OYSTER RESTORATION IN CHESAPEAKE BAY
Background
Since the mid-1800s the Chesapeake Bay has been a major producer of oysters to an extended market reach- ing as far away as California and England. During the 56-year period after 1834 when the business of packing oysters for shipment to the interior was established in Baltimore, Maryland, the average annual harvest from the Bay was 7 million bushels per year, or 392 million bushels for the period. This massive yield from both the Maryland and Virginia portions of the Bay was al- most entirely the result of natural production, that is, there was little farming of oysters.
Sometime after the turn of the century, Mary- land’s oyster harvests dropped below that of Virginia. This change in comparative productivity may have re- sulted from several factors: development of widespread private leasing of Bay bottom grounds in Virginia while in Maryland public grounds remained the primary source of harvesting; growth of power dredging in Vir- ginia, which was highly restricted in Maryland; over- fishing of public beds in Maryland; and increasing de- struction of oyster reefs and their consequent smother- ing by siltation. In the early 1900s, Virginia became the largest producer of oysters in the Chesapeake Region and on the entire Atlantic seaboard.1