Proper Way to Eat a Virginia OysterBy <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/108522_oysterhow14.shtml">PENELOPE CORCORAN</a><br /><br /><br />When it comes to oyster-eating here in the Pacific Northwest, I'm a bit of a purist. I believe that if you really want to taste and appreciate the beauty of our local oysters, there's only one way to do it:<strong> naked.</strong> <br /> <br />That is to say, to slurp oysters straight off the half-shell, unencumbered and free of such accoutrements as a reflexive squeeze of lemon, strings of fresh-grated horseradish, a dollop of zippy cocktail sauce or a drop or two of red wide vinegar-and-shallot mignonette. <br /><br />OK. Wanna know how I really feel? I say save the Tabasco and cocktail sauce and salsa and shooters for oysters consumed in some other region of the country -- say, New Orleans, for instance. Someplace where maybe you don't want to taste oysters as much as do them. You know what I mean?<br /><br />But, I digress.<br /><br />The simple three-step method described below is a fairly foolproof way to eat raw oysters. Even if you're a newbie, you'll look like you know what you're doing.<br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM19U3mFXqJmM1Sm-OBE9wbgO3v9y5w9m68UNSNbCagkcFnTV_kOy3992_yJOZznP8JgxMr8mFhjK814r7niqzb0RAYXhH8SnyvMHMpzOr9dYJu4I3b4gd65rhwcxbeWHIdyqWlCshhBg/s1600-h/oyster-raw1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 153px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM19U3mFXqJmM1Sm-OBE9wbgO3v9y5w9m68UNSNbCagkcFnTV_kOy3992_yJOZznP8JgxMr8mFhjK814r7niqzb0RAYXhH8SnyvMHMpzOr9dYJu4I3b4gd65rhwcxbeWHIdyqWlCshhBg/s320/oyster-raw1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288748092451350658" /></a><br /><strong>Using your shellfish fork, make sure the oyster is completely detached from its shell. While admiring the beauty, grace and freshness of my oyster, I like to gently move it around a little to ascertain that it's ready to be gracefully slurped. </strong><br /><br /><br /> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPqQh-sGvL9oWpzkZEVjfOmCyRA5K_zOrePpPLHmFdZuxNF8hAcobdCZiDFPWI4FI86YCrHS9eJH2FS4ZO94EYmfozsNb4CHQ5ctZ4VAg16d6S2sc_K7PJF0Ja5qhMER4sRZofeH8WFQ4/s1600-h/oyster-raw2.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 151px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPqQh-sGvL9oWpzkZEVjfOmCyRA5K_zOrePpPLHmFdZuxNF8hAcobdCZiDFPWI4FI86YCrHS9eJH2FS4ZO94EYmfozsNb4CHQ5ctZ4VAg16d6S2sc_K7PJF0Ja5qhMER4sRZofeH8WFQ4/s320/oyster-raw2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288748369748737778" /></a><br /><strong>Grasp the oyster shell comfortably, cradling it in the nook between your thumb and first two fingers. Look for the best "sipping lip" on the shell. Alter your grasp, if you need to, so you can easily slurp both your oyster and its liquid from this point on the shell. </strong><br /><br /> <br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrPHHDSEB_Ks9u-YkIqL3_6nLJ9JNZi1hf9VGhaQRX4Chf2NNhHGZiPusaIq3fb59QVNGfDB2543sACV823VyI9WovsKQExYCoYfqiM9Ksj_dnX994lQMajY55DvFi4yam89tKpybl3Ko/s1600-h/oyster-raw-3.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 151px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrPHHDSEB_Ks9u-YkIqL3_6nLJ9JNZi1hf9VGhaQRX4Chf2NNhHGZiPusaIq3fb59QVNGfDB2543sACV823VyI9WovsKQExYCoYfqiM9Ksj_dnX994lQMajY55DvFi4yam89tKpybl3Ko/s320/oyster-raw-3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5288748631537267474" /></a><br /><strong>Lift the shell to your lips and, in one swift move, tip shell up and slurp both the oyster and juices into your mouth.</strong> <br /><br /><br /><strong>Relax.</strong> <br /><br />Savor the high note of briny freshness. <br /><br />Think of the ocean. <br /><br />Don't try to swallow your oyster whole. <br /><br /><br />While oysters don't require vigorous chewing, like squid or octopus, they do need to be caressed with your molars a few times. As you do this, you may notice other flavors (cucumber, melon, toasted almonds) emerge. <br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br /><strong>Tags:</strong> <a href="http://www.autofinanceinsider.com">Automotive Finance</a> <a href="http://www.autofinanceinsider.com">F&I</a> <a href="http://www.autofinanceinsider.com">Finance & Insurance</a><br /><a href="http://www.creditra.com">Credit Repair va</a>, <a href="http://www.creditra.blogspot.com">Credit Repair blog</a>, <a href="http://www.creditra.com">Credit Restoration</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-14982470614120089402009-01-04T17:15:00.000-08:002009-01-15T09:24:55.705-08:00Oysters Carry a Special PromiseA single oyster filters as much as 50 gallons of water per day.<br /><br />Oysters are delicious to our taste buds, economy and environment. This is the take-home message of a three-page profile of oystering in the current year-end special issue of the authoritative Economist magazine.<br /><br />Still a big deal in <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Willapa</a> and <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Netarts bay</a>s, oysters offer some surprising benefits, as <a href="http://www.dailyastorian.com/Main.asp?SectionID=23&ArticleID=57126">The Economist</a> makes clear. Primarily focusing on Chesapeake Bay on the Atlantic Coast, this article heightens our feelings of gratitude and protectiveness for oystering as it is practiced around here.<br /><br />For one thing, <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">oystermen</a> in the Chesapeake have always relied on a sort of natural propagation process and public ownership of oyster beds. In contrast, here on the West Coast the practice has been to proactively farm-raise oysters on privately owned or leased grounds. Our relatively sophisticated aquaculture techniques are now being taken up in Maryland, where oysters are increasingly being recognized as playing a critical role in purifying water.<br /><br />A senior scientist on the Chesapeake told The Economist, "The oyster is pretty particular about what it eats, but it's not particular about what it filters." This means that water contaminants, especially things like nitrogen-based fertilizers, are taken out of the water column by oysters and processed back into a form that returns to the atmosphere. Phytoplankton that oysters eat would otherwise die and be consumed by bacteria, which use up oxygen needed by fish and crab. A single oyster filters up to 50 gallons of water a day.<br /><br />All is not well for Oregon and Washington oysters. Changes in ocean chemistry, climatic conditions and possibly other factors are making it harder to grow fat and healthy oysters here. There hasn't been a robust natural reproductive seed-set process in nearly five years in Willapa Bay. We're obviously better off here than in Chesapeake, where the oyster population stands at only one percent of its pre-1980 level. But we still need to get our scientific and political assets fully engaged in making sure that oysters remain a key part of our economy and gastronomy.<br /><br />"Oyster farming," <a href="http://www.dailyastorian.com/Main.asp?SectionID=23&ArticleID=57126">the magazine</a> noted, " is one of the few situations in which both economics and the environment win."<br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-69718119838711873092009-01-02T05:57:00.001-08:002009-01-02T06:41:52.905-08:00Shuck U - Using The Right Toolby: <a href="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2008/12/shuck_u_the_right_tool.php">Robb Walsh</a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDHkHZa8k0gr0YfZH2dy1KxB0JkC4bxFQFmzsn0z3msyZH0xl7qA4axPtn7lhQ552erxWQRiItj7ZDwNKrWjznvKwxrXph5DUFRiYNGWcA1pOqUvz3w4qhyphenhyphen19HOnC46OMSBXtP0Vo7auY/s1600-h/shuckyou.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDHkHZa8k0gr0YfZH2dy1KxB0JkC4bxFQFmzsn0z3msyZH0xl7qA4axPtn7lhQ552erxWQRiItj7ZDwNKrWjznvKwxrXph5DUFRiYNGWcA1pOqUvz3w4qhyphenhyphen19HOnC46OMSBXtP0Vo7auY/s320/shuckyou.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286695304887244530" /></a><br /><br />The big brute of the oyster-shucking world is called a "Galveston knife" (on the left). It's an eight-inch knife with a stout four-inch blade designed for opening large oysters like the five-inch <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Espiritu Santo Bay oyster</a> shown beside it. (Espritu Santo Bay is down around Port O'Connor.) The knife shown is an inexpensive plastic model available at restaurant supply stores for under $10.<br /><br />America's best-known oyster shucking knife is the "<strong>Chesapeake stabber</strong>" (in the middle) which is a seven-inch knife with a bulb-shaped handle and a tapered four-inch blade. The pointy tip and thinner blade makes it easier to open normal-sized oysters like the three-inch <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Apalachicola Bay oyster</a> shown beside it. Most serious oysters shuckers have a wooden-handled version of this knife in their toolbox. The plastic version is under $10 at a restaurant suppy store.