Md. Watermen Want More Access To Oyster Sanctuaries

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- So near and yet so far.

Oyster sanctuaries are currently off limits to watermen and they'd like at least limited access. That wish is now getting serious consideration in Maryland.

The sanctuaries begin with recycled shells, each carrying microscopic baby oysters called spat. Those are then deposited on oyster reefs where harvesting is forbidden.

Twenty four percent of Maryland's oyster reefs are in sanctuaries. Over the past five years, "it's basically cost watermen probably $20 million dollars I would say," according to Jeff Harrison, president of the Talbot County Watermen's Association.

That's from the oysters they are not allowed to catch and sell.

But a plan under consideration would open up 1,000 acres of oyster sanctuaries, with harvests once every four years.

"Where they can harvest certain areas one year and then give it off for three or four years, and they just rotate through that specific area," says David Blazer, of the Department of Natural Resources.

Watermen say they would plant new oysters in the sanctuaries first, years before a harvest would start.

"And then after those four years we would open them up and we would start a harvest, which we say we need," Harrison says. "We need that economic bounce because we've suffered so much."

"The opening up of sanctuaries is a big concern for us," says Allison Colden, a fisheries scientists with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "It's the only place we can develop large oyster populations with multiple age oysters on them, as well as places we can foster resistance to disease."

In a way, environmentalists and watermen are looking for the same outcome, but with different ways of achieving it.

"We both want the same thing," Harrison says. "We want a cleaner Chesapeake Bay with more oysters in it."

Right now, an oyster management plan is in the early stages, with all proposals being just that: Proposals that may or may not win acceptance.

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