Lynhaven River Oysters Have Not Arrived

Yep - I'd been looking forward to a few dozen oysters that were supposed to have looked just like this:

I guess that I will have to be content with oysters from more reputable farms.

Oyster season is coming very soon and I look forward to reviewing the harvest from as many Chesapeake Bay Oyster Farms as possible - stay tuned.

In the meantime: join the Facebook group:

Chesapeake Bay Oyster Farms



Until the next post... enjoy Chesapeake Bay Oysters!!!

Lynnhaven River Oysters

I love finding new good oyster farms, and am looking forward to getting my first shipment from Lynnhaven River Oysters.

"Fresh, outstandingly good, live oysters from the Lynnhaven River Estuary of the Chesapeake Bay".


How could I resist ordering after reading their ad copy from their website: www.seasidequalityseafood.com. Tell me if this doesn't just make your mouth water:


"Salty and with that wonderful fresh ocean taste - directly from the boat to your home.

World Famous - The Favorite of Presidents and Royalty

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".


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 http://oysterrecipes.blogspot.com - be sure to check it out!


Here is an earlier post made on this blog: Lynnhaven Oysters Make a Comeback: Here is the obvious sign of this comeback!!!

Read the post here:

http://oysterloversparadise.blogspot.com/2008/07/lynnhaven-oysters-make-comeback.html


Check back for the review...

Virginia's First Oyster Co-op Launched

Businessmen, watermen and scientists have collaborated to launch Virginia's first privately funded oyster co-op.

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.

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.

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.

"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 Watermen's Museum in Yorktown.

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. Many watermen have resisted calls to abandon the centuries-old hunter-gatherer approach in favor of oyster farming, also known as aquaculture.

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.

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.

"The oyster has a positive effect cleaning up the bay," Smith said.

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.

The effort is similar to one introduced two years ago by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. 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.

In addition to oyster farming, Oyster Company of Virginia has partnered with Reeftek Inc., a reef-building company run by Middle Peninsula businessman Robert Jensen. The cooperative will work will Reeftek to create oyster sanctuaries, Smith said.

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Oyster Facts: Basic Oyster Facts:

Basic Oyster Facts

Here are some oyster basics:

The native eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, usually lives in water depths of between 8 and 25 feet and naturally forms three-dimensional intertidal reefs.




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.




Oysters usually mature by age one. They are protandric, 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.

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.



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 “spat.”


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Oyster Management and Restoration

Oyster reefs are more than just habitat, they are complex and diverse communities.

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.


Chesapeake Bay Oyster Restoration

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.

Oyster Sanctuaries

The first component of the oyster management strategy defines sanctuaries—areas where harvesting is prohibited—to increase the ecological function of oyster beds.

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.

By restoring oyster reefs and protecting them from harvest, there is potential to increase populations of spawning adult oysters and, in turn, larval production.
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.

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.

Managing Oyster Harvest

The second component of the oyster management strategy implements harvest strategies to build a sustainable oyster industry in both Maryland and Virginia.

The main strategy for regulating harvest and enhancing harvest potential is to establish sanctuaries and special management areas throughout the Bay.
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.
A major challenge is to determine what level of exploitation is appropriate and will not compromise restoration efforts.

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.

Oyster Disease

The third component of the oyster management strategy recognizes the constraints of disease and implements management strategies that reduce the impact of disease.

A major challenge to oyster restoration 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.

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.

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.

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.

Introduction of a Non-native Oyster

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 Suminoe or Asian oyster). This species is believed to have greater resistance to MSX and Dermo.

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.

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.

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.

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.


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Oystering - a Skeleton of its History

P. KEVIN MORLEY/TIMES-DISPATCH



Billy Lett uses 16-foot tongs to pull in a load of oysters in about 7 feet of water.

Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population was so abundant that Indians named the bay Chesepiook, or “great shellfish bay.“

Indians and European settlers easily collected oysters to eat.

Oysters kept many Jamestown settlers from starving.

The bay’s oyster fishery became the largest in the world in the late 1800s.


Its plight:

Today, the bay’s oyster population is estimated to be 1 percent or less of its size in the late 1800s.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not only were oysters valuable as food, but their shells were an important building material.

Watermen took all the oysters and shells they could get.

With the reefs nearly wiped out, shell-less baby oysters found few places to take hold. That devastated reproduction.


Hope, trouble:

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.

Oysters began coming back. Virginia’s landings topped 4 million bushels by the late 1950s.

Then diseases called MSX and Dermo, harmless to people, began killing oysters just before they reached market size.

Also, development along the bay and its rivers creates pollution that kills oysters and erosion that smothers them in mud.

The light of a cold dawn revealed an endangered species on the James River -- waterman Rodgers Green of Gloucester.

Green catches oysters the old-fashioned way, with 16-foot tongs that resemble two rakes attached like scissors.

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.

"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."

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.

"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.

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.

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.

There, Green's strong hands broke market-size oysters from masses of mussels, barnacles and too-small oysters, then swept the remains overboard.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A decade or so ago, Green said, "We'd catch twice that many in half the amount of time."

Chesapeake oysters 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.

"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."

The bay, like Rodgers Green, needs the oyster badly.

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.

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.

The diseases, the first of which surfaced in the late 1950s, have been particularly deadly over the past two decades.

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.

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.

Through the decades, the James River oyster has never been particularly popular with diners. Some said they have a gray, snotty look.

But the James was a hot market for "seed oysters" -- tiny ones that buyers dropped in other rivers to harvest later.

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.

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.

"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."

For that reason, the state does not allow mechanized oyster dredges there. But tongers like Green, who are less destructive, work that area for market oysters.

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.

Years of tonging have damaged Green's back, and the work often pains his wrists and forearms, a condition watermen call "tongitis."

But you can tell Green and Lett enjoy being on the water, where they have no boss and no time clock.

"It's the onliest thing I know how to do," Green said.

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.

"This is the type of work where you take the bitter with the sweet," Lett said.

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.

Green hopes he can keep tonging James River oysters. On his boat, he pried one open. It looked tan and succulent.

For the record, it was delicious.


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Oysters Carry a Special Promise

A single oyster filters as much as 50 gallons of water per day.

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.

Still a big deal in Willapa and Netarts bays, oysters offer some surprising benefits, as The Economist 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.

For one thing, oystermen 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.

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.

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.

"Oyster farming," the magazine noted, " is one of the few situations in which both economics and the environment win."

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