<br /><br />A tiny sharp oyster knive (right) is sometimes called a "Frenchman." They are made to open smaller and more fragile oysters like the Pacific oyster (left) and <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Kumamoto</a> (right). The purple knife in the picture came free with a box of Beausoleil oysters, a tiny Virginica from New Brunswick, Canada. <br /><br />I used to have some nice wooden-handled oyster knives, but they were confiscated by airport security at the Little Rock airport a couple of years ago. Oyster knife collectors pay big bucks for vintage specimens, so don't throw your old ones away. <br /><br />Good article by: <a href="http://blogs.houstonpress.com/eating/2008/12/shuck_u_the_right_tool.php">Robb Walsh</a> <br /><br />I have a couple of antique oyster knives that were my grand dad's. What could they be worth? Hmmm. <br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-78509624765083742712008-12-25T09:50:00.000-08:002008-12-25T11:05:51.787-08:00Locally Grown: Oyster stew - A Christmas Eve traditionFor as long as I can remember, my family has had oyster stew on Christmas Eve. That's a tradition that makes sense if you live near the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">Chesapeake Bay</a>, where oysters are a treasured natural resource.<br /><br />Not so much in land-locked South Dakota. (Sorry for you - <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Oysterman</a>).<br /><br />As a shy kid, I didn't poll the neighbors to see whether they were slurping down bivalves while they waited for Santa. But I never once heard anyone else mention <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/">oyster stew</a>.<br /><br />Since most of the area was Scandinavian, I looked to my German roots.<br /><br />When I asked my dad about it, he was no help at all.<br /><br />"As far back as I can remember, we ate <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/">oyster stew</a> on Christmas Eve," he said.<br /><br />Tell me something I don't know. "Was it a German tradition?"<br /><br />I could feel him pondering over the phone. "I don't think so. I don't think it came from the Old Country. I think it might have something to do with Wisconsin. It came from the branch of the family that stopped in Wisconsin first."<br /><br />Hoping for more details than that, I contacted the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington to see if they could shed any light on this tradition. Anja Badura, who handles press, information and public affairs, sent along some interesting links and articles for reference.<br /><br />Roger M. Grace, who wrote "Reminiscing" for the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, pondered the origins of <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2008/12/famous-christmas-oyster-stew.html">oyster stew on Christmas Eve</a> in a June 17, 2004, column. Mr. Grace referenced a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article from 2002, in which Jerry Apps, an author of Wisconsin history and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor emeritus, was quoted: "By 1900, 50 different ethnic groups were here and each brought along its own costumes, recipes, approaches to the celebration. German celebrations always included, on <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2008/12/famous-christmas-oyster-stew.html">Christmas Eve, oyster stew</a>."<br /><br />I found the original article in George Mason University's History News Network. Unfortunately, the piece by Jackie Loohauis was on Christmas history, so it did not expound on the topic of oyster stew. And the library doesn't carry any books by Jerry Apps, so I have a confirmation, but not an explation. In the "Reminiscing" column, though, Mr. Grace did go on to say "that tradition did not emanate from Germany, the waters there being <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">too cold for oysters</a> to dwell in them."<br /><br />Anja also sent along a thread from the Germanna Colonies online archives, in which descendants of German immigrants discuss the tradition of oyster stew on Christmas Eve. After following the conversation, most participants concluded it was not a German tradition, but a ritual picked up along the coast regions of America.<br /><br />I turned to "<a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">The Big Oyster</a>" by Mark Kurlansky to see if I could find any German oyster connection. The only reference in the index - I confess, I haven't read the whole book yet. I've been making Christmas cookies! - was this, from around 1883: "Oysters were being shipped from New York not only to Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff and Glasgow, but also to Le Havre, Bremen and Hamburg." Apparently someone in Germany was eating oysters.<br /><br />In Mr. Kurlansky's book, the earlier recipes were for stewed oysters, where you'd "set them over the fire in their own liquor with a glass of wine, a lump of butter, some salt, pepper and mace."<br /><br />He later quotes from "<a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/">Miss Leslie's Directions for Cookery</a>," 1851 edition, by Eliza Leslie, which has instructions for both oyster soup and oyster stew. The oyster stew starts by stewing in the liquor with pepper, mace, grated nutmeg and butter. When done, buttered thin slices of toast are put in the bottom of a deep dish, and the oysters and the liquor are poured over. Miss Leslie instructs "The liquor of oysters should never be thickened by stirring in flour. It spoils the taste, and gives them a sodden and disagreeable appearance.... A little cream is a fine improvement to stewed oysters."<br /><br />Mr. Grace's article, as well as others written by Karen Herzog of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 1999 and Cathy Benson of Roanoke Times & World News in 2003, concludes that the <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2008/12/famous-christmas-oyster-stew.html">tradition of oyster stew on Christmas Eve</a> came from the Irish. As Catholics, they were not allowed to eat meat the day before a religious feast. In their native country, they had prepared a stew with a chewy fish called ling, which wasn't available in the United States. Oysters were substituted because of a similar taste.<br /><br />Maybe my German Catholic descendants in Wisconsin had some Irish Catholic neighbors....<br /><br />Growing up, the Roos family always made traditional Maryland oyster stew (sans seafood seasoning); we just didn't know it. Milk, butter, oysters and salt and pepper were all we used. This <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2008/12/famous-christmas-oyster-stew.html">recipe</a> is from the Maryland Department of Agriculture.<br /><br /><br /><strong>TRADITIONAL MARYLAND OYSTER STEW</strong><br /><br /><br />1 pint shucked Maryland oysters, with liquor<br /><br />1 quart milk<br /><br />1/4 cup butter or margarine<br /><br />Salt and pepper to taste<br /><br />Seafood seasoning, if desired<br /><br />In 4-quart pan, cook oysters, with liquor, over low heat until edges of oysters just begin to curl. Add milk, margarine or butter, salt and pepper. Heat slowly until hot; do not boil. For an extra "zip" sprinkle seafood seasoning on each serving. Makes about 6 cups stew.<br /><br />I have to admit that I've gone beyond traditional with my oyster stew since I've moved to Maryland and oysters are more readily available. I've added a few things to "enhance" the milk, while not detracting from the flavor of the oysters. This is something that I cook from feel, depending on my mood and the number of servings I am preparing. But a typical <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2008/12/famous-christmas-oyster-stew.html">Christmas Eve oyster stew</a> at my house now starts by sauteeing some pancetta (or bacon) in pan large enough to accommodate the amount of milk you plan on adding. When it's done, remove the pancetta and add diced leek to the skillet, adding butter according to taste. When the leek is tender but not crisp, pour in the oysters with liquor, and cook over low until edges just begin to curl. Add milk and a dash or two of RedHot, salt and pepper, according to taste. Heat slowly.<br /><br />If you need more specific instructions, here's a very similar recipe from a friend, Erin Colomb Henson, who is the deputy director of public affairs for the Maryland Department of Transportation.<br /><br />It has been described as "killer." <strong>(</strong><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/"><strong>Oysterman</strong></a><strong> agrees).<br /></strong><br /><br /><br /><strong>ERIN'S OYSTER STEW: </strong><br /><strong><br /></strong><br />SERVES 2 for a large bowl each with a little leftover or SERVES 4 for a small appetizer<br /><br />PREP TIME: 20 minutes<br /><br />COOK TIME: 15 minutes<br /><br />1 pint oysters<br /><br />1 cup milk (we use Lactaid, but any kind is fine.)<br /><br />1 cup heavy cream<br /><br />3 strips bacon<br /><br />1/4 vidalia onion (or other onion)<br /><br />1/2 bunch green onions/scallions<br /><br /><br /><strong>FOR GARNISH ONLY WHEN SERVING<br /></strong><br />another 1/2 bunch of green onions<br /><br />1 garlic clove<br /><br />1/2 teaspoon salt<br /><br />1/4 teasoon pepper<br /><br />1/8 teaspoon cayenne<br /><br />2 dashes hot sauce<br /><br />Butter (optional)<br /><br /><br /><strong>PREP:</strong><br /><br />Chop onion and green onions (all green and white parts). Set 1/2 bunch of green onions aside for garnish.