THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 54 lines
Independently of each other, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission staff recently came up with the same excellent proposal to save some of the last presumably disease-resistant oysters in the Bay.
The oysters are due to be harvested, beginning Dec. 1, because the commissioners, ignoring their staff's recommendation, recently voted 5-4 to end a three-year ban on taking them.
The large oysters are in the Tangier and Pocomoke sounds, two Bay inlets near the Maryland border. Some of the commissioners reasoned that the oysters might die over the winter if not harvested, that watermen needed the money and that the oysters did not seem to be reproducing anyway.
The Foundation and the staff have responded by offering to buy the oysters from waterman, at market rates, in order to transport them to a spot where they might reproduce. The problem in their present location appears to be currents sweeping away the larva, which float for three weeks before attaching to something. The proposed spot for the oysters is a manmade oyster reef at the mouth of the Great Wicomico River, a good spot for reproduction.
At a regular meeting at 9:30 a.m. today at the Newport News City Hall Council Chambers, 2400 Washington Ave., the commissioner will receive a staff request that the proposal to buy the oysters from watermen be considered at the commission's Nov. 26 meeting. That would allow time for public comment.
The proposal is a good one and should be carried out.
The limit on the harvest would be 2,500 bushels, all of which would have to be sold to the commission at market value, which could reach $22 a bushel.
The money for the buyout, possibly $45,000, would come from a marine commission oyster-replenishment contingency fund. Buying the oysters would not detract from other replenishment programs.
It is not a sure bet that the oysters the staff wants to save are disease-resistant. Conceivably, disease has simply not reached them. Still, there's a good chance the oysters are resistant to disease, and the money to save them would be well spent, for the situation is desperate.
As staff writer Scott Harper reported, ``The Bay's oyster population, especially in Virginia, has nearly disappeared under a lethal barrage of disease and pollution. Recent harvests are 1 percent of their historical bounty, once thought to be limitless.''
If the commission votes not to start the oyster-buying program, the Bay foundation will move ahead with its preservation program, said Joseph H. Maroon, the foundation's executive director in Virginia.
But it would be better if the commission acted to require waterman to sell the oysters from the sound to the marine commission.
Because there's a likelihood they are disease-resistant, the oysters in Tangier and Pocomoke sounds are too valuable to be eaten.
Eating them makes no more sense than eating the corn kept as seed for the next year's crop. by CNB