<br /><br />Finely chop garlic clove (leave separate from onion and green onions).<br /><br />Put all spices in small bowl except for hot sauce.<br /><br />Chop uncooked bacon in small pieces and set aside.<br /><br />Put cream and milk in bowl or measuring cup.<br /><br />Drain oyster liquor from pint of oysters carefully not to lose any oysters.<br /><br /><br /><strong>COOK:</strong><br /><br />Cook chopped bacon until fat renders, but not anywhere near crisp. DO NOT DRAIN. Leave fat in pan that is your cooking base and flavor. Add garlic first, until it begins to turn brown. Add onion and green onions (except for garnish). You may want to add some butter at this time depending on how moist the onions are. Cook until translucent.<br /><br />Add spices and a few dashes of hot sauce. Add cream/milk mixture and <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2008/12/oysters-gem-of-ocean.html">oyster liquor</a>. Bring to a near boil and add oysters. Immediately bring to a low simmer to four or five minutes until the oysters curl.<br /><br />Serve with scallions on top, a little black pepper and a small bit of butter is optional.<br /><br /><strong>Serve with hot French bread.</strong><br /><br />Erin's note at the end: "ENJOY … And say a small prayer to the oyster gods, and "<a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2008/12/oysters-gem-of-ocean.html">Save the Bay</a>"!<br /><br />If you've got a favorite food tradition you'd like to share, or if you're looking for a recipe, please e-mail Locally Grown at <a href="mailto:food@capitalgazette.com">food@capitalgazette.com</a>.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br /><br />For insider secrets, lease rates, money factors and residuals given by a Finance Manager at an Infiniti Dealership, go to:<br /><a href=" http://www.InfinitiSecrets.blogspot.com "> http://www.InfinitiSecrets.blogspot.com </a>.Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-90364491161770926072008-12-22T21:09:00.001-08:002008-12-22T21:36:11.928-08:00Oysters - Gem of the ocean<strong>A Dozen Oysters and a Pint of Guinness, Please</strong><br /><br />From <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795573">The Economist</a> print edition<br /><br />Bridgeman Art Library<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhQJ6lbSEPez_62UPdMpF1xChKeefFcpUNh-GceFhRBfTrDBeA3jkCZh7Cfc5ImNPCEt3N5o2G4LyH4DU-jQkgmSrgtYwuLPumgn84B_Zy2cF8ffj51J9fZ8ctoNX1VsWW-X6M2DUrMnY/s1600-h/oyster+painting.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 198px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhQJ6lbSEPez_62UPdMpF1xChKeefFcpUNh-GceFhRBfTrDBeA3jkCZh7Cfc5ImNPCEt3N5o2G4LyH4DU-jQkgmSrgtYwuLPumgn84B_Zy2cF8ffj51J9fZ8ctoNX1VsWW-X6M2DUrMnY/s320/oyster+painting.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282849065324908194" /></a><br /><strong>I would love to own this painting.</strong><br /><br />JUST as household trash tells you a lot about a family, so mankind’s rubbish heaps reveal much about the species. One of the best lies in the waters around Manhattan. There, archaeologists have found mounds of oyster shells, known as middens, dating back to 6950BC. <br /><br />People have fed on oysters so long that the man whom Jonathan Swift called brave for first eating one is quite out of range of history’s eye. Sergius Orata, a Roman engineer who lived in the first century BC, cultivated oysters in southern Italian lakes by bringing them to spawn on rock piles that he surrounded with twigs. Larval oysters settled on the twigs, which the cultivator could monitor easily; when the oysters grew to marketable size, they were plucked off and sold.<br /><br /> In Manhattan the oyster trade really took off with the arrival of Europeans: as Mark Kurlansky writes in the opening to “<a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">The Big Oyster</a>”, his marvellous examination of the dark and salty crossroads where bivalency and humanity meet, “To anyone who is familiar with New Yorkers, it should not be surprising to learn that they were once famous for eating their food live.” Yet had the Europeans examined those shell mounds more closely, they would have found something ominous: the shells grow larger toward the bottom. Left alone, oysters never stop growing. The largest ones were taken first. As more people arrived, the average oyster’s lifespan fell: even in pre-European America, overfishing threatened.<br /><br />Those ancient New Yorkers and the Dutch and English who followed plundered the area’s oyster supply without a second thought. The waters around New York once teemed with oysters, as did those around London. Both cities were built on estuaries, allowing the constant yet changing mixture of fresh and salty water that oysters love. Both cities progressed rapidly from manufacturing to industrial to financial capitals, and in the process, voraciously abetted by the appetites of their citizenry, both killed their oysters (Paris, the third great oyster metropolis, protected its beds far more successfully, and to this day shuckers presiding over crates of oysters packed in ice remain a common sight on the city’s corners in winter). In so doing, New York and London may have destroyed something far more than a delicious source of protein: oysters are not only among the strangest and tastiest creatures in the sea, but as far as the health of marine ecosystems go, they may also be the most important.<br /><br />Edible oysters fall into one of five main species: <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Ostrea edulis</a>, the European oyster, is the most regular, rounded and attractive in appearance; they are most often sold as <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Galway</a> or <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Mersey flats</a> in Britain and Ireland and <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">belons</a> in France (like wine, oysters take on characteristics of the terroir, so to speak, in which they are raised; the wildly different tastes result not from biology but from the variant diets, temperatures and salinity offered by the water in which the individual oysters spend their lives). <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Ostrea lurida</a>, sold most often as <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">the Olympia</a>, is the only species native to America’s west coast; it is small, sweet and tastes of grass and earth rather than the sea.<br /><br />Crassostrea sikaema, known as <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Kumamotos</a>, are small and quite deep-shelled; they were brought to America’ s west coast from Japan’s Kumamoto prefecture, and have a crisp texture and a taste that is reminiscent of melons or cucumbers. Crassostrea gigas are native to the Pacific but grown around the world—notably in France as the green-tinged Marennes-Oléron and the fine de claire. <br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Gigas</a> are closely related to Crassostrea angulata, formerly known as the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Portuguese oyster</a>. The story goes that C. angulata were introduced to northern Europe, particularly France and Britain, when a ship carrying a cargo of Portuguese oysters, took shelter from a storm in southwestern France. Believing his oysters ruined, the captain jettisoned them. They flourished. It was either these or O. edulis that M.F.K. Fisher, an American food writer, had in mind when she recounted an old recipe for a single roasted oyster: “You start with an oyster. You put it inside a large olive. Then you put the olive inside an ortolan (a wee bird called ‘the garden bunting’, in case you are among the underprivileged), and the ortolan inside a lark, and so on and so on. In the end you have a roasted oyster. Or perhaps a social revolution.”<br /><br />The teardrop-shaped <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Crassostrea virginica</a> thrive on America’s east coast, and can appear in guises as diverse as the small, intensely briny Malpeque, from Prince Edward Island, to the large and sweetly bland Apalachicola, from Florida. Historically, however, most virginicas—a significant portion, if not an outright majority, of oysters eaten in America, from the time of the Civil War until the mid 1980s—came from the Chesapeake Bay, situated mostly in Maryland but with a watershed stretching 64,000 square miles across six states and the District of Columbia. <br /><br />Although the Chesapeake region might be best known for its blue crabs, in fact oyster harvesting and processing formed the most commercially viable operation in the region as far back as the Civil War. And the waters teemed with oysters long before that: when John Smith first sailed into the Chesapeake in 1608, he wrote that they “lay as thick as stones”—so profuse, in fact, that they made navigation difficult.<br /><br />The stone-thickness of the oyster beds that Smith saw attest not just to the Chesapeake’s ideal salinity—situated as it is just in from the Atlantic, and fed by dozens of rivers from across the watershed—but also to the beds’ age: left undisturbed, oyster beds would indeed thicken impressively, because oysters like setting their shell nowhere as much as on the back of another oyster shell, because they grow larger the longer they live, and because proximity aids successful spawning. Spawning occurs in the warmer part of the year—hence the historic injunction against eating oysters in months that lack an R. This has nothing to do with illness (though obviously oysters, like other raw meat, spoil faster in warm weather), but because, as Ms Fisher reminds us, “oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing”—the meat tends to be thin and flat-tasting. They spawn by releasing <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">gametes</a> into the water: a female Atlantic oyster tends to release clouds of eggs in a series of wet puffs, while males send sperm forth in a stream. But male oysters can spawn in the style of females, and vice versa; and hermaphroditism, in which eggs and sperm shoot out of the same oyster at the same time, also occurs, albeit rarely.<br /><br />Fertilisation occurs when opposite gametes meet in the water: hence the advantage offered by proximity. Generally, the male releases his <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">gametes</a> first, which acts as a signal to any females nearby. The spawning process takes about 45 minutes, during which a female will emit anywhere from 10,000 to around 60m eggs, only a small fraction of which will be lucky enough to meet their mates. Once the pair of gametes connect, they become a larva that drifts and swims in the tidal current, propelling itself by means of a little organ ringed with cilia called a velium. This is an oyster’s only taste of free movement. When the larva grows to around 300 microns (roughly one-third of a millimetre), it extends its foot and seeks a suitable surface on which to set. Having found one, it grows into a spat, which when seen beneath a microscope already resembles a tiny oyster, with the shape of a shell already visible. It prefers settling on hard, chalky surfaces. Farms often use tiles as the foundations of their beds, but when given a choice spat seem to prefer oyster shells.<br /><br />And there’s the rub: most of the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster operations have been public fisheries rather than aquaculture—anyone with a license could take oysters from state-owned bars, and though size and number limits were set, often they were more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Once a tipping point was reached, oysters were too far apart for enough of their gametes to meet, so the population could not sustain itself. And those few larvae that were lucky enough to live long enough to extend a probing foot too often found only silt. The oyster population in the Chesapeake today stands at just 1% of its pre-1980 levels.<br /><br />It wasn’t just overfishing that depleted the oyster population. Between 1950 and 2000 the human population of the Chesapeake Bay watershed region has more than doubled, from 8m to over 16.7m. The Eastern Shore, long a relatively isolated patch of America’s east coast best known for the odd quasi-Elizabethan English spoken by its inhabitants, became an increasingly popular weekend and second-home destination. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have weekend homes in the harbour town of St Michaels. Mr Rumsfeld’s is called Mount Misery: Frederick Douglass, a renowned American abolitionist and statesman, was enslaved there in the early 19th century. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Nt8eHVn9aYn5WrM52LWBWvG9Kgg4qvsNtLMi4HFw7GlxOqoE7Z7bHYOt420LAkze41Q9VirKm941Mh1I71ZCI6Vn0NV5gl4Ac-XWY4iWYDMABjw3Ygpw7ZawiQvr6Y7llWEhWjMmyhw/s1600-h/5108XMOY5.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6Nt8eHVn9aYn5WrM52LWBWvG9Kgg4qvsNtLMi4HFw7GlxOqoE7Z7bHYOt420LAkze41Q9VirKm941Mh1I71ZCI6Vn0NV5gl4Ac-XWY4iWYDMABjw3Ygpw7ZawiQvr6Y7llWEhWjMmyhw/s320/5108XMOY5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282849619199588018" /></a><br /><strong>Scraping the sea bed in Chesapeake Bay</strong><br /><br />The charm is obvious enough: rather like the Norfolk Broads, it contains few breathtaking vistas but, taken as a whole, its quiet, undulating, slithery beauty and ramshackle little towns leave few unmoved, and if your correspondent had to choose a place to see his last sunrise, this might be it. Of course, every golf course, condo development and chain restaurant chips away at the very thing that made people want to move there in the first place. And they inevitably bring environmental problems: sewage, agricultural run-off and increased burning of fossil fuels, all of which produce large quantities of pollutants, which find their way into the bay.<br /><br />As far as the health of marine ecosystems go, perhaps no single pollutant does more harm than nitrogen. It occurs naturally in human and animal waste. Fossil-fuel combustion produces nitrogen oxides, which rise into the atmosphere and come down in rainfall as nitric acid. And fertilisers often contain large quantities of nitrogen, which seeps into the groundwater and is washed into the bay. In the water, nitrogen serves as a major nutrient for microscopic organisms called phytoplankton. Individually, they are invisible to the naked eye, but when present in large quantities they cause massive blooms, clouding the water reddish, green, yellow or brown and preventing sunlight from filtering through the water. Also, as these phytoplankton die, they, like all organic matter, are eaten by bacteria, which, also like all organic matter, breathe, using up valuable oxygen in the water. Nitrogen thus harms aquatic life in two ways: by allowing phytoplankton to live, it keeps sunlight from reaching underwater plants and grasses, which removes an important source of food and habitat for numerous marine species. And the bacteria that feed on dying phytoplankton use oxygen, leaving less for fish and crabs.<br /><br />Fortunately, few species filter nitrogen from the water as effectively as oysters—as Bill Goldsboro, a senior scientist with an environmental advocacy group called the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chesapeake Bay Foundation</a>, explains, “The oyster is pretty particular about what it eats, but it’s not particular about what it filters.” A single oyster can filter about 50 gallons of water per day. A few decades ago, the Chesapeake had enough oysters to filter the entire bay every week: that same task would take its existing population a full year. As an oyster eats plankton, it draws in everything else around it, including nitrogen; what it does not eat it expels into the water as solid pellets of waste, which eventually decompose and bubble up into the atmosphere as nitrogen. <br /><br />In <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">oyster-farming</a>, both economics and the environment winThe efficacy with which an oyster expels everything that displeases it puts paid to a long-standing myth: that pearls are formed when a grain of sand gets into an oyster (or other bivalve), and it protects itself by forming shell material around the intruder. Oysters live in sandy beds; they constantly ingest and expel the stuff. A pearl actually begins from a parasite adhering to an oyster’s mantle, which is a thin organ that surrounds the inside of its shell. The mantle secretes nacre, or mother-of-pearl, by synthesising calcium carbonate from materials in the water. If a parasite tears off a bit of the mantle and carries it to another part of the oyster’s body, that piece of mantle will still secrete nacre, forming a pearl sac around the parasite, which, over years, turns into what people consider a jewel.<br /><br />This happens very rarely, and so, on a blustery Saturday morning on the Eastern Shore, when the wheezing remnants of Hurricane Gustav turned sky and water alike pearl grey and your correspondent held 6m oysters in the palm of his hand, he was, alas, fairly certain that none of them would facilitate his early retirement. The oysters were being grown in a hatchery run by the University of Maryland just off the Choptank River, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Like most rivers in Maryland, the Choptank flows into the Chesapeake. Its mixture of salty water from the bay and ocean and fresh water from streams in the mountainous west of the state make it a perfect habitat for oysters, and thus an ideal testing ground for a theory: it is not so much that oysters live in clean water, as that water with an abundance of oysters in it will be clean. In other words, dirty water doesn’t drive away the bivalves; rather a lack of bivalves invites the filth.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgufusDwWN6ZcZe6j5snpyi6AurcIqnH8i0J99JhdMRkonl5d4jQ_H5T19knKJjejvEuMi3HEj3xb4Iv6eWVUsKfAmhATjZzCD09kCKurcLSODSupd4nfxnBIlQtff7OUaXlQL7DXa2cqY/s1600-h/5108XMOY3.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgufusDwWN6ZcZe6j5snpyi6AurcIqnH8i0J99JhdMRkonl5d4jQ_H5T19knKJjejvEuMi3HEj3xb4Iv6eWVUsKfAmhATjZzCD09kCKurcLSODSupd4nfxnBIlQtff7OUaXlQL7DXa2cqY/s320/5108XMOY3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5282849985040077538" /></a><br /><strong>Predators going after the oysters</strong><br /><br />Don Meritt, a bluff, burly, deeply-tanned PhD waterman who runs the hatchery (and whom everyone—university president and beaker-scrubber alike—calls Mutt) explains that this is a gross oversimplification, but it contains a grain of truth. “Oysters aren’t the magic bullet, but they’re an important bullet,” he says. Dr Meritt has been studying oysters for the university since 1972. His kingdom is a warren of green-roofed institutional buildings hulking alongside a winding two-lane road, near enough to the Choptank to use its water, which flows in through underground pipes. Inside, oysters spawn in black plastic tubs; algae in every shade of drab seethe and multiply in glass jugs; and cheery young students hunch over notebooks. The future of the bay—and more than just the bay, if the experiments work—may depend on what happens here, for oysters are a keystone species: if they thrive, others will too.<br /><br />Oysters filter nitrogen, and their beds offer the same multispecies home as hard coral in the tropics. Oysters have relatively few natural predators: mainly starfish, which attach themselves to the shell with multitudinous teeth and patiently chew through, and the oyster drill, a species of carnivorous snail that attaches itself to a mollusc shell with a multi-toothed organ and inserts its proboscis, which releases enzymes that digest the creature in its home, making it easy to hoover up. Watermen once tried to defeat starfish by cutting each one they dragged up in half; unfortunately, since they regenerate, this doubled the starfish population. Even a few predators, however, attract predators of their own. And as the oysters remove both plankton and nitrogen from the water, it grows clearer, allowing eelgrass and other species of marine plants to return, which provide comfortable shelter for crabs, scallops and other aquatic life.<br /><br />In the hatchery, oysters grow from larvae to <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">spat</a>; a group called the Oyster Recovery Partnership (ORP) then carries the spat out to the Chesapeake or one of its tributaries and places them in an oyster bed. In 2008 the ORP planted over 450m hatchery-raised oysters. Not all will live, of course, but many do: over 200m through the ORP’s efforts alone, since 2007, totalling around 1,100 acres of new oyster reefs (historically Maryland held about 200,000 acres of oyster reefs; today it has about 36,000). Half of the oysters have been seeded in sanctuaries and cannot be harvested; the other half are in managed-reserve beds, which watermen tend and can harvest from once they reach marketable size. Only a small portion of available oysters will be harvested, whether publicly or privately; most will be left in situ for the environmental benefits they provide.<br /><br />And Maryland will likely turn away from public fisheries and toward private ownership of beds—after all, people tend to take better care of what they own. Fortunately, farmed oysters, unlike other seafood, suffer no decline in taste. They grow, breed, eat and filter just as they do wild. Indeed, oyster farming is one of the few situations in which both economics and the environment win: any body of water that can support a vibrant oyster industry will almost certainly be cleaner and more vital than one that cannot. Farmed salmon may turn flabby, bland and, without the addition of dye to its diet, dully grey, but eating an oyster will always be, as Léon-Paul Fargue, a Symbolist poet, said, “like kissing the sea on the lips”. <br /> <br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br />For insider secrets, lease rates, money factors and residuals given by a Finance Manager at an Infiniti Dealership, go to:<br /><a href=" http://www.InfinitiSecrets.blogspot.com "> http://www.InfinitiSecrets.blogspot.com </a>.<a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com"></a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-25385355488396034922008-12-17T17:19:00.000-08:002008-12-17T17:32:14.619-08:00Shell Recycling Provides a New Home for OystersBy: <a href="http://www.cbf.org/site/News2?abbr=SB_VA_&page=NewsArticle&id=38499">Andrea Moran</a> <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJgaP8p-AmhykvXhOeaOcqGAD4BpYEdgiPf0SPB9pJLW5uaVAA-v3SO8ajjpGkcFAQmdX9eJVsBogpLfoxQ7mhR0RFLfZxZrMo5zc62iHtCnXxC8lQlbBUk2YAtWR0GKDk-6Cn2zZSc9w/s1600-h/oysterbags.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJgaP8p-AmhykvXhOeaOcqGAD4BpYEdgiPf0SPB9pJLW5uaVAA-v3SO8ajjpGkcFAQmdX9eJVsBogpLfoxQ7mhR0RFLfZxZrMo5zc62iHtCnXxC8lQlbBUk2YAtWR0GKDk-6Cn2zZSc9w/s320/oysterbags.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5280934720666440994" /></a><br /><strong>These oyster bags contain oyster shells loaded with spat and ready for planting on a restoration reef. CBF's spat on shell restoration method requires tons of recycled oyster shells each year. Photo by John Bildahl </strong><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_QTlz4MG8XZoZSjrhSqq-H_OzJ8kJz-wTqEgoQbujrN_YedbZ1dFXexNW8_6Ih3lcSKxpLpivezAyfhOgLdHgw3QkFadcCuAdoRmQ4viiefMx4dznvpaKpJUAgYq7Clw9ePkDaznw6E/s1600-h/oyster+recycling.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 190px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL_QTlz4MG8XZoZSjrhSqq-H_OzJ8kJz-wTqEgoQbujrN_YedbZ1dFXexNW8_6Ih3lcSKxpLpivezAyfhOgLdHgw3QkFadcCuAdoRmQ4viiefMx4dznvpaKpJUAgYq7Clw9ePkDaznw6E/s320/oyster+recycling.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5280934199841688322" /></a><br /><strong>CBF volunteer Walter Zadan delivers another load of oyster shells to the recycling curing site in Williamsburg, Va. Photo by Andrea Moran/CBF Staff</strong><br /> <br />A re-energized Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) shell recycling program is not only keeping thousands of oyster shells out of Hampton Roads landfills, it's also providing future habitat for new oysters. "Save Oyster Shells," commonly referred to as "SOS," is the ultimate "win-win" recycling effort, says CBF Oyster Specialist Jackie Harmon who is coordinating the effort. <br /><br />Although it's only been under way for about a month on the Virginia Peninsula, the program is gaining momentum as restaurants, volunteers, and community oyster roast organizers get on board. So far, Williamsburg's Berret's Seafood and LaYaca restaurants and Yorktown's waterfront Riverwalk Café are saving oyster shell for later use in CBF's spat on shell restoration projects. <br /><br /><strong>How it works</strong><br /><br />SOS is simple. CBF provides containers to restaurants, which collect used oyster and clam shells from finished meals. The containers are picked up by CBF volunteers such as Walter Zadan of Williamsburg. Zadan picks up the shell from LaYaca and Berret's and takes them to a curing site provided by Colonial Williamsburg. Zadan says he enjoys doing this and feels good about helping the oyster restoration efforts. And, although it's an extra step for restaurant staff, Harmon says they know it's helping restore the oysters that people love to eat, so it's well worth the effort. <br /><br />Althea Moore and other students from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) pick up shells from the Riverwalk Café and take them to another CBF curing site at VIMS' Gloucester Point Hatchery. Curing shells allows bacteria and organic matter to decompose before the shells are washed and reintroduced to the water. Each and every saved shell can provide a home for baby oysters, which prefer shells to settle upon. <br /><br />Loss of shell reefs has made it difficult for oysters to find a foothold and grow, which is why shell recycling for restoration is so important. <br /><br />After curing and washing, the shells are submerged in wire cages in big tanks at VIMS. Next, baby oyster larvae are released into the tanks and attach themselves to the shells. Several baby oysters will attach to each shell and grow into a cluster, enabling the oysters, now called spat, to be better protected from predators and disease. Later, CBF places the shell clusters on sanctuary oyster reefs throughout Hampton Roads waterways, giving oyster restoration efforts a big boost. In 2008, approximately 10 million oysters were added to local Virginia rivers by using the spat-on-shell method. <br /><br /><strong>From oyster roast to the Bay</strong><br /><br />Other states have enjoyed great success with shell recycling programs. CBF was one of the local pioneers of shell recycling when the Hampton Roads pilot project began in 2005. SOS is an expansion of that project. Other groups such as Norfolk Environmental Commission and Lynnhaven River NOW also recycle shells. Still, the vast majority of oyster shells end up in landfills. <br /><br />"We want this resource coming back to us so it can help save the Bay through oyster restoration," Harmon said. "I'm excited about this program because it incorporates green practices in restaurants and provides more shells for restoration. This is good for the Bay and the oyster consumer, so everyone is a winner." <br /><br />Harmon plans to double the number of participating restaurants in 2009, and collect thousands more shell from community oyster roasts. In order to reach CBF's restoration goals for the next couple of years, she says CBF needs much more shell and many more volunteers to collect them.<br /><br />If you know of upcoming oyster roasts in 2009, or if you want to become a Save Oyster Shells volunteer, please contact Jackie at jharmon@cbf.org or call 757/622-1964. <br /><br />Find out more about <a href="http://www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=state_sub_va_hamptonroads_oysterrestoration">other CBF Virginia oyster restoration efforts and how you can participate.</a><br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a><br /><br />For insider secrets, lease rates, money factors and residuals given by a Finance Manager at an Infiniti Dealership, go to:<br /><a href=" http://www.InfinitiSecrets.blogspot.com "> http://www.InfinitiSecrets.blogspot.com </a>.Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-14676013845930770732008-11-26T05:52:00.001-08:002008-11-26T06:10:16.103-08:002008-2009 Oyster Season Off to Slow Start<strong>Watermen say demand is down</strong><br /><br />Oystering is off to a slow start this fall for watermen and the seafood industry in Virginia and Maryland.<br /><br />While there's the longstanding issue of the declining number of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, people in the seafood business are finding another problem: There's little demand from consumers.<br /><br />Even though the holiday season from Thanksgiving through Christmas is prime time for eating oysters in stuffing and stew, few people are buying.<br /><br />"It's off from last year," said Joe Morotti, owner of Joe's Seafood, a carryout shop in Severna Park. He wouldn't speculate why sales were slow, but hoped last-minute Thanksgiving customers would come in today and tomorrow.<br /><br />Mr. Morotti was selling pints of shucked oysters for $12.99 for <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/">bay oysters</a> and $16.99 for <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chincoteagues</a>.<br /><br />Some watermen can't find much work oystering, because they can't sell what they catch.<br /><br />"The economy is so bad, they're only working two to three days a week," said Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association.<br /><br />Waterman Joe Kubert of Kent Island said oystering already is a tough business because watermen are limited by law to working five days per week. Add to that the depressed market and the days that are lost to bad weather and "It's the worst it's been in years," he said.<br /><br />Mr. Simns encourages the public to give oysters a try and not to worry too much about the depleted oyster population in the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chesapeake Bay</a>.<br /><br />While the oyster population is low due to past overharvesting and pollution and diseases that don't affect humans, the species is carefully watched to avoid a complete wipeout. The population is estimated to be at just 1 or 2 percent of historic levels.<br /><br />Though watermen and the state regulators often disagree over how the oyster harvest is managed, they have the same goal of making sure oysters aren't <a href="http://www.oysterforums.com">overharvested</a>, Mr. Simns said.<br /><br />"If it's on the market, it's good. Don't try to manage the market yourself by not buying," because that only hurts watermen, seafood processors, retailers and restaurants, he said.<br /><br />The oyster season opened Oct. 1 and runs through the end of March.<br /><br /><strong>Oysterman says:</strong> I already have a couple of pints of shucked to make the stuffing for the turkey - <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com/2008/11/skipjack-oyster-dressing.html">HERE IS THE RECIPIE</a>: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh98qBUnSx5f31Fd4lyy2tymD-4KGoH2Z96zY8kxbPuW1StCebrgBhPtQEFqkidJ7DQy-NPqdkJqkenSsOiJqAgQ-eYAFz_i4yBZxvRBi49NbDcx7hn0eAYURdQ8MUgTK9LXDOdx91ufJ4/s1600-h/OYSTER+DRESSING.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 174px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh98qBUnSx5f31Fd4lyy2tymD-4KGoH2Z96zY8kxbPuW1StCebrgBhPtQEFqkidJ7DQy-NPqdkJqkenSsOiJqAgQ-eYAFz_i4yBZxvRBi49NbDcx7hn0eAYURdQ8MUgTK9LXDOdx91ufJ4/s320/OYSTER+DRESSING.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5272968078324187554" /></a> <br /><br />Today I think I'll go out and stimulate the economy and help the local producers by buying a couple of dozen to open tonight. There is nothing like oysters that were just harvested! Cheers.<br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-14152503127151021682008-11-14T06:06:00.000-08:002008-12-17T17:37:54.989-08:00State Seeks Ways to Back Aquaculture IndustryProposal would help businesses, individuals raise oysters in bay<br /><br /><a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.aquaculture14nov14,0,6849341.story">By Timothy B. Wheeler </a><br /><br />Seeking to boost Maryland's fledgling aquaculture industry, the O'Malley administration plans to introduce legislation to make it easier for people and businesses to raise oysters or other shellfish in the Chesapeake Bay.<br /><br />The administration has drafted a bill that would overhaul the state's law that now limits leasing of the water and the bay bottom to private entities that want to raise oysters or clams. The measure was presented last night at the state's Aquaculture Coordinating Council meeting in Annapolis. (AWESOME!)<br /><br />Natural Resources Secretary John R. Griffin said the state needs to cut away the red tape and legal limitations on leasing in the Chesapeake if the state's once-prolific oyster industry is going to recover from the diseases that have devastated the Chesapeake's oyster population over the past two decades.<br /><br />"If you look worldwide, the only places where oysters seem to be thriving is in aquaculture settings," Griffin said yesterday. "There's very few public fisheries left."<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlQRyFTmmJCgbYZSFC1kG2wJaLHQp9AaK9PPLKl1U9uxWcnIWeP6KL-IISOUTp9up5r7NIUuY7CUiPf6fViMmmu-HecloGXCiJrcGn3GJ_ghWKiqOZYpoetYqBVaRvCPjpMd-BRj5DBY/s1600-h/oysterfloat.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihlQRyFTmmJCgbYZSFC1kG2wJaLHQp9AaK9PPLKl1U9uxWcnIWeP6KL-IISOUTp9up5r7NIUuY7CUiPf6fViMmmu-HecloGXCiJrcGn3GJ_ghWKiqOZYpoetYqBVaRvCPjpMd-BRj5DBY/s320/oysterfloat.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268516974266707858" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.andersonbay.com/listings/oyster.html">The Principle of Oyster Aquaculture - CLICK HERE:</a><br /><br /><br />The initiative comes as Maryland, Virginia and the federal government weigh how to go about restoring the bay's disease-depleted oyster stocks as well as its industry, which once harvested millions of bushels of <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">bivalves</a> annually. Harvests in recent years have been a fraction of historical levels, though, as a pair of parasitic diseases have killed off the oysters before they can grow to marketable size. Scientists have said that the bay's once-abundant oysters helped filter pollution from the estuary.<br /><br />A small but growing cadre of people, including some watermen, are trying their hand at raising oysters. Some say they are finding ways to beat the diseases but remain hampered by legal and bureaucratic hurdles - with the state's leasing restrictions among the most nettlesome. <br /><br />"We have 100-plus years of cobbled-together, piecemeal" leasing law, said Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell, the minority leader from Southern Maryland and a member of the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">aquaculture council</a>. He said the law "doesn't make sense in today's world." <br /><br />There are currently 7,276 acres leased in Maryland waters, with about 300 individuals holding 700 20-year leases. However, relatively little of that is being used to raise oysters, state officials say.<br /><br />State law prohibits leasing where oysters grow naturally. But those restrictions are based on century-old surveys, when oysters were much more abundant, so much of the bay is off-limits. Leasing also is completely banned in a handful of counties.<br /><br />"We've got to clear away some of that underbrush and help to build our industry here," Griffin said.<br /><br />The administration bill proposes to reserve for wild harvest only those waters where oysters recently were caught and to remove limitations on the size and location of leases. It also would remove the ban on corporations holding leases. <br /><br />The measure would also establish a pair of "aquaculture enterprise zones" in the Patuxent and Rhode rivers. In those 50-acre tracts, leasing would be streamlined and essentially "pre-permitted" to make it easier to start raising oysters - either on the bottom or in floats on the water. Though given rights to use the bay for 20 years, leaseholders would be required to use their leases or risk losing them.<br /><br />The bay's watermen traditionally have opposed any significant expansion of private leasing of the bay, fearing it would deprive them of the ability to pluck wild oysters from the most productive reefs. But with most wild oysters gone, at least some watermen are beginning to eye <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">private aquaculture</a> as a means of continuing to make a living from the bay.<br /><br />"We don't have nowhere else to turn," said Larry W. Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association. With the decline of the public fishery, and the state's ability to support it, he said that "if we don't do something ourselves, it ain't going to happen."<br /><br />Simns said watermen remain wary. They want an opportunity or even guarantee they'll be able to get good leases, he said. They also want to be shown that they can make money raising oysters rather than roaming the bay to harvest what nature produces. He argued that the oyster diseases remain the biggest hurdle to large-scale aquaculture.<br /><br />Waterfront property owners also may resist an expansion of aquaculture. Some have objected at times to private oyster floats or clam beds along the shore, where they complain they are unsightly and impede boating. <br /><br />State officials say the legislation would bar leases within 50 feet of the shoreline or a pier, or in narrow creeks, coves or inlets - a provision meant to address landowner complaints.<br /><br /><strong>Oysterman's take on this:</strong><br /><br />"I still think about how cool it would be to have a couple of oyster floats in my backyard. Any time the desire strikes, I could walk down to the floats and collect a dozen or two. Then, walk back to the house and put them on the grill. <br /><br />That's the problem with living on fresh water. Oh well".<br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">BACK TO A VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-30329342920534624222008-11-11T05:18:00.000-08:002008-12-17T17:38:31.204-08:00Three Methods Vie to Restore Oysters to Chesapeake BayBy Scott Harper<br /><a href="http://hamptonroads.com/2008/11/three-methods-vie-restore-oysters-chesapeake-bay">Link to original article:</a><br /><br /><br />Virginians are weighing in with their choices for a preferred grand strategy for restoring oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, and so far, the winner seems to be an old favorite - sticking with the native species.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq9HZruW9j3E9enWZDCmffmOUXJcrsFCU7IBnWQflbSU9UlSIGLiIm0U6GwwNxBjF_ZtTqnbQKEcygJELI-EskBUWoh3LnfxHA16FubukOGgijqY4O_neQGxB-6JbDEh5Q0EuLCF-thl8/s1600-h/oysterschesapeakebay.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq9HZruW9j3E9enWZDCmffmOUXJcrsFCU7IBnWQflbSU9UlSIGLiIm0U6GwwNxBjF_ZtTqnbQKEcygJELI-EskBUWoh3LnfxHA16FubukOGgijqY4O_neQGxB-6JbDEh5Q0EuLCF-thl8/s320/oysterschesapeakebay.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267389243463078226" /></a><br /><strong>A side-by-side comparison of an Asian oyster, left, and a native oyster. The Asian species grow faster and are more resistant to disease. (Hyunsoo Leo Kim | The Virginian-Pilot)</strong><br /><br /><br /><br />At public meetings last week in Newport News and Colonial Beach, most speakers said they think an Asian oyster is too biologically risky to introduce directly into the Bay.<br /><br />This majority includes scientists, environmentalists and watermen. They instead want government to step up its efforts at bringing back the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">native Eastern oyster</a> from near extinction, despite minimal success over the past 15 years at doing so.<br /><br />The Asian animal, also known as ariakensis or the Suminoe oyster, is not a silver bullet, said Jay O'Dell, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy, at a three-hour public hearing Friday night in Newport News.<br /><br />Other Atlantic coastal states, he said, are opposed to the foreign species as well, fearing it could spread into their waters and carry new problems if Virginia and Maryland decide to give the China Sea import an adopted home in the Bay.<br /><br />"It's just way too early to give up on the Eastern oyster," O'Dell said.<br /><br />He said federal, state and local governments have spent "only about $58 million" on native recovery efforts since the mid-1990s. "That's decimal dust in the federal budget," O'Dell said.<br /><br />A meaningful program, he and others said, would cost $520 million over 10 years.<br /><br />The hearings last week stem from the release of a major environmental study on restoration alternatives for <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com">Chesapeake oysters</a>.<br /><br />Native stocks have sunk to historic lows because of disease, pollution, overfishing and lost habitat. This has left the Bay without a key natural filter of pollutants and has decimated a once-powerful oyster industry.<br /><br />Led by the Army Corps of Engineers and taking five years and nearly $15 million to complete, the study reached no conclusions about a top strategy, but it suggested three combination plans.<br /><br />All three call for increased funding and attention to the native species, one supports careful cultivation of sterile Asians in controlled settings, and one includes a direct introduction of reproducing Asian oysters.<br /><br />In advance of choosing a path, the corps scheduled six public meetings, three in Virginia and three in Maryland.<br /><br />The corps expects to announce a final plan by June.<br /><br />The third and final public hearing in Virginia is tonight on the Eastern Shore, where interest in farming native oysters is gaining momentum.<br /><br />The biggest champions of an Asian introduction are <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com">seafood merchants</a> and other business interests that have watched shucking houses close, jobs disappear and profits fall for several decades.<br /><br />More recently, they have trumpeted successes with the Asian oyster in controlled field tests. The animals grow to market size faster than natives, taste about the same and, most important, do not die of local diseases.<br /><br />"Until we get an organism that beats the disease, we're not going to have any success, no matter how much money we throw at it," said Robert Johnson, a Suffolk seafood executive, at Friday night's hearing.<br /><br />Johnson said private industry would pay for most of the Asian work, while native restoration relies mostly on taxpayer money.<br /><br />A.J. Erskine, president of the <a href="http://oysterrecipies.blogspot.com">Virginia Seafood Council</a>, said the long debate Friday night - and for the past decade - misses a key point.<br /><br />"No one is saying we should stop one thing and do another," he said. "We're saying do both - continue working with natives as well as with ariakensis. Why can't we look at both?"<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://OYSTERLOVERSPARADISE.BLOGSPOT.COM">BACK TO THE VIRGINIA OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-41784847935132133172008-10-31T15:05:00.000-07:002008-10-31T15:11:59.691-07:00Brady's OystersI found this site while surfing the internet. If I am ever in Aberdeen WA, I am going to stop by. Cute bumper sticker too.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SuzqHUcRLA8sfKMwnwpTG5_9LB-JBQIY-RZPkcvxmefPHUvsC6GR6z3F4M_w5WgBVEChvDO3kLyIS_OTAqHfYVh6EazhIh0p1mGEogKZY49tq8rx0lS54gChHf-g0JlZuJjIW6x8aic/s1600-h/viagrabs.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 74px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0SuzqHUcRLA8sfKMwnwpTG5_9LB-JBQIY-RZPkcvxmefPHUvsC6GR6z3F4M_w5WgBVEChvDO3kLyIS_OTAqHfYVh6EazhIh0p1mGEogKZY49tq8rx0lS54gChHf-g0JlZuJjIW6x8aic/s320/viagrabs.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263442743789698722" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.bradysoysters.com/">Brady's Oyster Website:</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://OYSTERLOVERSPARADISE.BLOGSPOT.COM">BACK TO THE OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</a>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-41013015395927414822008-10-27T05:13:00.000-07:002008-12-22T21:35:08.285-08:00Chesapeake Bay Oyster History Lesson<a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://chesapeakebay.noaa.gov/pics/Oysters/LynnhavenIntertidalreefexposed.gif&imgrefurl=http://chesapeakebay.noaa.gov/RestorationMain.aspx&h=230&w=340&sz=55&hl=en&start=6&sig2=QNz8DvePTm1qWjRIKk2Lwg&um=1&usg=__w21IWaXPFOPmPKQF_GEI-vXNLBg=&tbnid=m5SfTVqCcO4vtM:&tbnh=81&tbnw=119&ei=9LEFSa2HF5eWerfBybYO&prev=/images%3Fq%3Doyster%2Breef%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN">Here is some Oyster history:</a><br /><br />Beyond mere food, oysters are history. Oysters made Chesapeake Bay and the tidewater culture that embraces it. Chesapeake itself means “Great Shellfish Bay”. Archeologists can spot a pre- European contact Indian village site by the overgrown piles of discarded shells. Visit old tobacco plantations from Mount Vernon to Cape Charles; each has tucked away, amid the poison ivy and kudzu, a mound of old oyster shells quietly dissolving back into the soil. Indentured servants and slaves were fed oysters; cheap protein and free for the harvesting in the shallows. One of the first labor strikes in American history rose from indentured servants complaining about having to eat oysters day in and day out. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizjbn-nVSGRMGOZEVxTkoPzfZ05kel8KReMSdJo2qFcE_Tu9nroCoN20i4fw1r-qgxTuuWWzT9T5IUCPqH3GnOcY_n7CNBo1m4b4-yFIaz9AC9InQFdxgUL3HKsBb63yUiJ-ZiFNSNMFo/s1600-h/oysterreef.bmp"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 176px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizjbn-nVSGRMGOZEVxTkoPzfZ05kel8KReMSdJo2qFcE_Tu9nroCoN20i4fw1r-qgxTuuWWzT9T5IUCPqH3GnOcY_n7CNBo1m4b4-yFIaz9AC9InQFdxgUL3HKsBb63yUiJ-ZiFNSNMFo/s320/oysterreef.bmp" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261808515547852370" /></a><br /><br />When John Smith explored the Bay in the 1500’s, he found oysters so extensive that they formed reefs, breaking the surface at low tide and a hazzard to navigation. The European settlers adapted the Indian appetites and watercraft. Soon, schooners called bugeyes, sporting two raked masts and hulls built from nine old-growth pitch pine logs, were hauling dredges across the reefs. After centuries of onslaught, the reefs soon dwindled to bars; smaller, shorter, and harder to get at, but still chock full of oysters. Bugeyes gave way to <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">skipjacks</a>—single masted plank-built sloops that could handle the new conditions. These graceful craft began the evolution of clipper ships, the acme of sailing ship development. <br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">Oysters</a> are vital to Chesapeake Bay, in large part responsible for its teeming biodiversity and are the Bay’s filtering system. Oysters are what ecologists call a “keystone species”. Keystone species are defined, like the Cheshire Cat, by what’s left when they are gone. Pull a keystone species out of the environmental pyramid, and you get a resulting cascade of unforeseen changes and extinctions of species that, at first glance, have nothing to do with oysters drop in abundance and associated ecosystem function. Ecologists estimate that, at the turn of the 20th century, a volume water equivalent to that of the entire Chesapeake Bay was filtered through an <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">oyster</a> every three days. A single oyster runs 50 gallons of water a day through its gills, feeding on and removing algae and bacteria.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSf12_tsvgLzDpvrnaqqaww8xAchgbTYxfmCf3Ui1WHJml8x8d71G-ziBu-ICaQdPYbOQhyphenhyphenvB2u788dfBzkAfXgT4-LhLZMhxX_T3SevOu4Jycxj17f-1pkcv1xZSASfFiHWbGj7cFmtA/s1600-h/restoredoysterreef.gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 210px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSf12_tsvgLzDpvrnaqqaww8xAchgbTYxfmCf3Ui1WHJml8x8d71G-ziBu-ICaQdPYbOQhyphenhyphenvB2u788dfBzkAfXgT4-LhLZMhxX_T3SevOu4Jycxj17f-1pkcv1xZSASfFiHWbGj7cFmtA/s320/restoredoysterreef.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5261809054667232770" /></a><br /><strong>Restored Oyster Reef</strong> <br /><br />Oysters’ prodigious filtering capacity was the major influence on submerged vegetation. Oysters filter feed on one celled algae, keeping the water clear enough for sunlight to penetrate to the bottom, allowing aquatic grasses to thrive. The grasses formed nurseries for crabs and fish of all sorts. <br /><br />In the 19th Century, sail switched to steam and gasoline engines and the plunder became serious. Maryland made feeble attempts at conservation, such as limiting dredging to sail only, but to little avail. It is an adage among fisheries management people that governments don’t enact management plans until the resource has already dwindled to critical levels. After being pounded for 400 years, the oysters have seemingly given up. Down to one percent of their former populations, they are no longer a major functional part of Chesapeake ecology.<br /><br />Eastport once had nearly 20 oyster shucking houses and watermen tied up at nearby Annapolis City Dock to off load their bushels of bivalves. Skipjacks and smaller working craft were common in the harbor.<br /><br /><a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/"><strong>BACK TO OYSTER LOVERS PARADISE HOMEPAGE:</strong></a><strong></strong>Robert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983534844440374420.post-35660074426181960022008-10-19T16:33:00.000-07:002008-12-17T17:38:58.212-08:00Shells Reveal Change in Oysters400-year-old remnants show that creatures grew faster than they do today<br /> <br />By <a href="http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-10-18-0133.html">PAULA NEELY</a><br /><br />A study of 400-year-old oyster shells discovered in a Jamestown well used by colonists shows that eastern oysters grew significantly faster then than oysters today, a clue that may help shed light on the plight of the <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">modern oyster</a>.<br /><br />The Virginia Institute of Marine Science study provides the first documented evidence that oysters function differently than they did in the early 1600s.<br /><br />They were larger than modern oysters the same age, which probably would have made them "exponentially more capable of reproducing, filtering water and making shell," said Juliana Harding, senior marine scientist at VIMS.<br /><br />Roger Mann, professor of marine science at VIMS, said the slower growth rate of <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">modern oysters</a> may be the result of changes in water quality or sedimentation -- which can bury oyster habitat -- diseases, or a combination of these factors.<br /><br />Researchers studied shells unearthed in a 1609-1616 well discovered inside the James Fort site at Historic Jamestowne in 2006. Archaeologists contacted VIMS and other organizations to find out what shells and other organic artifacts preserved in the watery environment could reveal about the Chesapeake before the impact of European colonization.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhduP4zRfxm30BsNAQLIc3PfXmRzfoNYlXepaCAy-dJdutUzxaQ_MZywZHKZRWsez80NtKcGVxhL3-CsvQ6yGmX7GXyJ-BodcNjUAuaHtlObJKZpiHducmco9WCrpZWttWmg9wUGgAUyIM/s1600-h/ancient-oysters.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhduP4zRfxm30BsNAQLIc3PfXmRzfoNYlXepaCAy-dJdutUzxaQ_MZywZHKZRWsez80NtKcGVxhL3-CsvQ6yGmX7GXyJ-BodcNjUAuaHtlObJKZpiHducmco9WCrpZWttWmg9wUGgAUyIM/s320/ancient-oysters.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5259013400563586626" /></a><br /><br />As they produce their shells, oysters, clams and other mollusks record biological information about their age and growth just like trees store information in growth rings. They also incorporate minerals from the water and lay down a record about their environment that can potentially provide information about water temperature and salinity levels.<br /><br />"They're like a million environmental barometers spread all over the place that have recorded everything that's happened at that spot throughout their entire life history," Mann said.<br /><br />To select shells suitable for comparison, Harding sorted through about <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">3,000 oyster shells</a> deposited in the well after colonists began using it as a trash pit.<br /><br />To determine changes in growth rate, researchers measured the shell lengths and compared the historic oysters with modern oysters of the same age from similar sites in the James River that had the same salinity level as Jamestown in the early 1600s.<br /><br />Studies of mineral deposits in the 400-year-old shells of tiny crustaceans and marine protozoans from the Chesapeake Bay were used to determine that salinity levels around Jamestown were 10-15 parts per thousand higher than they are now.<br /><br />In 1617, <a href="http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/">oyster reefs in the James River</a> near Jamestown were large enough to be navigational hazards, indicated as small islands on a 17th century map drawn by Johannes Vingboons, a Dutch cartographer. Harding said they would have been visible at low tide.<br /><br />Although oysters can live 10 to 20 years, Harding said most modern oysters die before they are two or three years old, mainly because of diseases, harvesting and habitat degradation.<br /><br />"Restoring them is not simply a matter of putting more oysters in, leaving them alone and expecting the same results we had 400 years ago," she said. "You need to plan and accommodate for things that are out there now that were not there then. That's a step that has not always been acknowledged." <br />Results from the study will be published in the Journal of Shellfish Research in December. For further information, visit www.vims.edu/mollusc/research/mehoyJT.htmRobert Linkonis Sr.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17006194089617624003noreply@blogger.com1